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    Tea Party: Nixon's chickens come home to roost

    Nixon
    David Seaton in Dagblog
    The political climate in America is toxic and it has been ever since Richard Nixon launched his Southern Strategy and caused Republicans to pause from their golf and stock coupon clipping long enough to plunge into neofascist populism and charismatic religion. The fiscal conservatives have been using the social conservatives and the just generally resentful and racist elements as cannon fodder to win elections and now they finally see what Nixon hath wrought.

     

    Nixon's "southern strategy" is the cause of what we are seeing now. Nixon began it and Reagan fine-tuned it, with his "welfare queens" and "state's rights". It was all very simple: it was postulated on the theory that southern whites, who had supported the Democrats solidly (the solid south) since the Civil War and had been some of most favored by FDR's "New Deal", in fact hated black people more than they loved their own children, who needed health care, housing and schools. This curious theory proved correct and since then, the southern states and a great many poor whites elsewhere vote Republican.

    The Republicans have begun to see that they have fallen into a trap of their own construction: the party of the rich, which catered to the yokels is now in danger of being taken over by the yokels... which could be catastrophic for American business interests all over the world.

    We are looking at a scenario that could produce a serious mutation in the system, which, even if it doesn't make it all the way to the White House, could seriously warp America's political landscape.

    Most informed observers seem to concur that high unemployment is here to stay for quite a long time. That the number of white, working poor is growing exponentially and that this group, very large although unhyphenated, with all of its former, 1930s, left wing populist fervor long since extirpated, is bereft of any ideology except charismatic Christianity; with its critical faculties dulled to disappearance by a brutish corporate entertainment culture and drugged with sentimental, xenophobic patriotism and with nowhere to go except toward racism and paranoia.

    These people have no defense against globalization and the new technologies except fear and resentment. And having an African-American in the White House has destroyed the last citadel of their precarious, tattered and battered self-esteem: the thought that, no matter how far down they were, there was someone they could look down on... black people.

    Incoherent, celebrating violence, sentimental, paranoiac and resentful: it's all there cooking on the stove of high unemployment.

    Certainly continuing high unemployment with no relief on the horizon is the recipe for populism. Since left wing populism is out of the question in America, then it would have to be right-wing populism.

    The rise of socially conservative populism is the joker in the deck that could derail globalization and interrupt the pantomime of American politics. The idea sounds fun, but the reality could be pretty terrible.

    Comments

    You would have to tell us what a 'socially conservative populist' government, of Republicans/T-Partiers, would do. There is no reason to believe they will do anything but more harm to the nation, a sequel to the 8 years of Bush.

    The long range plans of the GOP do not go beyond spouting enough slogans, falsehoods and baloney about the Constitution to win the next election. When nothing improves, or things get worse they pick more targets for blame, illegals, Muslims, liberals, or just distract their supporters by self-righteously claiming the high ground of 'values'. Real 'right wing populism' means intervention of the state into industry in the name of the people. Volkswagen, the people's car, was created under Hitler. The only thing the GOP wants to control is the thinking and prejudices of it's supporters, while it wants to reduce government regulation and taxing of big money and big corporations.

    The fact is leading Republicans today have no plan to do anything but make money and get political power to make even more money. Their 'modus operandi' is to do this by stoking fears, spreading lies, and pandering to bigots. We saw the results of that with George W. Bush.  The 'New Breed' of Republicans is no different than the 'Old Breed'. 

    They are backed by big money, they don't want to raise taxes on anyone but the middle class, they have no ideas what to cut except programs for the poor and middle class, while many of their supporters are on Social Security. They are scam artists and con men, they are not populists.


    Bush was all about big business, the "compassionate conservatism" was just icing on the cake. For example Bush wanted to pass an immigration law that would legalize all the wetbacks in Arizona. Tea Partiers are of course dead set against that sort of thing.

    The Tea Party is very bad for American business interests... deadly. The Republican have been playing with fire and now they are going to get burned... or we all are, and they with us.


    Compassionate conservatism was lying BS, which pretty much describes the entire 8 years of Bush, lying BS. The Bush administration wasn't good for business. The t-party is just the same folks of the Bush Base who are pissed Bush was a flaming failure, and its leadership is full of lying scam artists who are just like Bush. The t-party will be not be good for the country or for business.

    My point is populism, left or right, means doing something for the little guy, and neither the Bush GOP or the t-party GOP plans on doing anything for the middle class.

    The GOP and the T-party are snake oil salesmen, carnival barkers and Bible thumping hypocrites not populists. They all are for sale to the Koch family or the highest bidder.

    I don;t know what your point is about 'wetbacks', illegal aliens didn't lie us into two disastrous wars, scam the world with collateralized debt paper, or run GM into the ground.  Legal or illegal they worked and helped this country produce.

    Yet, in a down economy, illegals are used as convenient targets for hate by the GOP. Kicking them out of Arizona has been the nail in the coffin for the Arizona real estate and retail economy, and has not created jobs.


    You have absolutely nailed it for me.  So much so that, as one who views Nixon as one of the most evil people of my time (which missed Hitler by about seven years) I am willing to be that even he would regret what he, as you well describe, wrought.  The growing inability of our government to work in any reasonable way, is something even he would have seen to be a bad thing.


    When we talk about George Wallace, as Richard Nixon's "evil spirit" it is very important to talk about his post-assassination epiphany, something that never occured with Nixon or with his real evil spirit, Pat Buchanan.

    Here it is from Wikipedia:

    Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, a representative from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn who at the time was the nation's only African American female member of Congress. Despite their ideological differences and the opposition of Chisholm's constituents, many of whom were all too happy to see Wallace get shot, Chisholm visited Wallace as she felt it was the humane thing to do.(...) Wallace announced that he was a born-again Christian in the late 1970s, and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his earlier segregationist views. He said that while he had once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness.  In 1979, as blacks began voting in large numbers in Alabama, Wallace said of his stand in the schoolhouse door: "I was wrong. Those days are over and they ought to be over."His final term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black appointments to government positions. Wikipedia

    This is phenomenom that we can see in other white southern "Christian" politicians such as Jimmy Carter and Mike Huckabee

    This is one of the reasons that I believe that deeply rooted, evangelical, charismatic, "southern" religion, which is basically the faith of poor whites and African Americans holds an important key in defeating the divisions of racism, which cripple the American left.


    I've spent the past year of my life researching and writing about precisely this topic. The first half of this article is spot on, though it's a little more complicated than that. For instance, Nixon launched the Southern Strategy partly as a defensive move to counter George Wallace, who pioneered modern conservative populism. (Though at least one of Nixon's aides explicitly discussed the long-term strategic potential of pitting working class whites against black and Hispanics. That aide was Pat Buchanan, who has long championed white solidarity against Mexican immigrants and who also popularized the term "culture war" in his 1992 keynote address at the Repubican convention.)

    But I disagree about the effect of unemployment on conservative populism. I spend a whole chapter on the argument in the book, but the long and short is that the relationship between economic hardship and political extremism, though widely assumed, has little data to support it. It's also worth noting that Tea Party supporters tend to be richer, to have more education, and to suffer from less unemployment than the average American.


    It's also worth noting that Tea Party supporters tend to be richer, to have more education, and to suffer from less unemployment than the average American.

    Which they will do what ever is necessary to avoid becoming.


    Anecdotally, those experiencing financial hardship are too darn busy trying to feed their families to commit the time it takes to organize political extremism. AQ is able to do what they do pretty much by offering their recruits a salary (or at least an assured meal, shelter, and clothing) which promises to remove that economic pressure - not unlike our own military recruiting most heavily in economically distressed areas. It seems like the spark needed to convert economic hardship to political extremism (or even nationalist militarism) would be someone providing resources in exchange for participation.

     


    Genghis,

    I think it might be fun to investigate how long Tea Partiers have tended to be richer. For, example, I know a couple with a typical Tea Party profile: he is a well off orthopedic surgeon, his wife is a religious nut, they live in Carmel, California and have their money offshore in a tax haven...

    It wasn't always thus... They were childhood sweethearts, they grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, they played together in the streets as children in the same poor neighborhood where Elvis Presley lived before he hit it big. They used to hate Elvis, because, with the money he made off of his first, local, Sun Records hits he bought a big motorcycle and used to ride it up and down the street frightening the children, who had no other place to play.

    When they grew up, the husband joined the Navy in order to study medicine -- obviously his family couldn't afford to send him -- and they spent 20 years traveling around the world:, their eldest children are all "Navy brats". When he left the Navy he took up private practice and made enough money to put it offshore and live in Carmel... and invest in art (my wife's, that's how I know of them). Naturally they are wildly conservative, between their Tobacco Road, hard shell Baptist childhood and the money he makes as an orthopedic surgeon... and of course they hate black folks.

    I think if you scratch the surface of many affluentTea Partiers you may find a story like this.


    I advise against generalizing the "typical Tea Party profile," as as the adherents are surprisingly diverse. Certainly, neither one of us has the data to back up any speculations about the income of Tea Party supporters when they were growing up.

    But the point is that Tea Party supporters have on average suffered less hardship from the recession than others, which undermines the hypothesis that unemployment causes extremism. This hypothesis, known in its most common form as the frustration-aggression theory, was a popular explanation for the fascist movements of the forties, but some of the early studies supporting it were debunked, and additional data has not borne it out. One recent study of the relationship between economic decline and political extemism found a small effect but concluded, "it is unlikely that even strong recessions can change political outcomes." As a counterexample, I also note that the most recent period of extreme political paranoia in the United States took place during the post-war economic boom of the 1950s.


    I'll wager that that you will find that most fit the typical Neuvo Riche profile though. Upper middle class and with out any real positive social qualities. They drink expensive imported beer but would not know the difference between that and stale Bubwiser.


    My theory is that most of the Tea Partiers know very well what being broke is all about and they are terrified of being there again. They mistakenly identify their fate with the fate of the truly rich.

    Fear has always been a useful tool of governance.  In the '50, the "red scare" supplied all the necessary paranoia; that was when the economy was booming. The sort of economic hardship we are beginning to see today hasn't been around since the Great Depression. So that's the only thing we could compare it with... those were the days of Huey Long. The Tea folk are terrified of the great unwashed raising the partier's taxes in order to educate their filthy little children and feed the little brats and such.


    Ever think about the Democratic Party's counter strategy during the same time span?  What was it?  How much of a fight did it put up to keep the Solid South solidly Democratic?

    At least since Mondale's disastrous 1984 campaign*, the Democratic strategy has been to win without the South.  Several books openly advocate it including the relatively recent Whistling Past Dixie and Why the Democrats Should Write Off the South.  I have no idea why the authors bothered to write the books since for all practical purposes the Party abandoned the South in 1968 leaving Southern Democrats and the majority of the USA's black population to the tender mercies of the Southern GOP newly invigorated by Dixiecrats who also abandoned the Democratic Party around the same time.  Ironic, eh?  Want more irony?   Domestic migration from other parts of the country has increased the South's electoral votes since then. 

    I have not voted for a Democrat for any local or state office in the past decade for the simple reason that there are none on the ballot.  You can't win if you don't compete. 

    And now a little period music to end.

     

     


     Uh ... Ya' know . . .

    It was more like Locked up in Alabama

    My ol' touring partner from Tupelo knew it well . . .

    Delaney - RIP

    ~OGD~


    Oh God...I loath southern rock.


    Chacun ses goûts....

    How about a nice cover of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush?


    That's so true, Emma. For so long it's been impossible to vote FOR someone on the ballot in most states in the South -- in my case, in South Carolina; one can only vote for the lesser of evils and often that isn't enough to feel good about.

    Btw, thanks for the Skynryd, a song I've always loved.

     I just got home from a family funeral in Alabama -- a family I might add, in which no one is a Teaparty nutcase or a religious Fundie. Despite all the previously well-earned stereotypes, there are a lot of thinking/equalitarian-minded people in the South. They are gaining in numbers, in every state, and if the Democrats don't completely blow it by ignoring jobs and healthcare, there will be viable Democratic -- not Dixiecrat -- candidates sooner rather than later. 

     



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