poll: political beliefs on bobcatnation.com

Hell's Bells · Post by **Hell's Bells** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:28 pm

In the 1960s Richard Nixon launched the Southern strategy, later updated by Ronald Reagan and others, to use likracially coded wedge issues like state's rights, school busing, school prayer and "crime in the streets" to break up the majority coalition that Democrats had enjoyed since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

how are those ideals racist?
if states rights is a racially coded wedge issue then what does that say about marajuana as a medical impliment?

Good for him. Mehlman sounded like the deathbed apology uttered by former GOP chairman Lee Atwater, campaign manager for George H.W. Bush, for using race to savage Dukakis. At least Mehlman apologized while he was still healthy

i bet he is refering to Mike D's smart to let a murder go free for a weekend leave who ended up....gasp....murdering again *see horton, willie*

i will actually say that by calling the southern stragity racist the dems are trying to use the race card to their advantage again without debating those issues on their face value, besides, horton showed that Mike D. was a wimp when it came to crime

as a side note, as i expect this post to be totally ignored but i will post this anyhow, John Kerry was Mike D's lieutenant govenor...

Hell's Bells · Post by **Hell's Bells** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:34 pm

Bay Area Cat wrote:If reading the articles and applying your background knowledge to the subject don't get you there, there's nothing I can say to help you out.

Regardless, the GOP has apologized for it (and they weren't apologizing for simply winning elections, but rather how they won elections), which is at least a nice token effort at fixing errors of the past.

im asking for your opinion...sheesh lol

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:41 pm

If you don't see how those terms were used as euphemisms for race-baiting politics, then you are intentionally blinding yourself to reality. It happened. It's a part of our history. Our country is no better for it if you pretend that it didn't happen, and your "team" is no better for it for you to pretend like it didn't happen.

And to top it off, the GOP APOLOGIZED for it recently. This isn't a Dem thing -- the GOP party itself is trying to come clean for mistakes of the past. That is worthy of applause, but unless you think the GOP party is lying about its own past to make itself look worse, then I can't imagine why you would suggest that it wasn't true.

To spell it out for you, there are different connotations applied to the term "state's rights" when it is used in different circumstances. When it was being used as part of the Southern Strategy, that term was a not-so-subtle code for opposition to federal laws that were used to squash the Southern State's racist laws.

To compare that to current legitimate state's rights issues is obviously comparing apples and oranges.

Yeah, Dukakis was bad ... we know ... and the Willie Horton ads were marketed not to appeal just to law and order folks, but to the racist inclinations of people.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:43 pm

Hell's Bells wrote:
Bay Area Cat wrote:If reading the articles and applying your background knowledge to the subject don't get you there, there's nothing I can say to help you out.

Regardless, the GOP has apologized for it (and they weren't apologizing for simply winning elections, but rather how they won elections), which is at least a nice token effort at fixing errors of the past.

im asking for your opinion...sheesh lol

I had already posted the articles, so I assumed that you had read them and still not made any connections ... sorry if I was short-posted.

Hell's Bells · Post by **Hell's Bells** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:47 pm

Bay Area Cat wrote:If you don't see how those terms were used as euphemisms for race-baiting politics, then you are intentionally blinding yourself to reality. It happened. It's a part of our history. Our country is no better for it if you pretend that it didn't happen, and your "team" is no better for it for you to pretend like it didn't happen.

im not pretending that it didnt happen, just what i am saying is that a major issue has been pulled out of thin air just so that a party can play the race card

And to top it off, the GOP APOLOGIZED for it recently. This isn't a Dem thing -- the GOP party itself is trying to come clean for mistakes of the past. That is worthy of applause, but unless you think the GOP party is lying about its own past to make itself look worse, then I can't imagine why you would suggest that it wasn't true.

the gop was wrong to apologise for a winning stragity...somthing out of animal farm if you ask me

To spell it out for you, there are different connotations applied to the term "state's rights" when it is used in different circumstances. When it was being used as part of the Southern Strategy, that term was a not-so-subtle code for opposition to federal laws that were used to squash the Southern State's racist laws.

soo what you are saying is as long as a dem uses state rights argument it is ok?

To compare that to current legitimate state's rights issues is obviously comparing apples and oranges.

no its not

Yeah, Dukakis was bad ... we know ... and the Willie Horton ads were marketed not to appeal just to law and order folks, but to the racist inclinations of people.

once again pulling things out of thin air

Post by **SonomaCat** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:14 pm

Do you really drink the koolaid to such a degree that you refuse to acknowledge the truth even when the GOP admits the truth?

The party using the race card was the GOP. Now the GOP has apologized. Yes, Rush said they shouldn't have, which may well convince you that they shouldn't have either, but they did. They used dirty politics to win elections.

Can you give me an alternate theory as to why about 90% of blacks vote Democrat? Don't you see a bit of a cause and effect relationship between the southern strategy and the lack of support the GOP has among blacks?

I know you desperately want to turn this into some "Dem" conspiracy theory thing, but it just ain't workin'. There are legitimate state's rights issues, and there were then as well. However, the particular state's rights that were being spoken to back then in terms of the Southern strategy were meant to speak to civil rights laws, and that rallied the anti-civil rights folks for the Republicans. The same thing is being done today with gays and other moral issues. The GOP leadership probably didn't believe in racist ideals back then, and certainly doesn't buy into anti-gay crap now (or else they'd have to purge the cabinet), but it was a political strategy employed to bring up racial wedge issues that would rally a portion of the population to vote with them.

Nobody is making up issues out the air ... except the GOP strategists who manufactured said racial wedge issues ... and now they are apologizing (and nobody pressured them to do so).

Kudos to the GOP for doing the right thing, and now let's see if they can move away from using that same sort of strategy in our current environment.

History gets kind of messy when you have to look at both sides of the political spectrum and acknowledge wrong-doing on both sides, doesn't it? Unfortunately, that's just reality telling us to be skeptical of everything we're told, as we can never believe anyone all of the time, especially a political party. They don't care about us -- they care about their own power. If we just swallow everything they feed us, they we just become their pawns and end up as powerful accomodators for their personal gain.

Grizlaw · Post by **Grizlaw** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:44 pm

Holy cow...this thread has become quite a train wreck since I last looked.

I'm not going to teach a history lesson here; I'm only going to give one example. If anyone either doesn't get my point or chooses to ignore it, that's fine.

"I look forward to publicly defending our conservative philosophy."

--George W. Bush

That's not a racist statement, right?

Now, what if the statement was made right before the South Carolina primary, at Bob Jones University, a school which, at the time, STILL DID NOT ALLOW INTERRACIAL DATING BY STUDENTS (yes, this was in 2000).

"Our" conservative philosophy. At Bob Jones University.

I'll grant you, if he had stood in front of the crowd waving a Confederate flag and peppering his speech with the "N-word," it would have been more obvious that he was playing to southern racism. However, I think we are all capable of reading between the lines and connecting the dots, aren't we?

Now, don't get me wrong; I am not a Bush hater (although I'm not really a fan, either). Hell, I even voted for him in the 2000 general election, even though this particular speech left a bad taste in my mouth even at the time. Is he a racist? Probably not. But he did *use* southern racism to his advantage in the election, for better or worse.

Hell's Bells · Post by **Hell's Bells** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:57 am

gl reading between the lines will also get one in trouble because part of it is assumeing what is obviously unsead. for example, Bob Jones university is also anti-catholic. a good majority of Catholics/Christains/mormons vote republican. would then Gov. Bush be stupid enough to say to most of his potential voters "catholics need not apply"??

Grizlaw · Post by **Grizlaw** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:06 am

Hell's Bells wrote:gl reading between the lines will also get one in trouble because part of it is assumeing what is obviously unsead. for example, Bob Jones university is also anti-catholic. a good majority of Catholics/Christains/mormons vote republican. would then Gov. Bush be stupid enough to say to most of his potential voters "catholics need not apply"??

I am curious to know how, exactly, you think my reading between the lines on this issue is going to "get me into trouble"? I am giving my interpretation; no more and no less (although a lot of people happen to agree with it).

It is pointless to argue about this, Hells; clearly neither of us can "prove" what Bush hoped to accomplish by speaking at Bob Jones.

However, Bob Jones University is widely cited as one of the few surviving bastions of racial segregation in our country. If you truly think that fact was lost on Bush and his advisors when they chose it as a site for his campaign speech, then you have a far greater faith in the good of our fellow man than I do.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:37 am

The interesting thing is that Republican strategists also know that if someone points out the rather obvious nudge nudge wink wink thing, then the attack machine is in place to accuse the "Dems" or "Liberals" of race-baiting. Not that any of us are familiar with that concept or anything.

It's actually brilliant. The true believers parrot the company line (especially when told what to say and think by radio talking heads), the target audience gets the very strong symbolic message of support, and the moderates, for the most part, write off the whole thing in hoping that it was just an oversight by someone on the campaign staff (which is a silly assumption, but we like to think the best of people).

This is the kind of campaigning that the GOP was apologizing for, and I am going to take them at face value and hope that they are being sincere. That kind of racial wedge issue politics really has no place in our society, and it never should have been used in the first place.

The reason for the apology was pragmatic, of course. With the demographics shifting, it is becoming more obvious that minorities need to be a larger part of the voting base of the Republican party, so the historic racially dividing approach will no longer work. The party is now working to shed that image and trying to wipe the slate clean. Even though I realize they are doing it out of self-interest, I am still happy to see them taking this approach. It's never too late to admit that you did something wrong, even if your motives aren't necessarily altruistic.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:43 am

I would also suggest that NOT reading between the lines and not being skeptical of things done and said by politicians is what will get you in trouble, not visa versa. Everything they say and do, unless it is off the cuff, is orchestrated and has meaning. To ignore stuff like that is to do exactly what they hope you will do -- miss the messages they are sending out that you don't agree with while they have a sort of plausible deniability by claiming that they didn't explicitly say exactly what they were suggesting. It's a great way to double-speak.

I really, really wish there were a lot more hard-core knee-jerk far left liberals that posted in here. It would be nice to work one of these conversations from middle pulling to the right for a change. I enjoy debunking left wing stuff much more than right wing stuff, but we just don't have enough people offering up those kinds of topics.

mquast53000 · Post by **mquast53000** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:43 am

You guys are making Reagan roll in his grave!

WYCAT · Post by **WYCAT** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:47 am

Bay Area Cat wrote:I really, really wish there were a lot more hard-core knee-jerk far left liberals that posted in here.

Oh ya, that is just what we need.

And MQ - that is hilarious stuff.

Post by **SonomaCat** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:58 am

WYCAT wrote:
Bay Area Cat wrote:I really, really wish there were a lot more hard-core knee-jerk far left liberals that posted in here.
Oh ya, that is just what we need.

Then we could be on the same side of an issue for a change! I'm getting tired of the same old teams that seem to have formed in our debate club. We need to change things up a bit. We need a few rabid moveon.org people to provide the far left point of view so we can poke holes in their ideas for awhile.

As an aside, I have been driving to work the last couple days (I usually take the train, but needed my car at work these days), so I have been listening to a bit more talk radio to fill the time. On the right side of my dial (and saved station settings) is Air America, and on the left side of my settings is the local hard-core conservative station. So I flip back and forth until I hit the point that I can't take it anymore or they hit a commercial break (so I average about two minutes per station per round).

I must say, Air America is matching the right blow for blow now in terms of intellectually vacant name-calling radio. Some of the commentators are decent (I used to not be able to stand Franken, but he's actually fairly well thought out and not shrill when he talks politics), but many are just beating a drum hysterically over and over without saying anything.

I guess I am happy to say that both right and left are now equally shrill and vacant on talk radio in America. I am saddened to say that some people actually listen to those same people and don't realize how shrill and vacant the content really is. Alternating between the two of them really drives home to me how true that is -- it's just packaged opinions for a society that wants to be outraged about something more than it wants to know the truth about anything, and it's about businesses (talk shows) that are more than willing to make money off of those masses.

poll: political beliefs on bobcatnation.com

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