St. Reagan and Dixiecrat Strom ThurmondI guess I need to read Paul Krugman's new book, The Conscience of a Liberal. Because he emphasizes a very important theme that is a favorite topic of mine. In an interview in the 11/15/07 Rolling Stone (p. 126 of their new, confusing "digital edition"), he talks about what he calls "my diagnosis of how the bad guys got away with it for so long":
It turns out to be embarrassingly simple: Race is at the core of it. The history of U.S. politics for the past thirty years can be summed up in five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. But we’re becoming a different country now. In crude terms, we’re becoming a less white country. And the better news is, we’re becoming a more tolerant, more open society. The old Republican tactic of using race as a wedge doesn’t work anymore, which means we have a real chance of a political process that responds to people’s real needs rather than just prejudice. There are a lot of things we can do right if we put our minds to it. (my emphasis)The New York Review of Books also has its review available online of Krugman's book by Michael Tomasky, The Partisan 11/22/07 issue (accessed 11/03/07). He writes that Krugman emphasizes the importance of racist appeals to white voters in the development of the Republican Party and our current state of political affairs generally. He also notes that Krugman doesn't have a lot of patience with the game of pretending that St. Reagan was so much more dignified and pleasant than Cheney and Bush. Also a favorite topic of mine.
I suggested in a recent post that understanding today's Republican Party requires us to "follow the segregationists" and "follow Dick Cheney". It sounds like Krugman's book does a good bit of both.
Tags: conscience of a liberal, paul krugman, republican party
2 comments:
Thanks for these comments. However, as I know you know, before white Southerners began to vote for Republicans, they voted for Dixiecrats with pretty much the same politics.
I hope you are right about our future. But while the African-American/white interaction has been the pivot for US racism, US racism has shown itself quite able to put indigenous people and Latinos in the same status as people of African descent.
We have a ways to go, as I am sure you would agree. I guess I just don't think it has a lot to do with political parties.
L. Yates
There's certainly a long way to go.
One big difference it makes in the parties today compared to 40 or 50 years ago is that the old Democratic Solid South meant that there was a substantial conservative bloc in the Democratic Party. And there were actual liberals in the Republican Party.
Which meant that the liberal-conservative ideological split cut across both parties. Today the parties are far more ideologically aligned. It's just that the Democrats have had a harder time adjusting to that situation than the Republicans.
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