-- Mae West
It fell to Richard Nixon, through word and deed, to bring the Southern Strategy into full flower. And he accomplished it in 1968 with code words (touting "states' rights") and by capitalizing on a Southern white backlash against civil rights and Northern fears of black urban unrest by campaigning on a "law and order" theme. Strom Thurmond also switched to the GOP. With a third-party segregationist candidate, Alabama's George Wallace, plucking off four Southern states from the traditional Democratic column and South Carolina going Republican, Nixon's realignment of the white South was on a roll. To be fair, Nixon also backed an affirmative action Philadelphia Plan that rankled the white building trades. But that does not erase the political opportunism that ignited his Southern Strategy.
Drifted? It was outright abandonment of African Americans that took place. The party of Lincoln became the party of Jesse Helms. And having written off black voters in favor of a white conservative Southern and Western bloc, the Republican Party moved out smartly and never looked back.
It's not for nothing that ex-Klansman and American Nazi Party leader David Duke chose to run for Louisiana governor as a Republican or that James L. Hart is now a GOP candidate for a congressional seat in Tennessee. Hart, according to the Associated Press, backs eugenics, a phony science that resulted in thousands of sterilizations in an attempt to purify the white race. For the past four decades, the Republican Party has preached distrust of the federal judiciary and of the government in Washington. That's comforting to the GOP's conservative base. But most African Americans know that without the help of U.S. courts and federal civil rights attorneys, we might still be behind the plow.
Today's Republican Party talks of expanding party enrollment but seems to favor only African Americans who speak the language of white conservatives. And there's little room in the GOP for African Americans who, while believing in free markets and self-help, also see racism as an obstacle to progress.
Express confidence in government's ability to remedy inequities and promote social development, or take issue with those who believe that victimization, laziness and irresponsible behavior are the only real impediments to black advancement, and forget about finding a welcome mat at the GOP. Yet, with all that, Gillespie decries the fact that the GOP attracts only about 5 percent of the African American vote.
And that is a pity, too. Because as sure as I draw breath, the Democratic Party is about to get another free ride on the backs of black voters. Come January, if John Kerry wins (and that can happen only with a strong African American turnout in key states), what group do you think will still find itself on the outside having to suck up to patronizing white Democratic insiders to get in? You've got it.
What a choice! Republican conservatism or Democratic tokenism.
And Gillespie thinks it's all because things just "drifted"?
Even George W. Bush knows better.
kingc@washpost.com
