Trump has always said the quiet part out loud
Ever since Richard Nixon, the Southern Strategy has shielded the Republican Party in its endeavor to increase its political power among the country's white electorate by quietly coating their platform in racist rhetoric. The Southern Strategy gets its strength in its abstraction and ambiguity. It allows Republicans to say racist things while making it impossible to prove that it is racist in the absence of explicitly racist language.
Racist rhetoric is not new with the Republican Party, this has been the GOP's bread and butter since 1968. What is new is that Trump is saying the quiet part out loud.
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That's some historical background...
Wow, if saying "cutting taxes" is racist code, then anything is... who doesn't want taxes cut? At that point of abstraction, it's so subtle I wouldn't dare calling anyone a racist then, because I wouldn't know if it means aliviate hard working families (not racist) or making it harder for the poor or minorities (maybe racist). Interesting.
The southern strategy was the cornerstone of the party realigning. As we all know, the Democratic party was born in the south and was the party of Andrew Jackson, slavery, and Jim Crow. The GOP of the past was for a large central government and ending slavery (obviously, this is a gross oversimplification). How the GOP realigned and got lifelong southern democrats to vote for their party was by utilizing dog-whistle politics. Meaning, rather than saying racist things and being a racist, you appeal to the issues that appeal to the racist.
Lee Atwater said it best (he was a major campaign advisor for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. On a hot mike he said, "You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner."
The image is pretty.
But I don't understand the description:
Southern republicans use ambiguous racist coded language, you can't prove it is racism, but it is anyway?
At least i understand southern republicans are racist. Does it mean northern republicans aren't?
Very good one, Daniel !