Department of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.
Calpundit finds National Review explaining to us why southern Republicans love the Confederate flag so much:
Republicans don't embrace the flag because it is racist... but explicitly because it represents things other than race: heritage, pride, honor, etc.
But it then backtracks, and inserts a parenthetical thought between dashes into the middle of the sentence:
--or at least [Republicans] never, ever, say that [they embrace the flag because it is racist]--
National Review wouldn't want anyone to miss the important reason Republicans embrace the Confederate flag that they "never, ever say", would it?
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.
Posted by DeLong at November 8, 2003 12:17 PM | TrackBack
Sid Blumenthal does a good job summarizing the GOP appeals to racism in the South with an interesting take on Howard Dean's Confederate Flag remarks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1080497,00.html
Race politics has a big influence on all GOP social policies, from abortion to welfare, to health care, to education, etc. It is a desire to return to separate and unequal.
Posted by: bakho on November 8, 2003 10:50 PMBakho--you forget that the abortion movement was originally established to cut back on the growth of the black population, among other things. And it isn't like we see many Democrats trying to educate black people either, and they control most of the really bad school districts. I do find it sad that the moderate wing of the Democratic party has ceased to exist, driving the South to the Republicans by default. Think of Howard Dean's comments portraying Southerners as a bunch of racist hicks.
I think we have an identification problem here. How do you distinguish the racists who jumped parties in the 1960's (say, a Trent Lott or a young Jesse Helms) from the New Southerners who view the Republicans as a promoter of normality (say, a Newt Gingrich)? The former jumped because of civil rights (though to a party that promoted civil rights?!), and the latter jumped because of the Democrats' reactions to Vietnam, abortion, and group politics.
This coincides with the realignment of many northern Catholics and Westerners too, and these couldn't have had much to do with race. The likes of Sid Blumenthal have done a lot to antagonize people who previously might have supported the Democrats once in a while. "If you're Catholic or a devout Protestant, or a private businessman, we don't care what you think. You're anachronistic and probably a bigot. But we will gladly raise your taxes to pay for abortions and wreck the health care system some more, if such a thing were possible. But don't ask for us to protect you from crime or terrorism, or to educate your kids. Only a racist would care about those things."
As a person who thinks that monopoly is usually a bad thing, including political monopoly, I ask the Democrats to please, please, please think about what they're doing. I would happily vote for a reasonable alternative to Pres. Bush but Howard Dean is hell-bent on getting Bush reelected. I'll go along with that, but not happily.
Posted by: Chris on November 10, 2003 01:04 PM