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As all marketing people know, sex sells. And as all Republican politicians know, racism sells. We are now witnessing the top three Republican candidates engaging in a show of racism far more explicit than we have seen in a very long time. It's enough to make George W. Bush's hair stand on end. Bush was many things, but racist wasn't one of them. His first cabinet appointment was Colin Powell as secretary of state and his closest adviser was Condi Rice.
A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump let his inner racist come out when he talked about "vermin" and how immigrants were "poisoning the blood" of America. Not subtle at all. Not a dog whistle in sight. In the past, Trump opposed immigration and promised to build a wall (with Mexico paying for it) in 2016, but he didn't quote Hitler while doing so. Now the mask has dropped and he is going full-bore racist.
Then there is Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who thoughtfully reminded people that some slaves learned skilled trades (e.g., carpenter) that were of personal benefit to them. Now remember, he was talking about people who had been kidnapped from their own country, brought to America against their will, and sold into slavery, all without their permission. He was not talking about indentured servants who voluntarily made a deal with someone who agreed to pay for their passage to America in return for working for them for 4-6 years, after which time they were free to do whatever they wanted.
Last week at a town hall, Nikki Haley was asked about the cause of the Civil War, something she surely knew about since she was governor of the state where it started and the first state to secede from the Union. She gave an incoherent answer about the war was caused by a disagreement on how government should be run. That kind of downplayed what every 12-year-old in America knows, it was caused because the North wanted to stop the spread of slavery and eventually eradicate it and the South wanted to keep the peculiar institution. She took a lot of incoming fire on that and eventually admitted that she did in fact, successfully graduate from 6th grade and knew the real cause.
Stuart Stevens, the top strategist for G.W. Bush, said about these developments: "I think Republicans are still litigating a lot of these issues internally that the rest of the world long ago moved on from." He added that they are catering to voters who "see the world changing and find it unsettling." He knows what he is talking about. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy was done with dog whistles. Trump, DeSantis, and Haley are using bullhorns.
In the Washington Post article linked to above, the reporters talked to conservative voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. They discovered that some of them thought Haley was right about slavery not being such a big deal and thought the resulting media firestorm was way overblown. One of them said the war was caused by an economic battle between the industrial North and the agricultural South, sort of like you might describe the difference between Michigan and Nebraska now. His sister said: "The Democrats always want to play the victim card."
Amy Stanley, a professor of history at the University of Chicago said: "The stock in trade of the GOP is evasion—Haley's silence on slavery—and falsification—the Florida curriculum's pretense that slavery had positive aspects. This false history plays into conspiracy theory."
Playing the race card is nothing new for Republican politicians going back to Nixon, but it really took off with Trump. Remember, he said Barack Obama wasn't born in America and wasn't an American, even after Obama produced his birth certificate. Then Trump rode a wave of white grievance to the White House in 2016. It has gotten only worse since then. Prof. Jennifer Hochschild of Harvard said: "Nixon said this stuff in private—we know from his tapes—and [George] Wallace said this stuff, and [Pat] Buchanan said this stuff. But I don't think any presumptive presidential nominee has been so overt for a long time, at least some decades."
Will it work? This kind of racist talk warms the cockles of Trump's base's heart, but many moderates and independents find it disgusting. The base will vote for any Republican, racist or not, but independents can go either way and the Republicans' base-only strategy may work in the primaries but may work much less well in the general election. (V)