How the GOP came to this

This is an edited transcript from my radio show, The Big Picture with Edwin Eisendrath, that aired September 18, 2021.

This is a bit longer than my usual post, but bear with me. I will explain what’s going on with voting rights- why it was once bi-partisan but is so no longer.  I will decode a generation of GOP victories and explain the breadcrumbs that lead Party of Lincoln directly to its present anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, anti-black, white supremacist identity.

Make no mistake, the attempt to undermine American democracy has broad support, is well funded, and very dangerous. Those of us who want to stop it must work harder to understand how this came to be.  Why would a good portion of the most democratic nation on earth turn against democracy itself?

The social strategies of the plotters are well known.  They were on display today in the rally in our nation’s capital to whitewash the January 6th insurrection:  Spread more lies, create more confusion, stoke more anger, and sow more doubt.   

The goal of the plotters is to overthrow popular sovereignty and perhaps even the rule of law to create a minority government that has power despite lacking anything like majority support.  To do this, they need to fool a lot of people into supporting their cause.  Hence the lies, the rage, the doubt.

It is the great disgrace of our time, and one that is so big and so all-encompassing that those of us who oppose it have had trouble finding the right words to condemn it.  Outrage after outrage comes at us so fast, that we find ourselves going from condemnation to condemnation and losing the big picture while we are at it.

It is time to put a stake in the ground- to identify the roots of this disaster, to find its context, and, with the big picture in mind, to help us move forward.

I am going to start in 1970…  now bear with me, I promise it’s worth it.

I recently found an article written by a man named James Boyd in that appeared in the New York Times on May 17, 1970.  I was twelve years old back then.  (So, I missed it at the time!)

The article is about a rising star in Republican politics, a sociologist named Kevin Phillips, who, at that time was a special assistant to Attorney General- and future felon- John Mitchel.  The article traces Phillips career to that point as the guiding force behind what he correctly predicted would be an emerging Republican Majority.  

Phillips grew up in the Bronx during a time when that community was composed of strong ethnic groups, all rivals for local power.  Phillips developed a theory that enduring majorities could be cobbled together by any party willing to be home to largest set of ethnic and racial animosities.  He saw, in the rise of civil rights, an opportunity to change the political map for a generation. 

Here’s a quote from the piece (the picture drops a few words, “He honeymooned…)

I read that with absolute horror.  He was right.  Stoking fear and hatred of one group of Americans for another would be a potent tool for the GOP.  But I did not fully understand the depravity until I read further.  

Here’s something from a few pages later in the same article… 

Wow.  

Phillips did not see this historic legislation as part of our American mission.  He did not see it as a way to live our values and or to create a more perfect union.  In 1970 he saw voting rights as a way to create just enough black power to scare majority white communities into the GOP.  That explains the bi-partisan support voting rights legislation has had for fifty years.  

Until now.  Now, those voters protected by the Voting Rights Act are getting actual power.  They elected a Black man president.  Maybe now, the voting rights act has outlasted its purpose to sweep every bigot into the GOP.  Now that they are there, why keep the Act?

There is a direct line from Kevin Phillips to Kevin McCarthy.  And it runs through Ronald Reagan.

Few now remember how Ronald Reagan began his campaign for the Presidency in 1980. He went to Philadelphia Mississippi.  That’s where, in 1964, the KKK murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were civil rights workers helping to secure the constitutional rights of African Americans. At that time Klan members were in the local government. One was the sheriff who first arrested the three workers, then released them and brought to an isolated spot, then murdered them, then buried them in an earthen dam.

The national outrage that followed helped build support of passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Reagan launched his campaign in that place with a speech that never mentioned civil rights but was instead a call for a return to state’s rights.  To be sure, Reagan did not, and would ever have, condone those terrible killings. But he was willing to adopt the Kevin Phillips strategy to win, and that had the effect of legitimizing racial hate that America had been making some progress fighting. It was a turning point, and an important step in the march from party of Lincoln to Party of Trump.

George Bush would go a step further, allowing his political guru Lee Atwater to significantly darken an already black face in scare tactic ads featuring a killer named Willie Horton.  After Atwater there was Karl Rove- a man who studied Kevin Phillips carefully. Neither of the Presidents Bush would condone racist acts. Both spoke out against them. And yet, their willingness to use these tactics in their campaigns paved the road to the contemporary GOP.

America is a dynamic society facing increasingly rapid and often disruptive change- social, technological, and economic. This kind of change creates the opportunity for scapegoating and grievance porn. Every tinpot strongman uses these tactics.  And nothing but misery is the result. 

Why did fifty years of GOP leaders encourage the politics of racial anxiety and ethnic animosity? Why did they try to ride that tiger?  Not because they believed what they were saying. They did it for political expedience. But the cost, we now know, was catastrophic.   

The politics benefited the very wealthy, the corporate interest, the polluters, the few folks on the top. They paid for this strategy in order to win regulatory and tax relief. But it had dire consequences for ordinary hard-working Americans, for people of color, for our civil society in general.

There is good news, however.  The tide is turning.  

For one thing, the racist dog whistles don’t work as well as they once did. Barack Obama was president for two terms. Four years later, Donald Trump flat out said he was running to save the suburbs, meaning save white suburban women from black men. He then lost those the vote in those suburbs. Americans are less tribal in each generation.  Nor should we forget that it was once unthinkable that power should be shared with Catholics, or Poles, or Irish, or Jews. Slowly, generation by generation, America gets past its hatreds. Now, in our time, there is real progress being made against the longest and most persistent of these: white and black America, as well as newer arrivals and the indigenous population.

For another, Americans will not so easily abandon democracy or the rule of law.  I am confident for many reasons, not least of which is that on January 6th Americans defended our democratic system when it was under attack by no less than a President of the United States and his allies.  

Democracies usually do not throw out a totalitarian leader once they have voted him into power. Yet we tossed Mr. Trump, and no matter how much he complains of his mistreatment, we will not allow him to regain power.  Ours is not the Weimer Republic, or the inchoate democracy of Belorussia.  We are not the former Ottoman Caliphate in Turkey, nor oil-corrupted Venezuela.  Despite the efforts of a President to undermine, then to overturn an election, we prevailed.

We should be deeply proud of our citizens- including many republicans.  

But the fight is not over.  The efforts to distort our democracy beyond recognition continue.  These efforts are highly organized.  They are well funded.

That’s why anti-voting legislation looks so similar across the states.  That’s why the same lies about election integrity, the same innuendos about the patriotism of other kinds of Americans is a staple on FOX and similar channels in all 50 states. It even explains the bat shit crazy stuff about ivermectin- the coup requires making people distrust the government, even if it costs then their lives. 

Overcoming these radical reactionaries will require much of each of us. Here’s what we need to do now:

First, tell this story so that everyone understands what the fight is about. Explain to your neighbors and friends what tactics have been used to divide Americans from one another in order to keep us from claiming a share in the national wealth we work so hard to create.  

Second, recognize that in times of disruptive change grievances can be weaponized, and so take steps to address the real grievances of ordinary Americans- whatever color they are.  And I say that fully mindful that the historic grievances of Black Americans are so deep that there is nothing comparable. 

Working people have seen their incomes stagnate and their children’s futures constrained.  This attack on working Americans that gathered strength in the 1980s happened at the same time Black Americans joined the general workforce- in fact, an attack on one group has been an attack on both.  There is common cause.

That commonality was intentionally obscured by the super wealthy Koch’s and their ilk when they chose to fund the hate-filled strategies outlined half a century ago by Kevin Phillips… encouraging and fomenting ethnic anxieties that would pull us apart.  Policies that address economic insecurity and help build strong communities where people have a sense of belonging without needed to feel a sense of isolation will help.

Third, and this is counsel aimed at the left, we must tame our own anger and pride.  We cannot ask “what’s the matter with Kansas.”  We need to see what’s right with Kansas and connect on both policy and values.

And, we can connect on values.  

Look- Hatred is not a value.  Anger is not a value.  But that is all that remains of Party of Lincoln after a half century of dog whistles and outright racist fear mongering.  Liberty, equality, and fairness are values. Building a society where our children can be more prosperous than we have been- that is a value.  

I see a lot of this work going on right now.  From the infrastructure bill to elements of the build back better agenda.