You could see it coming a mile away.
A Nevada rancher who’s been feuding with the federal government over grazing rights, is backed up by Tea Party paramilitary types when the government tries to seize his trespassing cattle. Of course Fox News and Republican politicians are falling all over themselves to offer support. Nevada Senator Dean Heller called them “patriots,” the moniker that the Tea Party is trying to own like the right owned flags and God in the 1980s.
Then the guy opened his mouth. He needed to let the world know what he thought about “the negro.” Turns out, he thinks they are all on “government subsidy” and had more freedom when they were slaves.
If they had been in a stadium, several Republicans would have been trampled to death in the stampede for the exits. They’ve dropped their rancher-hero like a hot potato. Mainstream Republicans, you see, may hate racism, but they keep falling for the racists like an abused spouse who keeps returning to her abuser because she sure he’s changed.
Now, I’m sure my comment section is going to fill up with diatribes about how Democrats were the party of racism in the years following the Civil War and throughout the one-party South. But what they will forget, or ignore, is that following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the racists left the Democratic Party. And they were welcomed with open arms by the GOP as part of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, forming the modern Republican Party.
For years, the GOP was able to hide them. They disguised them as Christian Conservatives and cloaked them in the bible and the flag. Their fervor for the unborn and prayer in schools overshadowed their resentment of minorities. They opposed immigration reform on economic grounds, not racism, and anybody who would say otherwise was race baiting. Then the Tea Party emerged as an anti-government, self-described patriot movement and the GOP embraced them, too.
Just below the surface, though, is racism and the GOP leaders either can’t or won’t see it. And yet they keep making the same mistake. If they really want to change their image, Republicans have got to deal with the reality. All the ads in the world won’t change the nature of the racists in their midst.
According to a new study, 47% percent of people under 20 years old are minorities, up from 32% in 1990. And pretty soon those folks will be voting. They are not going to tolerate a party that makes heroes out of people who disparage them. This is another 47% moment for the GOP. It’s time they purge the racists in their midst instead of rationalizing that they support the GOP agenda for some other reason.
There are a couple of themes that intertwine in the Bundy saga. The GOP has been pitching the government as the bogeyman for so long that governmental nihilism has become mainstream to GOP thought. In their minds, nihilist Bundy stands for what they stand for, even though legally he’s a tax cheat, and a heavily subsidized millionaire. Never mind all that, he’s their new poster child!
When thugs show up threatening violence, that’s OK (“Patriots!”), but when he flat out denies the legitimacy of the US government, when it turns out he’s a johnny-come-lately on the ranch, and especially, when he starts spouting politically unacceptable diatribes, his GOP supporters have to go to radio silence. This was supposed to be a conversation about how the GOP will save you from the Big Bad Government, not a conversation about how the GOP is full of racists.
You said:
>It’s time they purge the racists in their midst instead of rationalizing that they support
>the GOP agenda for some other reason.
I assume that’s rhetorical, because I think we both know the GOP as an institution is incapable of that kind of purge. You can’t kick a big chunk of your base out of the party, and you can’t tell a big chunk of your base how to think. The only choice the GOP has is to continue with business as usual, hoping the rural crazies don’t embarrass them so badly that the lose the suburbs. That’s not a good plan for the medium term.
It’s not completely rhetorical. Back in the early 1960s, William F. Buckley took on the John Birchers, who were part of the base, and drove them out of the Republican party, making the party stronger. The GOP needs to adopt a zero-tolerance-for-racism policy and find somebody to use as a very public example. I’m sure somebody will surface soon.
You’re absolutely correct about Buckley, I had forgotten that. But with crazy the new mainstream in the GOP, I have trouble imagining anyone doing that today. The party elders seem to be Hannity and Limbaugh. With both Bushes and their associates held in low esteem, who are the wise elders that could take on such a task? The GOP certainly needs them now. I hope you’re right.
Well, Thomas, let me just say that you have put into words my exact experience and take on a sad undercurrent within the “new” GOP.
Just a week ago, as a e-commenter on an article appearing in our metro newspaper, I was in a back-and-forth discourse with TP posters about the Bundy matter. It wasn’t about race at that time. Rather, they insisted that the federal government was an illegal landlord in the West, were using Gestapo tactics vs. Bundy, and, in all ways, were at fault and were “the thugs.” To them, Mr. Bundy was a “patriot” and “liberty-loving,” representing states rights, human rights, and everything fiercely American.
I came at it as I read it, i.e., as taxpayers, those BLM lands were our lands and that Mr. Bundy should not be treated any differently than others who use public resources for private-profit gain, that the feds had tried numerous ways to have Mr. Bundy follow the law and pay his fees (as all other ranchers had), had begun to seize and remove his cattle, but, out of a desire to avoid a gunfight with armed Bundy supporters, had backed off.
Now, after Mr. Bundy has clarified his white supremist views (and also his anti-American views — he said he didn’t even recognize the USA government) a bit more, GOP’ers can’t seem to run away from the man fast enough—at least on the surface.
Yes, sadly and unfortunately, there appears to have been an element of racism in many policies, positions and statements Republicans have made in the last 5 years. It needs to go.