The results of the Republican Southern Strategy

If you never saw this, I think it may be the best blogging I've done. Summarizing, it attempts to illuminate the likely long term failure for the Republicans of Nixon's Southern Strategy in the '72 election which appealed to the racism of Southern voters.

What brings this to mind today...

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.....

The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces -- evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

The Republican appeals to the base on immigration and gay marriage are nothing new. They are just the latest outgrowth of the underlying bigotry the Republican party utilizes to get the "base" to vote against its own economic and social interests.

It's amazing to me how well hate and fear can be publicly managed to get people to vote their jobs to India and their healthcare to Never Never Land.

(Let me state very clearly that I am not saying, nor attempting to imply, that all Republicans are racist. I think the openly racist element represents a fairly small percentage of the Republican voter base, with a larger but still minority group sympathetic to the coded messages of racism.

However, with the current 50-50 party division in this country, this group, much like the Evangelical Christians, punches far above it's weight in terms of the size of the constituency vs their impact on the party message. Their 5% (?) or 10% (?) of the Republican vote is absolutely critical to the Republicans maintaing power.)