Let me say up front here that I’m not sold on this reporting by Eve Conant of The Daily Beast. Maybe David Duke is going to run for the Republican nomination but, by her own reporting in this article, it seems like the White Nationalist movement is more interested in an insurrectionary strategy. Anyway, here’s her lede:
Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke.
A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Republican executive-committee chairman in his district until 2000, Duke has a significant following online. His videos go viral. This month, he’s launching a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid. He hasn’t considered running for serious office since the early ’90s, when he won nearly 40 percent of the vote in his bid for Louisiana governor. But like many “white civil rights advocates,” as he describes himself to The Daily Beast, 2012 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year.
Now, I can believe that Duke is considering an independent bid. But going for the GOP nomination doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Or, maybe it does. Here’s how it could work. With Duke on the ballot during the primaries and caucuses, every racist asshole in the country will turn out in support of a bunch of insurrectionist white nationalist candidates for, e.g., positions on the water board and in the state assembly. When he loses the nomination, Duke declares as an independent to make sure the racist assholes come out in the general election to vote for downticket Republicans from the white nationalist movement. Voila!! Now, all of a sudden, the GOP has a bunch Nazis in positions of low to moderate power who can then move up the ranks over time.
Most of these candidates will lose. But some of them will win by simple virtue of having an (R) at the end of their name. An independent bid by David Duke would create some interesting dynamics in the Electoral College and in lesser races. Duke would drive up turnout on the right, but at the expense of the Republicans’ presidential candidate. His mere presence in the campaign would also scare the crap out of a lot of people from all spectrums of life, and probably help the left rally itself to the polls.
Duke would certainly chew into the Republican nominee’s numbers, but it’s hard to say if he’d change the outcome in any states. I suppose he could draw enough support to throw the outcome of his home state of Louisiana into question. More likely, he’d put Mississippi and Georgia into play. He might even have the potential to throw Montana and the Dakotas in Obama’s lap, depending on how effectively he appealed to those voters.
Remember, President Clinton won Montana, Louisiana, and Georgia in 1992, based on the appeal of H. Ross Perot. So, any right-leaning candidate has the potential to do some damage to the Republicans in some otherwise unlikely places.
And if the White Nationalist goal isn’t to help the GOP win the presidency, but to successfully infiltrate their lower ranks, this strategy can further that goal.