This is America. Let it unfurl.

[Joe Allonby]

I've said this in other places: when you win by exploiting idiots and
circus clowns, don't be surprised to wake up to find idiots and circus
clowns in charge.



On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:57 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well stated, Joe.  AKA the "Southern Strategy" (but also applicable elsewhere):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
>
> In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the late-20th
> century Republican Party strategy of winning elections in Southern
> states by exploiting anti-African American racism among Southern white
> voters and appealing to states' rights. Though the "Solid South" had
> been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic
> Party's defense of slavery prior to the American Civil War and
> segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats
> left the party following the African-American Civil Rights Movement,
> the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of
> 1965, and desegregation.
>
> The strategy was first adopted under future Republican President
> Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and continued through the latter
> decades of the 20th century under presidents Ronald Reagan and George
> H. W. Bush.[1] The strategy was successful in achieving its goals; it
> led to the electoral realignment of Southern states to the Republican
> Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black
> voters to the Democratic Party.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This is a common tactic for appealing to "values voters". Colin Powell
>> and a few others have taken their fellow Republicans to task for
>> implying, or outright stating, that people from urban areas and the
>> coasts do not have American values, as if only small town and
>> Midwestern values were genuine. This tactic essentially identifies the
>> majority of the population as not really "True Americans". They are
>> the "Others":.
>>
>> The Know Nothing wing of the Republican Party is playing on the fears
>> of a white Protestant constituency that sees itself as losing cultural
>> and political dominance. They fear being marginalized. They think that
>> their way of life is dying. A mixed race President is a sign of their
>> impending loss of power. They are right about this. So what? Evolve or
>> join the dinosaurs that they think Adam and Eve rode before the flood.
>>
>