dagblog - Comments for "GOP 2020 Strategy: Identity Politics of Hate"

Only 13 House GOP brave

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 23:53:53 +0000

In reply to GOP 2020 Strategy: Identity Politics of Hate

Only 13 House GOP brave enough to counter the Haters Tribe Identity plan:

The 13 Republicans who voted against Trump's national emergency declaration:

Amash
Fitzpatrick
Gallagher
Herrera Beutler
Hurd
Johnson
Massie
McMorris Rodgers
Rooney
Sensenbrenner
Stefanik
Upton
Waldenhttps://t.co/LAMZ9Prn9n
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) February 26, 2019

Of course, Republicans have

NCD — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 20:34:38 +0000

In reply to thanks so much for pointing

Of course, Republicans have spent billions over decades, and Republcan media empires (Fox hate radio), are key contributors.... combined with big corporate "both sides" media, which still gives a TeeVee platform to bomb throwing crackpot ex-Republicans, in CREATING and nurturing the Red State Base.

For the sole purpose of controlling government, cutting regulations snd their own taxes, looting the Treasury and having a reliable electoral "battering ram" composed of bigots, grifters, homophobes, xenophobes, misogynists, neo-nazis, traitors, criminal syndicates, thugs, halfwits, dimwits, con men... and so forth -- primed, ready and eager for the right demagogue to vote for....

That's identity politics on a hit of PCP, with a ketamine chaser.

Wallace was forgiven, just

rmrd0000 — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 20:31:03 +0000

In reply to George Wallace was a believer

Wallace was forgiven, just like Ralph Northam has been forgiven

Mr. Wallace had one more presidential race in him, in 1976, but he quickly faded. Six years later, he was elected Alabama governor for a fourth time. But long before then, he cast himself as a changed, even chastened, man on race relations.

In 1973, he crowned the University of Alabama’s first black homecoming queen, Terry Points. More substantively, he began speaking remorsefully about his race-baiting past — how wrong it was and how sorry he was. In 1979, he went to a church in Montgomery, Ala., where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had once been pastor. There, he spoke of having learned the meaning of suffering. “I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure,” he said. “I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

African-Americans in Alabama granted him redemption. They voted for him in large numbers in his final runs for governor. After he died in 1998 at age 79, Representative John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights era, wrote in The Times that “George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/us/george-wallace-tapped-into-racial-fear-decades-later-its-force-remains-potent.html

Wallace got the black rural vote because the alternative was worse

Just how much Mr. Wallace has changed the way he talks since his first inauguration 20 years ago, when he vowed Alabama would have ''segregation forever,'' was apparent last week. He called on Alabamians to ''turn to one another and not against one another.'' He also appointed two blacks to his Cabinet and supported the appointment of four others to committee chairmanships in the State House of Representatives.

Such rewards were not surprising. Black voters had helped Mr. Walllace beat back the strong opposition of moderate Lieut. Gov. George McMillan in the Democratic primary. Mr. McMillan, endorsed by urban black leaders, calculated that he could win by holding Mr. Wallace to no more than 10 percent of the black vote.

But among rural blacks, Mr. Wallace's populist pronouncements, purged of racial rhetoric, helped win him a measure of forgiveness that translated into about 35 percent of the vote. Against a rightwing conservative in the general election, he got more than 90 percent of the black vote. Mr. Wallace faces perhaps his toughest term as governor - Alabama has historically been dependent on steel, automobiles and other basic industries that have been hardest hit by the recession - but some other new governors were also looking at hard times.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/23/weekinreview/george-wallace-picks-up-on-a-different-note.html

ah but I think about: how

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:56:23 +0000

In reply to closet gay

ah but I think about: how much is due to the blackmail thing vs. how much is choice due to the "smarts", dealing with the reality you have and not as you wish it would be. He's certainly not the shrinking violet/pansy scaredy cat type, he is calculating. This is actually part of southern culture, think: southern belle. Scarlett O'Hara. Or Truman Capote for that matter.

George Wallace was a believer

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:36:17 +0000

In reply to Graham is a descendant of

George Wallace was a true believer-- playing moderate is where he was being cynical. Graham is like the opposite scenario.

Very false equivalency: if Graham is a descendant and no different, then so is every "smart" politician selling out to get elected, left, right or center.

Graham is no different tan

rmrd0000 — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:29:44 +0000

In reply to GOP 2020 Strategy: Identity Politics of Hate

Duplicate

Graham is a descendant of

rmrd0000 — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:28:46 +0000

In reply to GOP 2020 Strategy: Identity Politics of Hate

Graham is a descendant of George Wallace.

From the NYT

He might have carried a tolerant message into the Alabama governor’s mansion in 1958, but he lost the race after spurning the support of the Ku Klux Klan (which then backed his primary opponent, John Patterson) and being endorsed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Sadly for Wallace’s state, his region, his nation and himself, he did not respond as John Lewis did after his defeat by Carmichael. Mr. Lewis, whenever confronted with calls to divisiveness, chose to redouble his commitment to reason and tolerance. After his loss to Mr. Patterson, Wallace is said to have turned to an aide and declared, “I was out-niggered ... and I’ll never be out-niggered again.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24rymer.html

closet gay

jollyroger — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:13:16 +0000

In reply to thanks so much for pointing

closet gay

And so illustrative (in his whipsaw change of rhetoric about Trump) of how the closet is a danger to us all, when someone is blackmailed by the threat of an open door.

thanks so much for pointing

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:51:10 +0000

In reply to GOP 2020 Strategy: Identity Politics of Hate

thanks so much for pointing this article out, I might have skipped it if you hadn't recommended it.

I like these two paragraphs

Graham reminded me that when McCain was facing re-election in 2010, he turned himself into “the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate.” That was the race in which McCain claimed that he never embraced the “maverick” label, and people were asking, “What happened to John McCain?” Graham chuckled at the memory.

In acknowledging this, Graham was speaking to me as a fellow creature of Washington, fully versed in the election-year “showcasing” he is now engaged in — one of the “people who are so smart” that he derided the day before. “If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business,” he said.

In a nutshell, it explains why I like to follow what people like Graham and past buddy McCain are up to. It's because they are "smart". The have a few certain conservative principles and the rest is all "smarts" about reality. But especially smarts about the red state base. About the varieties therein, i.e., southeast, southwest, they are different. Where they can push their own principles and where they can't. How far they can go with populist pandering without selling out their few principles. It's an intuitive thing, can't be done by pollsters that well.

What fascinates me about Graham now: I think he might be wrong on reading the national vibe, he is being too influenced by his own South Carolina situation? And I suspect South Carolina is not the same culture as when he was first elected, have visited it enough to question that. Has he adjusted or is he wrongly judging from past situations, too influenced by old powers in his state and not enough by new ones?

Then there's also what has always fascinated me about him: he is so closet gay, c'mon! How'd he do what he did in the past and does now? It is like a miracle feat, what a character the guy is! Only in America.