1115.org

…in fact it’s a crime.”

“If you know better
Could you do better?
Or would you sell your soul
Just to roll in the cheddar?”
-Public Enemy - “More Hype Believers Than Ever in ‘97“

Largely lost in the subsequent Karl Rove and Supreme Court coverage was a story that, based on its place in history and significance to the current political situation, should have received much more attention. With the President skipping the annual NAACP convention for the fifth time in as many years, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman appeared in Bush’s stead and offered what some termed an “apology” for the GOP’s “Southern Strategy”:

“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” Mehlman said, according to his prepared remarks. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

Some Republicans. Mehlman glossed over the fact that the Southern Strategy has been the electoral roadmap for Republican politics since 1968, didn’t provide any specific examples of its corrosive and divisive tactics, and worse, offered no assurances that anything would change. And why would he? The Southern Strategy has been enormously effective in peeling off white southern voters just as the “culture wars” have attracted “values voters”. These two lanes make up the highway to Republican dominance in the south and the plains by playing on prejudices to sway voters whose economic interests would clearly be better served by voting Democratic. What’s next, will Mehlman give an interview to The Advocate admitting that it was wrong to turn James Dobson and friends loose on SpongeBob?

But the Southern Strategy is no laughing matter, and its disgrace is only compounded by the fact that it continues unabated by Mehlman’s empty apology. Upon signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, President Lyndon Johnson lamented “There goes the South for a generation.” Richard Nixon wasted little time in seizing upon the discontent that was a byproduct of the Civil Rights Act by running in the 1968 Presidential elections on a platform of “states rights,” which was little more than a euphemism for rollback of the protections the act granted to minorities. Nixon went on to a landslide victory in 1968 by denying Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey formerly reliable Democratic states. In the process, Nixon discovered that code words like “states rights” and “federalism” allow Republicans to appeal to southerners uncomfortable with integration while not alienating northern voters who don’t understand the hidden meanings. Later candidates like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would combine those and other code words with appearances at sites with ingrained significance to southern racists and racist sympathizers. In 1980 Reagan launched his first Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were killed in 1964, and later gave a speech at the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan praising Confederate president Jefferson Davis. George H. W. Bush, though considered moderate on race issues, benefitted from the most notorious political ad ever run, the Willie Horton spot which derailed Michael Dukakis‘ 1988 bid for the White House. By visiting Bob Jones University, a school that had strict rules on race including one barring interracial dating, George W. Bush proved that he had more in common with Reagan than he did with his father.

Mehlman is right to admit that it’s plain wrong, but in the very next sentence of his statement, he demonstrates both his party’s insincerity and their craven opportunism:

“But if my party benefited from racial polarization in the past, it is the Democratic Party that benefits from it today.”

Political parties are like sharks in that they have to keep moving forward or they die. The Democratic party rested on their laurels and became something of a permanent minority. Republicans evolved (in the morally neutral sense of the word) and now enjoy solid majorities in Congress and the White House largely because of the strategy enacted by Nixon. They have legislated in a manner that impedes minority progress and litigated to reverse progress made by Democratic legislation to reward and further encourage support from intolerant voters. Bush has taken the Southern Strategy playbook on campaigning and applied it to governance. Civil rights enforcement has fallen each year of Bush’s term, as personnel and funding were shifted away. By using a recess appointment on the weekend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2004 to elevate Judge Charles Pickering, a judge critical of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and who has displayed anti-civil rights views on several other issues, Bush offended African-Americans and reinforced his support among those who wish to hold them down. In another particularly audacious case, Bush used his pet phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” to justify his administration’s anti-affirmative action stance. Mehlman realizes that, while still quite effective, the Southern Strategy has already maxed-out its potential.

Even if Mehlman had gone beyond his empty gesture and promised a halt to the Republican’s racist activities, the still-viable remnants of their policies are the fruit of a poison tree. How many Republican members of Congress owe their seats to racially divisive campaigns? Will Republicans allow the redrawing of districts affected by racial gerrymandering? Will they force patently racist Senator Trent Lott from office (after only stripping him of his majority leader status in 2002) for remarks praising Strom Thurmond’s segregationist Presidential campaign? Will Mehlman lead a proper investigation into voting irregularities in minority districts in Ohio? And what about the nasty business of minority voter suppression? In cases where criminals are found to have profited from their crimes, they are often compelled to disgorge their ill-gotten gains in order not to reward their transgressions. Any serious repudiation of the Southern Strategy would require the same, otherwise Republicans are no different from bank robbers who confess to their crimes after the statute of limitations passes, reinvest the money into better tools and promise to do it all over again at every opportunity.

Since the first slave ships landed in Virginia 400 years ago, black people have been oppressed and subjugated. For the vast majority of that time, they suffered from equal-opportunity repression. But 40 years ago Republicans figured out how to take advantage of it for political ends. While the President continued his pattern of ignoring the largest African American group in the country (becoming the first President since the great depression to do so), Ken Mehlman tried to score cheap political points. African Americans would be better served if their votes were less reliable to one party, but if the Republican party wants to do better than 11% of the black vote in the next Presidential election, they will either need to follow up Mehlman’s word with concrete action, or get started on an army of Condoleezza Rice clones. Rush Limbaugh will be pissed either way.