Andrew Breitbart writes an incoherent conservative call-to-arms in today’s Moonie Times. I was particularly taken with his strategy for turning back the tide.
Republicans, on the other hand, act like a snobby condo board and appear to seek out potential voters for their savoriness. The party expects pre-existing respectable organizations, Protestant churches in particular, to do the heavy lifting. In this day of dwindling Republican appeal, the party’s ace in the hole is heard at the end of the polling day: “Have they counted the overseas military vote yet?” It’s amazing Republicans ever win…
…In the next election cycle, things need to be drastically different. Democracy is not Augusta National Golf Club. It’s a messy free-for-all, and in a two-party system, the GOP will not survive if it doesn’t accept the fact that the Democrats are its enemy and that it must begin to play for keeps. That means finding another Lee Atwater – only meaner – and not apologizing when we get him.
Now, if you were asking what might be the opposite of savoriness, Breitbart answered that, as well.
Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.
I remind you that ACORN registers voters in precincts that have at least 65% Democratic registration, although they make no partisan appeals and will turn in every registration card regardless of partisan preference. As someone who used to analyze registration data for ACORN, I can tell you that 65% Democratic precincts are almost all precincts of color. They are almost all low on the socioeconomic scale. You might call these precincts ‘Skid Row’ if you wanted to be uncharitable, although many of them don’t fit that description at all. What they are, is heavily latino and black. That’s right, ACORN registers (mainly) latino and black voters. And that is why the right-wing keeps attacking them. They don’t want to admit that is why they are attacking them, so they say that ACORN is registering winos, giving them smelling salts, and then driving them to the polls. That’s pretty offensive, Breitbart. Just so you know.
But, there’s an unintentional irony in this piece. Breitbart criticizes Republicans for acting like snobby members of a condo board who won’t let anyone unsavory into their building. I think it is possible that he doesn’t mean what he seems to be saying. But he seems to be noting that the GOP is increasingly acting like an exclusive club where blacks, latinos, women, gays, Jews, Muslims, and agnostics needs not apply. He reinforces this reading by going on to mention the Augusta National Golf Club. The Club has never accepted a female member and has, to my knowledge, only accepted one black member (in 1990). Thus, at first reading, it seemed like Breitbart was going somewhere with his analysis. But he ends up by saying the answer is to find a new Lee Atwater and not apologize when they do Atwateresque things. Things like this:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
So, that’s how the GOP can overcome their snobbishness?
