The "Southern Strategy"

Op-Ed Columnist - Bigger Than Bush - NYTimes.com

Here we have a standard little "assertion that requires no support" from the NYT recent Nobel Prize winning "economist".

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves.Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

Let's look at a little number relative to the Civil Rights act of 1964:

The original House version:

• Democratic Party: 152-96   (61%-39%)
• Republican Party: 138-34   (80%-20%)

The Senate version:

• Democratic Party: 46-21   (69%-31%)
• Republican Party: 27-6   (82%-18%)

Now I know that the MSM constantly harps about the "fact" of "Nixon's Southern Strategy", with the not very subtle message being claim that the "Republican party was nothing but a bunch of racists", but one would think that a short look at the numbers above might indicate that the idea that the Democrat party, the party that did all it could to allow slavery to live on in the 1800's and spent the 100 years from 1865-1965 as the party of Jim Crow wasn't exactly "individually responsible for the voting rights act".

Yes, the Democrats had huge majorities in both houses of congress, but it was really REPUBLICAN VOTES that allowed this to happen. The DEMOCRATS from the south were filibustering, and 46 votes isn't going to break a filibuster! 82% voting for the act is a lot better than 69%! One might have some idea that the party that fought the bill tooth and nail and had 30% of it's members in the Senate voting against it might be seen as less than "a champion of the black man in America"--but one would not have taken the media and general lack of public interest in critical thought into consideration. Something repeated enough times tends to become true to most people, so the idea that Republicans are some sort of racists has become "truth" to many Americans.

So Krugman feels that the worm has turned--ding dong, the evil Republicans are dead, long live king BO! Hopefully we have entered an era where facts are no longer a factor and we can all prosper by being bailed out!