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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts issued a statement Thursday condemning “racially divisive issues” after an article in The New York Times detailing a proposal by Ricketts’ “super PAC” to challenge President Obama’s re-election campaign because of his relationship with controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, among other things.
The Cubs are currently working with Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, and the state of Illinois to craft a public/private financing plan to renovate Wrigley Field.
In a story posted on the New York Times’ website on Thursday morning, it was revealed that Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who gave his children more than $400 million to buy the Cubs and Wrigley Field, was funding a $10 million political action committee, the Ending Spending Action Fund, aimed at challenging the president in the upcoming presidential election.
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See, not *that's* funny.
It's a massively complicated history. Basically, the Democratic Party at one point in the 1940s included both Theodore Bilbo and Adam Clayton Powell Jr in the same Congress, which is a hell of a big tent. I don't see any Democrats trying to conceal that history. To cite that history does not mean that the Republican Party was therefore the party of civil rights.
It's a massively complicated history. Basically, the Democratic Party at one point in the 1940s included both Theodore Bilbo and Adam Clayton Powell Jr in the same Congress, which is a hell of a big tent. I don't see any Democrats trying to conceal that history. To cite that history does not mean that the Republican Party was therefore the party of civil rights.
Bob, you might as wait for the next resurrection of Jesus as expect for any of our local conservatives / libertarians to exhibit even the faintest understanding of the forces involved in shaping mid-century American history. I don't know whether it's a matter of their one track mind ideology or simply that they're too lazy or indifferent to learn, but you get the same result either way. They're about as subtle as Rush himself, and no more interested than he is in incorporating any salient facts into their worldview.
There's not a single Democrat I know who won't acknowledge that their party was severely compromised by the Dixiecrats, or who won't acknowledge that there were many good Republicans during that critical time who aided the cause of civil rights. Those people were widely admired and recognized at the time, and won't be forgotten.
But at the same time, it's very difficult to find any Republicans today who will acknowledge any linkage between those same Dixiecrats and the southern Republican party of today. Their dishonesty (or willful ignorance) in this regard would be laughable if it weren't so contemptible.
Sooo... possible perjury isn't worth the time for the government to worry about, but the 0.000003% of votes cast that might be fraudulent and might be preventable via requiring a photo ID -- this IS worth worrying about.
Just want to be sure I understand your priorities properly.... or - you can just admit to partisan axe-grinding.
To claim the GOP is the party of civil rights is to invert actual history and turn truth on its head. Hell, Williamson, in an attempt to pull off that inversion, cites the fact that Strom Thurmond was originally a Democrat. In order to try to maintain his slight of hand, he fails to mention that, after running for President as a Dixiecrat in 1948, Thurmond eventually wound up converting to the Republican Party, as that party slowly but surely jettisoned its history of civil rights work in order to take in the Dixiecrat vote for themselves.
It's not terribly hard to find and read an actual history of Atwater and Nixon's Southern strategy. It's just terribly inconvenient to read actual history when your pet project is pretending that the modern GOP isn't undergirded, at the "base" level, by the self-same anti-civil rights contingents that spun off from the Dems in 1948 and ran two 3rd party attempts for the presidency - first with Thurmond and then with George Wallace. It also is worth noting that National Review is also denying it's own history, as it is the case that Saint Buckley Jr. himself spent no little ink in his magazine defending the rights of white supremacists in the South to maintain their brutal rule by any means necessary.
When "civil rights" became a far more expansive concept than anti-discrimination, Republicans started peeling away -- as well they should have.
(*) Andy understates Republican support. It wasn't that there were many "good Republicans" who "aided" the cause; 85% of the Congressional Republicans voted for the bill.
For over 150 years, we tried to explain to your oafish regionnaires how they should treat people of other races, but they wouldn't listen. You've listened and understood, which is to your credit, but are now, alas, overcompensating.
OK - wait a minute... let's not go overboard here -- I'm a lifelong northerner, but let's not pretend that the enlightened north was some bastion of equality. Northern cities were (and are) still relatively segregated, and there were plenty of 'rights' northern minorities didn't have complete and total access to. The main difference is that most northern metropolises simply had local political machines that found it worthwhile to simply embrace minority voters as part of the power base -- but keep 'em in their own neighborhoods -- rather than prevent them from voting entirely.
I'd certainly agree that the latter was better than the former on a relative basis, but it's not exactly a nirvana either.
Actually 80%, but whatever.
The amusing thing about your historical interpretation here is that Northern Democrats voted in support of the Civil Rights Act in greater percentages than Northern Republicans, and Southern Democrats voted in support in greater percentages than Southern Republicans. It's just that there were more Southern Democrats than Southern Republicans - and good thing, too. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be long before that would drastically change.
Nevertheless, assigning to either party the mantle of "the party of Civil Rights" during that era is highly reductionist. It's complicated history and both parties were internally conflicted by the issue (it's worth remembering that despite Congressional support for the Act, the GOP would nominate an outspoken opponent for President that year). It's far more accurate to say that support for the Act was much more a question of regional affiliation than party affiliation; at least that gets us closer to understanding the dynamics of the situation than does simple posturing over party.
(Brian slipped in ahead with the same point. Wikipedia even points out that this vote is used as an example of Simpson's Paradox.)
I'd certainly agree that the latter was better than the former on a relative basis, but it's not exactly a nirvana either.
Sure, but let's face it: Ninety-five percent plus of the debt that's owed was run up on the South's credit card. They maxed that sumbitch out a long time ago and kept spending. And the North's still bailing their asses out, a fact barely acknowledged, much less thanks given for.
Come to think of it, since it was Texas and Alabama and Virginia and their confreres that left the debt on our front yards like a blocked-up Chevy 4-by, maybe they can raise their own money and pay it back -- instead of wasting a bunch of time worrying about Neil Young, de-unionizing their work forces, stealing Northern factory jobs, and swaggering.
Save that song for someone who doesn't know better.
Or, in other words - the Republicans became the advocates for whites, and the Democrats for minorities. Big business, of course, can't afford to dick around with losing so they just support both parties.
Just like I would not expect a Union rep to give a fair shake to the bosses nor County Prosecutor to a small time hood nor a MLB balllayer's Agent to Bud Selig.
Even if individual voters (like all us saints on BBTF) vote their beliefs and ... (wait for it) ... principles - in the aggregate it's just thinly veiled self interest. This is trivially reflected in the Voter ID ########.
The Democrats don't care about who gets to vote - they only care that their is a block of hard-to-motivate voters that consistently votes democrat (as these people are generally poor and hence beneficiaries of the great socialist welfare state. The Republicans don't care about fraud - expect to the exent that the other guys might out-de-fraud them - they just care about denying votes to people with Democratic tendencies.
Now all of us being principled non-partisan thinking (white male -- except for BBC and a few others) folks WE can try the case of voter id on "it's merits". But we are just are may as well discussing the merits of a sac bunt down 1 on the road in top of the 9th with an empty bench. And in fact we have as much influence on the political "process" as we do on Dusty Baker.
(*) Andy understates Republican support. It wasn't that there were many "good Republicans" who "aided" the cause; 85% of the Congressional Republicans voted for the bill.
I fully realize that Republican support, but by that time there was only one northern Democratic senator (Byrd of West Virginia) and one or two northern Democratic congressmen who voted against the bill. And of course the Republican nominee of 1964 was a rather prominent opponent to that bill, a fact you don't mention.
But that aside, the voting breakdown on the 1964 bill is really beside the point, since as Brian and Chip have noted, the vote fell mostly upon regional lines. The point I've been making about "good Republicans" is that prior to the time when it became a political benefit for most northern politicians to vote for civil rights, there were some very "good Republicans" who were standing up to be counted, along with many "good Democrats". Brian is absolutely correct when he says that claiming the "civil rights" banner for either party is simplistic and reductionist. The truth is that the key factor in that civil rights bill was the massive public pressure in the streets and the growing embarrassment at the way our "freedom" rhetoric rang increasingly hollow around the world.** You can't forget that in the same year that the sit-ins began (1960), many African nations became independent. Don't underrate the role that our national image concerns played in goosing a lot of congressional fence straddlers towards voting the right way.
And if anyone is under any illusion that it was all that much better for black people in the north, I'd only advise them to look further. There were small pockets of enlightenment in a few big northern and western cities, and in most northern states there were no (or few) overtly racist statutes. But once you got out of those few enclaves of tolerance, it was a completely different story. There was overt segregation in housing, systemic discrimination in non-CIO controlled jobs, frequent barring of blacks from public establishments, all-white police forces that ruled black neighborhoods with an iron fist, and so on. It was gradually improving with the passage of time, but in many towns and city neighborhoods any black person who tried to move in was likely to be subject to vandalism or worse. Just ask Bill Russell how he was received by his white neighbors in liberal Boston. He wasn't the only one who got the message.
**I'd also add a sincere tip of the hat to Lyndon Johnson, and a cynical nod to Lee Harvey Oswald. Those who lived through the period will know exactly what I mean by that last remark.
Sorry.
I don't think I've ever been so happy to live in the old Confederacy :)
a sincere tip of the hat to Lyndon Johnson (Andy in #616)
Amen. Let's suppose that Williamson is right, and LBJ explained his support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as intended "to have
them ####### voting Democratic for the next two hundred years." Well, you know what? That meant that he acknowledged their right to vote. It's like people claiming that Abraham Lincoln was a racist. Fine, all other racists who issued an Emancipation Proclamation, please raise your hands.
Not just guns, robots too!
Good news for Mariano Rivera I guess. And for Ray.
Just for a public service nit-pick, since some appear to rely on BBTF for all their information, it is a bit of stretch to call West Virginia a northern state. It was carved out of Virginia, after all, and lies south of the Mason-Dixon line. Byrd not only voted against the Civil Rights Act, he actively participated in the filibuster, and also holds the dubious distinction of being the only Senator to vote against both black Supreme Court Justices.
WV certainly isn't a southern state, though. Good rule of thumb: if your state exists because it refused to secede during the Civil War, NOT SOUTHERN! Sort of part of the deal, really.
WV is Appalachia, and like pretty much all the rest of Appalachia, WV is just completely ######.
(It might bear mentioning that Appalachia is the biggest growth market for the Republican Party currently existing, too.)
Stephen Byerley isn't running, sadly.
Just for a public service nit-pick, since some appear to rely on BBTF for all their information, it is a bit of stretch to call West Virginia a northern state. It was carved out of Virginia, after all, and lies south of the Mason-Dixon line. Byrd not only voted against the Civil Rights Act, he actively participated in the filibuster, and also holds the dubious distinction of being the only Senator to vote against both black Supreme Court Justices.
You're right about Byrd's shameful participation in that filibuster, but in 1964 West Virginia was in political terms much more of a northern state than a southern one. The other West Virginia Senator (Jennings Randolph) voted for the bill, and Byrd was widely reported as haivng cast the only northern Democratic "no" vote. As Sam says, West Virginia was (and still is) considered more Appalachian than southern, and the fact that Appalachian whites today vote more like southerners than northerners doesn't really alter that fact.
Oh, and for the record, here's the party breakdown on the final House and Senate versions of that 1964 civil rights bill. I'd said that there'd been only 1 or 2 northern House Democrats to vote against it, but I'm pretty sure that the other 7 were all from border states, rather than from what we think of as the "North".
All five of the WV Reps (4 D, 1 R) voted for the bill as well.
For those that are curious, after a few minutes research, I've found the full roll calls for the vote in both chambers:
House
Senate
Whatever they need to tell themselves to get up in the morning, I guess.
Not sure you could get that result with the current state of Oklahoma politics.
Note that Oklahoma provides its own challenge to defining North and South through the Civil War. Indian Territory wasn't a part of the Confederacy, but it wasn't all that much a part of the Union, either. There were Indians from Oklahoma on both sides, including the very last Confederate commander to surrender in 1865, a Cherokee named Stand Watie.
Here's the breakdown of the border and northern states votes against that Civil Rights bill:
House Bill (Feb. 19th)
California - 4 Republicans
Iowa - 2 Republicans
Illinois - 1 Republican
Indiana - 1 Republilcan
Kentucky - 4 Democrats, 2 Republicans
Michigan - 3 Republicans
Missouri - 1 Democrat, 1 Republican
Montana - 1 Republican
North Dakota - 1 Republican
Nebraska - 1 Republican
New Hampshire - 1 Republican
Nevada - 1 Democrat
Ohio - 1 Republican
Oklahoma - 1 Democrat, 1 Republican
South Dakota - 1 Republican
Wisconsin - 1 Republican
Senate Bill (July 2nd)
Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona)
Bourke Hickenlooper (R-Iowa)
Norris Cotton (R-New Hampshire)
Edwin Mechem (R-New Mexico)
Karl Mundt (R-South Dakota)
Wallace Bennett (R-Utah)
Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia)
Milward Simpson (R-Wyoming)
BTW while Robert Byrd voted "no", he was the only West Virginian to vote that way. The other Senator (Jennings Randolph) and all 5 Representatives all voted for the bill, including the only Republican.
Yes, but as Byrd explained in his memoirs, he only voted no because a 17-year-old George Bush tricked him into voting that way during a trip to the Senate with his father.
You mean when one of us wrote this?.....
or this?.....
But soldier on, Ray, and don't ever concede an inch. I'm sure that David or Good Face will pop along shortly to parrot your parrot-talk, and if you're lucky, Joey B or tfbg9 will get your back, too.
Oh, and don't forget to ignore the fact that exactly two weeks after the 1964 bill passed, the Republicans nominated as their presidential candidate one of the seven GOP Senators who voted against it.
Yes, but as Byrd explained in his memoirs, he only voted no because a 17-year-old George Bush tricked him into voting that way during a trip to the Senate with his father.
I've never once apologized or made excuses for Robert Byrd's vote. So what do you think about Barry Goldwater's? This should be interesting.
He was on the wrong side of history, obviously.
Whatever they need to tell themselves to get up in the morning, I guess.
Stop. Making. ####. Up. Nobody, not one person, not a single soul said anything like this. You're becoming a liar.
Like Byrd, Goldwater also wasn't too proud of that vote in later years. Barry Goldwater wouldn't have a ghost of a chance of getting his party's nomination today---his social views would have been way too liberal for them.
**The same Jerry Falwell whose memory Mitt Romney just gave a big wet kiss to only a few days ago. He knows where those ducks are.
Of course, those votes represent the 180-degree turn that Byrd made on civil rights. It's kind of like saying "the dubious distinction of finishing behind the Royals twice" if one year was 2005 and the other year was 1980.
One of the most curious facts about the 1964 Civil Rights Act vote is that, a few weeks later, Strom Thurmond switched his affiliation to Republican. He was ahead of the curve, true; Richard Russell and John Stennis and many other reactionaries stayed in the Democratic Party, which was for many of them the only viable statewide party they'd known in their lifetimes. But think about that for a minute. If the Republicans were the bastion of civil rights, what on earth was Strom Thurmond doing seeking refuge amongst them? The odd thing is that the Republicans want us to remember about Robert Byrd's youth, but forget about Strom Thurmond's middle age.
I also love the insinuation that Goldwater lost the plot after marrying a trophy wife of loose morals. As opposed to all the other trophy wives who shored up their conservative husbands' faith, family values, and Americanism :)
Running away from a brand more damaged than poisoned Tylenol?
Oh, and don't forget to ignore the fact that exactly two weeks after the 1964 bill passed, the Republicans nominated as their presidential candidate one of the seven GOP Senators who voted against it.
To support the same principles that made him a social liberal. While it's certainly fair game to reiterate the growing distance between Goldwater and Repub/fundie orthodoxy as time passed, there's nothing really surprising about Goldwater's stance on social issues.
Stop trying to get me on your side!
You forgot to mention that when Thurmond switched parties, the Republicans even sweetened the pot by letting him keep his accumulated seniority, bumping him ahead of all but three Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
----------------------------------------------------------
Oh, and don't forget to ignore the fact that exactly two weeks after the 1964 bill passed, the Republicans nominated as their presidential candidate one of the seven GOP Senators who voted against it.
To support the same principles that made him a social liberal.
So when the Dixiecrats all voted against the civil rights bill, that not only meant that they were against civil rights, but that their votes rubbed off on northern Democrats.
But when Barry Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill, that's merely proof that he was a social liberal. I guess that means that the 84% of the Republicans who voted for it weren't such civil rights heroes after all. Good old SugarBear, he gets us coming and going.
While meanwhile, Julian Bond and Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson were joining the Democratic Party because ...? I think there's a more parsimonious explanation for these alignments than "Strom Thurmond, deeply committed to the true meaning of civil rights, abandoned the party of Jefferson Davis for the party of Lincoln" :-D
Oh please. After I pointed out the Republicans were the party of civil rights, you showed up filled with bluster and outrage demanding proof in your unique, passive aggressive fashion. There wasn't the slightest bit of acknowledgement that it could possibly be true by any of your fellow travellers until I started cramming evidence into your pie holes. You and yours are retreating on this issue because you've been bested. It's both amusing and sad that even after telling you guys the what, you still needed us to point out HOW. A depressing indictment of how indoctrinated and conditioned you lot are... you've literally lost the ability to think outside of your rigid ideologies.
Unlike your stupid ass, most of us don't identify "the Republican Party" with the species of Northeastern Republicans that were beginning to die out as early as 1968, and have basically gone extinct today. Few here would deny that, oh, Olympia Snowe perhaps, would probably support civil rights and social justice in most cases. It's just that, unlike you, we all take some note of the reality of 2012 where Olympia Snowe has no place in the Republican Party, due entirely to the fact that the modern Republican Party is a hodge-podge of Dixiecrats and Neocons, with a few idiot savant "Libertarians" hanging out in the back corner telling themselves lies about how important their "small government principles" are to the world.
Of course. There were two primary reasons to vote against the Civil Rights bill: (1) bigotry; and (2) a live-and-let-live attitude that, by its very nature, includes the right to associate with persons of one's choosing.
One is a very noble attitude; the other, well ... isn't.
They were conned into toiling on the librul plantation due to their well-meaning negro innocence.
I sense a new best-selling book from serious conservative intellectual Jonah Goldberg coming out of this thread. Somebody drop the lad a note to come hither.
Right. Except the comically obtuse observation that started this whole discussion was that the Republicans have been anti-civll rights since about 1960, which your "side" has now wishcast and airbrushed away.
Republicans were solidly in favor of civil rights as anti-discrimination and they aren't in favor of racial spoils, giveaways, preferences, and obsessions. "Civil rights" does not mean the same thing in 2012 as it meant in 1964.
Of course. There were two primary reasons to vote against the Civil Rights bill: (1) bigotry; and (2) a live-and-let-live attitude that, by its very nature, includes the right to associate with persons of one's choosing.
One is a very noble attitude; the other, well ... isn't.
I get it. Barry Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill for "very noble" reasons.
So what about the ignoble other 84% of the Republicans who voted for it? Were they nothing but shameless enablers of the encroaching nanny state, forcing restaurant owners to serve blacks at the point of a gun?
It's hard not to conclude (to put it charitably) that you're trying to have it both ways here: Republicans who voted for the 1964 bill were noble civil rights supporters, while Republicans who voted against it were noble resisters of government intrusion into private property rights.
Republicans were solidly in favor of civil rights as anti-discrimination and they aren't in favor of racial spoils, giveaways, preferences, and obsessions. "Civil rights" does not mean the same thing in 2012 as it meant in 1964.
Perhaps not, but Barry Goldwater didn't cast that vote against the 2012 Affirmative Action bill. He cast it against the 1964 Civil Rights bill.
I imagine most of them were like me and concluded that context and history warranted sublimating the principle. Assuming they subscribed to the principle in the first place, of course. It's pretty clear Barry Goldwater did, and he was the person being discussed.
It's hard not to conclude (to put it charitably) that you're trying to have it both ways here: Republicans who voted for the 1964 bill were noble civil rights supporters, while Republicans who voted against it were noble resisters of government intrusion into private property rights.
I'm sure there were some Republican bigots, too. I don't know that there were any principled "no" R voters other than Goldwater, but that's an historical/empirical question. I'd guess there were.
I made that statement. When presented with evidence to the contrary, I owned the mistake. But by all means, keep tilting at windmills. Nixon-Atwater was later than 1960. The takeover of the GOP by the Dixiecrat rump did not happen until after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Once more, with feeling, I got that one wrong.
Now can we please stop pretending like the debate at hand is about 1964, any more than it is about 1864? When we talk about the GOP being against civil rights, we're talking about the GOP as it has existed for the last 40 years - post-Southern Strategy; post-Nixon/Atwater. Stop being an obtuse fool.
But most of the post-1964 legislation, regulation, and debate was about things other than non-discrimination. I'm, frankly, not in the bigot-counting business and am not a devotee of either party. I have no dog in the fight over which party has more bigots in it; in fact, it stands to reason that, since the Republican party has become more Southern-fried in recent years, it probably has more bigots.
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. 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, \"######, ######, ######." By 1968 you can't say \"######\" — 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 \"######, ######."[6][7]
And sitting back on your ass and hand-waving away 350 years of state policy with a wink and a nod, saying "Oh, we don't _discriminate_ any more, goodness no!" while your mint julep glass sweats in the sun was *so* going to be work.
I imagine most of them were like me and concluded that context and history warranted sublimating the principle. Assuming they subscribed to the principle in the first place, of course. It's pretty clear Barry Goldwater did, and he was the person being discussed.
Goldwater later said that he regretted his vote, and he was wise to do so.
FTR all of those border and northern state Republicans and Democrats who voted against the bill came from the most reactionary wing of their parties. It wasn't that they necessarily had any personal animosity against blacks**, it's just that they were hard-core conservatives whose views weren't all that different from today's Tea Partiers.
Side note: Perhaps the most courageous congressional vote on the CR bill was that of Rogers Morton, a Republican from Maryland's Eastern Shore district. Morton voted for the bill in spite of the fact that the voting demographic of the Eastern Shore back then resembled Alabama much more than Maryland. To demonstrate that point: In the heart of Morton's district, Dorchester County, George Wallace won over 80% of the vote in that year's Democratic primary.
**I doubt that many of those southern congressmen did, either, though saying that completely avoids the issue.
The right answer to that question is "I don't know if these policies get to the 'racist side of the Wallace voter,' or really what that means, but a non-bigot has no moral obligation to abandon sound ideas just because some listeners might hear an appeal that isn't there."
All roads still lead to Philadelphia, MS, don't they?
And before Atwater, there was Kevin Phillips, in one of the earlier stages of his political journey:
Full link
So, if I have your argument correctly here, I should ignore the stated position of LEE ####### ATWATER - the man who was actually running the campaign - and take your wishcasting position in its place.
That is... Well. It's something. I'm rarely left speechless, so kudos on that side of the ledger, I guess.
The first bit of evidence that you have no grasp on reality was when I said I didn't give a #### about voter IDs. I'll get to the others after lunch.
A convenient, childishly naive position that one would expect from you. Some of us don't live cloistered lives in Jersey.
(I notice, too, that the libertarian wing of these boards has made its presence known by its absence.)
EDIT: I see DN has showed up.
And now you know... the rest of the story.
I don't know how anyone could miss that, but then again I can't understand what Andy's getting at by quoting Kevin Phillips advocating keeping the Voting Rights Act and registering more black voters. All this time, I thought he favored the Voting Rights Act, and expanded voting by blacks.
It was possible to oppose the law for principled (if completely ahistorical) reasons, and I think that Goldwater embodied that POV, even though he himself came to realize that his vote was shortsighted and overly based on abstract reasoning.
But while Goldwater's opposition was based on a broader principle than anti-black racism, you can easily find rather massive evidence (as in those Atwater and Phillips quotes above) that the Republicans---including Goldwater at the time---were all too willing to play up to Dixiecrat voters whose reasons for opposing the bill were a lot less libertarian and a lot more racist. As Goldwater said at the time, if you're hunting for ducks, you go where the ducks are.
I was mostly interested upthread in Williamson's revisionist history (and by extension Sugar Bear's :) I will grant you this much, David: times have changed. There are now two black Republican Congressmen from the south (Tim Scott from SC and Allen West from FL). They are very conservative, and they won a lot of white votes, and that's a sea change from 1998, let alone 1968.
It's not that racism disappeared in 1968 and we needed never talk about it again, of course; but nor is it that the Republicans want to deny black people representation. I think Republicans have moved a little from a few years ago, when their minority creds consisted of heartily approving of Clarence Thomas and admiring Tiger Woods's short game.
No, the problem with the GOP is that the values represented by the civil rights movement have shifted fronts in many ways, and the GOP – or at least its Tea Party dog-wagging element – continues to get out on the bad side of them: as witness Mitt Romney's attack on the relatively humane Texas policies to promote paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants. As long as Arizona is in the xenophobic vanguard, and Republicans nationally sign on to that xeonphobia, the GOP has a ways to go on civil rights. Or I suppose I ought to say human rights more generally; I'm sure there's some reason why illegal immigrants technically have no "civil rights."
I don't know how anyone could miss that, but then again I can't understand what Andy's getting at by quoting Kevin Phillips advocating keeping the Voting Rights Act and registering more black voters.
Perhaps that's because Andy managed to read the rest of that Phillips quote. Perhaps you missed it:
EDIT: For the record, these quotes reflect historical truth, not current attitudes. Romney shouldn't have to answer to Lee Atwater or the old Kevin Phillips, but neither should he be able to be avoid judgment of his own repeated words on human rights-related issues. Those words have nothing to do with Lee Atwater, but they have a lot to do with Joe Arpaio and Jerry Falwell.
Please Sam, do not take this bait.
Glad we could see some progress on Goldwater and principles, but no, that isn't what Atwater or Phillips were saying. Atwater was saying you can't say the n-word anymore and if someone thinks saying "tax cuts" is saying the n-word, it means we're "doing away with the racial problem." Phillips was saying, "Let's beef up the Voting Rights Act and register more black voters, it'll get us more white votes."
What do you mean by "principled"? I think anyone would agree that one could have a "principled objection" to the Civil Rights Act, but then the question would be, what are those principles worth in the world? Just because a person is "principled", it doesn't mean that those principles are noble or admirable.
Sam, when the fight for civil rights in the year 2012 is basically embodied by the push for gay marriage - which has oddly been cast as a civil rights issue, and not even most blacks agree - the battle really is over.
EDIT: Which is not to say that I agree with David that the battle has been over for 40 years -- but it's certainly over now. And has been for quite some time. Many years, at the least. At least a quarter century. We'll start from the Al Campanis dustup and work backwards from there to pin down the date at which saying things like Campanis did simply would no longer be tolerated in polite society.
This is no less stupid when you say it than when Ray says it.
Thinking Good Face started the whole CIVIL RIGHTS, SUCKAS thing as anything but trollbait is equally stupid.
To say that only hyper-lefty liberals today consider the words "civil rights" as referring to minorities and the last 50 years up until now is still stupid.
Goldwater previously had supported forms of Civil Rights legislation, including the previous acts and the original Senate version of the '64 act, I believe. I'm not sure I remember now (although I guess I could look it up) how he parsed the difference that made him come down against the final version.
It's like what film maker Jean Renoir near the end of his life said in an interview, when asked what he learned about life. Reinforcing the line from The Rules of the Game he said: "The horrible thing about life is that everyone has his reasons."
And in a democracy, even a mutant half-ass one (or maybe especially because) like ours, you ignore that at your political peril. Last I heard, racists (all breeds of racists) still get to vote, and everyone still don't rise above their self-interest.
It's not that odd - from a strategic standpoint, it's been an overwhelming success.
It's not really even that odd from a philosophical standpoint. There are so many legal and cultural benefits accorded to married couples that there was bound to be a drive to redefine the institution to be more inclusive.
Yes, yes... Lee Atwater went around issuing deathbed apologies because he recognized the end of using racial animus as a campaign tactic and never practiced such a dark art.
The war is trending towards justice, that I'll grant. There are battles left to be fought, and to pretend otherwise is to be obtuse and blinkered by your own privilege.
And of course equal protection under the law for LGBT minorities is a civil rights issue. As one of the bleating chorus of rightwingers was fond of saying a couple pages back, civil rights isn't an issue reserved for African Americans, after all.
As to your point about black opposition to civil equality for gays and lesbians - YES! The African American communities refusal to support the rights of other hated minorities is one of the saddest, most pathetic displays of empathy and civil good will imaginable. Luckily, there seems to be turning of the tide of late, though I'm sure someone will tell me that having a sitting POTUS, who as David reminds us is African American himself, come out in support of equality is "just words."
Glad we could see some progress on Goldwater and principles, but no, that isn't what Atwater or Phillips were saying. Atwater was saying you can't say the n-word anymore and if someone thinks saying "tax cuts" is saying the n-word, it means we're "doing away with the racial problem." Phillips was saying, "Let's beef up the Voting Rights Act and register more black voters, it'll get us more white votes."
Jesus, after that one, you might consider changing your handle to SugarBearSpinDoctor.
As zonk notes, Atwater wasn't issuing his deathbed apology for something he didn't do, and Phillips' raw appeal to "Negrophobe" white voters speaks for itself.
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It was possible to oppose the law for principled (if completely ahistorical) reasons, and I think that Goldwater embodied that POV, even though he himself came to realize that his vote was shortsighted and overly based on abstract reasoning.
Goldwater previously had supported forms of Civil Rights legislation, including the previous acts and the original Senate version of the '64 act, I believe.
I realize that, and that's one big reason for not applying any "racist" tag to him, even if he hadn't later recanted his 1964 vote.
And in a democracy, even a mutant half-ass one (or maybe especially because) like ours, you ignore that at your political peril. Last I heard, racists (all breeds of racists) still get to vote, and everyone still don't rise above their self-interest.
And yet many times we've seen that those who vote (or act) against their short-range political interest often wind up being rewarded by something a bit more lasting and meaningful than one's next re-election. Just because this is a representative democracy doesn't mean that our representatives have to be focus-group driven robots.
And what it says is, "That's politics."
I'm not sure what you mean by "raw appeal." He took stock of the unmissable fact that registering black voters would piss off bigots. What's he supposed to do, close his eyes? And from there, he must have concluded that the Republicans would get more votes from whites than they'd lose from the newly-franchised blacks. Again, what political consultant worth anything wouldn't have wanted to answer that question, and what politician wouldn't want it answered? Politicians count votes; that's their job.
In the absolute worst reading, Phillips advocates the right thing for the wrong reason -- and even that is a massive stretch.
As zonk notes, Atwater wasn't issuing his deathbed apology for something he didn't do,
This was Atwater's apology, as reported by the NYT in his obit (it had also reported it contemporeaneously):
"In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate,' " Mr. Atwater said in the Life article.
"I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not."
He also reconsidered the appeal of wealth and power, effectively abjuring them, and (I think) converted religions. And in his apology, he was worried about being seen as a racist. In other words, he did the kind of things a 40 year old with a fatal brain tumor does.
He didn't apologize for his tactics; he apologized for a couple things he said.
And what it says is, "That's politics."
I'm not sure what you mean by "raw appeal." He took stock of the unmissable fact that registering black voters would piss off bigots. What's he supposed to do, close his eyes? And from there, he must have concluded that the Republicans would get more votes from whites than they'd lose from the newly-franchised blacks. Again, what political consultant worth anything wouldn't have wanted to answer that question, and what politician wouldn't want it answered? Politicians count votes; that's their job.
In the absolute worst reading, Phillips advocates the right thing for the wrong reason.
And by sheer coincidence, it turned out to be a win-win situation for his favored party. SpinDoctorBanks strikes again!
It's kind of funny that the "Southern Strategy" that's had you guys all riled up for 40 years is nothing more than a Republican consultant saying "Keep bringing on the civil rights; the more the merrier!!!!" For their next act, Republicans will say nice things about black people, in the hopes of garnering even more white votes.
As the Spinmeister gayly morphs into a veritable Whirling Dervish.
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And you'll note: he didn't admit it was racist -- it wasn't -- but just that it "sounded" racist.
Yes, another mere coincidence, you stinking Shylock.
I want to apologize for that comment, which some people might say sounded a bit anti-semitic.
Think of it like WWII after the Battle of the Bulge - the war in Europe hadn't yet ended, but it was only a question of mopping up; there was no chance the Germans were going to stage a comeback.
And yet Allied soldiers and civilians still continued to die from that point forward in the war; if you had suggested that it no longer mattered how quickly the war was ended from that point forward I suspect a lot of people would have taken offense. And god forbid you suggested that it was now ok to side with the Nazis before the war was actually over.
To which reasonable men say "who really gives a #### what you believe you are, Lee?" "I'm not really a racist, I just courted them and broke bread with them for my own personal gain" is about the emptiest load of #### imaginable. I have no care whatsoever if Lee Atwater did or did not believe in the pseudo-science of white supremacy. I have no care whatsoever if he was, or was not "in his heart" a racist. I care what he did in the world. And what he did in the world - his actions in the world - extended racism in America.
What Lee Atwater believed, or what he believed about what he believed on his deathbed, is irrelevant. I don't care if he was a racist. I care that he did racist things.
And not just any black, but an arrogant anti-white savage born in the heart of Africa.
When is the last time you heard a non-KKK/Stormfront or John Derbyshire call themselves or their actions racist? We've got people making/passing cartoons of Obama with racist imagery or calling blacks a n*****r or acting in any other variety of generally considered racist activity, and guess what, they still don't consider themselves or their actions racist. Hell, conservatives won't even call John Derbyshire a racist and he actually has described himself as a racist.
I'm still around, and I will be the last one dammit.
This thread is incredibly sad, I'm mean we've had long thread and argumentative threads and RossCW threads, but there is no point in arguing past a clique that just has a wholly different worldview
Twelve comments before yours, it wasn't.
Just like Republicans did support the '64 CRA, Atwater didn't apologize for fomenting racial animus.
And, to continue the pattern:
And what he did in the world - his actions in the world - extended racism in America.
No they didn't ... and
I care that he did racist things.
No, he didn't.
to be fair, he kind of admitted that the statement itself was racist and cruel- what he didn't admit was that he was racist.
don't care which but perhaps it is time for someone to Godwin this tread
It's literally impossible to rationally conclude that Atwater "admitted that the statement itself was racist."
Just like the Phillips passage and the other Atwater passage, things are being read into writings and statements that simply aren't there -- all in support of a historical narrative that isn't there.
The heart of darkest Africa, no less.
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