Racism and the Right 5

Update: The post at Kiko’s House seems to have disappeared. H/T to Karen for letting me know.

Update Two: Via the comments, Shaun Mullen tells me the post is available now.

Over at Kiko’s House, Shaun Mullen has written a very thoughtful post on the place of racism in rightwing politics. My two or three regular readers know that this is one of my hot buttons.

I won’t try to excerpt or summarize his post, just recommend it. I make this comment:

He is more generous than I. Though I do not believe that all Republicans are racist–not by any means, for I know those who are not, or who are at least as non-racist as any of us can be having grown up in a society where race is seldom far from the surface–it is unquestionable that the Republican Party set out to woo racists and now is full of them.

It was called the Southern Strategy (PDF).

And it has succeeded to the point that those Republican “strategists” who wished to exploit white racists, who were fleeing the Democratic Party because Lyndon Johnson betrayed his kind (as it was phrased back then), now find themselves captive to them.

The Republican Party chose to romance the racists. Now it is wed to them.

Addendum:

Alex Goodall brings another perspective.