Is This The Start Of A Southern Strategy Revival?

(CBS/AP/David Katz)

When President Obama sat down with Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for their now famous "beer summit" last week, it pushed two perennial no-no's - race and class - to the front of the national discussion agenda (at least until the next installment of John and Kate plus Eight.) The timing was purely coincidental but a few days later, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press issued a report detailing the slide in President Obama's job approval numbers.

When you review the findings, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that President Obama has a growing problem with less affluent white Americans. Consider the falloff in his approval ratings between June and July.

55 percent of Americans with less than $30,000 in annual family incomes now hold significantly less positive views of the president's performance, down from 65% in June.

Among whites with annual family incomes of less than $75,000, Obama's approval rating fell to 47 percent from 57 percent last month.

It's not an anomaly. A Gallup survey turns up similar findings, with white support for Obama dropping 16 points since the start of the year to 47 percent. For Michael Steele and the rest of the Republican braintrust, finally, a way to change the subject from the latest hijinks of Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin's prime time quest for fulfillment. And they are making the best of the opportunity.

You only have to turn on the television to learn there's a lot of unchanneled rage out there - first, the tea party protests against endless financial bailouts, then the conspiracy theorists challenging President Obama citizenship and now the growing flap over "Obamacare." In fact, Thomas Edsall in the Huffington Post suggests what we're witnessing is a Republican return to a "White Voter strategy," similar to the so-called "Southern Strategy" which helped Richard Nixon win the White House in 1968. A similar critique is offered by The Nation's Leslie Savan. who goes one step further to connect the dots between the "birthers," the Gates arrest and the debate over health care reform. To wit:

"There were Birthers insisting that Obama's presidency is illegitimate because he was born in Kenya; CNN's Lou Dobbs trying to legitimize the Birthers, and of course, an angry Rush Limbaugh fuming that Obama 'is an angry black man.' None of them, however, could hold a fuse next to Glenn Beck, who asserted that the biracial POTUS is a 'racist' who has 'a deep-seated hatred of white people,' something so unhinged that even the Brown-Haired-Guy-Who's-Not-Steve-Doocy (the Fox & Friends cohost who had to apologize a couple weeks ago for blurting that Swedes and 'other ethnics' are different 'species') called him on it."

Savan's clincher is that Republican opposition to changing the health care system relies on spreading the notion it also would involve the racial redistribution of wealth. "As Beck himself said, practically redefining "welfare queen" as "healthcare queen": "Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill, are transforming America, and they're all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: reparations."

Will it lead to Obama's Waterloo, the outcome South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint hopes for? To Be Continued. But in the meantime, check out the run of recent YouTube video clips and the anger of the mob-style protesters at congressional town hall meetings. (See what happened to Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has never lost a Congressional race with less than 67 percent of the vote, upon returning to Austin for a meet and greet.)



Last month the Weekly Standard's impresario, Bill Kristol, urged critics of the Obama health care proposals not to pull their punches. "Go for the kill" was his prescription. He and other Republicans believe they have a winning moment. But is it a lasting one?

The Republican's problem, as pollster Nate Silver has pointed out on another occasion, is that the numbers in any Southern Strategy redux don't add up any more. When the GOP adopted its Southern Strategy in the late 1960s, it was a very different America, one where perhaps less than 10 percent of the electorate was nonwhite. That majority is evaporating.

To be sure, the polls are not terribly detailed. It's possible to still like Obama and be skeptical of the Democratic health care proposal. Well-insured Americans of any race, ethnicity, or skin color might have good reason to worry that their insurance plans will cover less, or be squeezed out of business by a government plan. Still, with demographic changes since then, about a quarter of the electorate is now nonwhite (and growing.)

How well the Republicans fare in national elections will turn on how they deal with those demographic changes. That's been a challenge for the old timers who still haven't got the message that Opie and Aunt Bee no longer appear on prime time.

[maryjessel]

Well of course white males are angry, why wouldn't they be? They are the only people in the country that it is safe to discriminate against and shout ugly racial slurs against. Look at this talk board and the language that is allowed here against whites, specifically poor and elderly whites, that would never be allowed against the protected victim groups: "white trash", "white trash retirees," etc. White men are 30-35 percent of the electorate, yet the liberal elite does its best to marginalize them and de-legitimize their political and economic concerns. However the liberal elite are plenty happy to take their tax dollars to finance their expensive but always-doomed-to-fail social engineering schemes.

[maryjessel]

Well of course white males are angry, why wouldn't they be? They are the only people in the country that it is safe to discriminate against and shout ugly racial slurs against. Look at this talk board and the language that is allowed here against whites, specifically poor and elderly whites, that would never be allowed against the protected victim groups: "white trash", "white trash retirees," etc. White men are 30-35 percent of the electorate, yet the liberal elite does its best to marginalize them and de-legitimize their political and economic concerns. However the liberal elite are plenty happy to take their tax dollars to finance their expensive but always-doomed-to-fail social engineering schemes.

[babooph]

Wow ,a lack of respect from "PO WHITE....",that must devastate him,they can go back to voting massive tax cuts for the rich,so they can get that maids job.

[vicoit66]

I'm niether an elephant or an ass. I'm just conservative. (one of the few left) First of all, you have the poor (most blacks & latinos quite simply because that's the mentality with which they are raised) and a ton of whites, asians, etc. who don't have the healthcare benefits they want. (By the way, I'm a white guy with 6 kids, full time job and no benefits so I speak from experience) You also have the "minions" as spoken of in an earlier post that have all the healthcare they want because they have money.

The fight is between those who have and those who have not. The poor want what the rich have (socialism and communism) and the rich don't want the watered-down crap that will be created by the poor when they get their version (crappy as it will be) that the rich have now.

Don't believe me that it will be crap? Just look at medicare and the VA right now. They are the "pilot programs" of government-controlled medicine. They SUCK, people!!! Ask any veteran or old person! And ask the doctors who can't get paid after going to a decade of medical school and now put up with insurance companies full-time.

Gov't run healthcare is the bane of society. Ask ANY European country or Candadians, or Argentinians and the list goes on...

Obama now controls banks, car companies, GE, and the list will unfortuneately grow to be much bigger.

And what's the deal with Whites being called racist and socially intollerant??? 53 percent of whites would vote for Obama again (yikes). That number doesn't seem racist.

AND YET 95% OF BLACKS THINK HE IS DOING GREAT AND WOULD VOTE FOR HIM!!! THAT IS RACIST!

And today Sotomayor was put into the Supreme Court quite simply BECAUSE she was latina. She may even turn out to be good. That's not the point...America has become a country where the white working middle-class straight male is to blame for everything and is discriminated against at EVERY turn...NEVER have I received any kind of assistance that the rest of you get. (not that I want it. I would not STEAL from others just so I felt EQUAL - whether it's money, power, position, benefits, healthcare or whatever)

It's time for a revolution...PERIOD.

Go ahead and bash me. I know you want to! I'm sure that there are 50 democrats just dying to take me out to the ally and beat on me because they know that what I said is true.

By the way, Republicans are idiots too. They just don't seem to be as far along as the Democrats these days.

I hope you people enjoy destroying the country I used to love.

[johnbrown8888]

And bible-thumping white trash retiree Limboogers will continue to collect their Medicare as they rant against "socialized medicine."

Give up your government benefits, Limboogers!

[bpai99]

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats." - Kevin Phillips, GOP Strategist, 1970

[bpai99]

?You start out in 1954 by saying, 'N--ger, n--ger, n--ger.' By 1968 you can't say 'n--ger'? 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." - Lee Atwater, GOP Strategist, 1981

[noloyalisti]

We are literally in a war against the rich and big corporations. This should be 98% of us poor, middle class and workers against the top 2% who have hijacked our media, military and government.

Instead you have the powers that be (the top 2%) having us fight among ourselves and call people socialists while the rich take our taxpayer money and laugh all the way to the Cayman Islands.

Time to take them down. Let me know.

[wyodutch]

We Republicans have been taken to the woodshed for abandoning our ideals.
.
We gave the Republic... Perpetual wars for perpetual "safety" from terrorists... Waterboarding... Military tribunals... Surveillance... Wiretaps... Free speech zones... Trillion dollar deficits.
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My Lord... even John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight Eisenhower left the G.O.P. in disgust over Bush and Cheney. That should tell us something.
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We won't be fit to govern again until we return to our roots.

[gcstone]

The Clinton's tried to pass a health care bill 15 years ago, but it was stopped by that great humanitarian Newt Gingrich and his right wing Republican colleagues in Congress. Gingrich and his Republican colleagues have said over and over how proud they are that they were able to kill a federal health care program. Now, we hear today that some 20,000 Americans (men, women, and children) die each year because they don't have health insurance. That is astounding. That's some 300,000 Americans who have died needlessly in the past 15 years as a result of what Gingrich said he and his colleagues were so proud they were able to bring about. Gingrich and his colleagues must accept the inescapable reality of his words... One can make all kinds of excuses, but, in the final analysis, there is no where to hide from your actions.

Each person must decide for himself or herself whether to support a federal health care option. Those 300,000 people are real men, women, and children. They are not wooden horses. There will be hundreds of thousands more Americans die needlessly over the next 15 years, if we don't act. There is no escaping that reality either. Finally, there is no escaping the reality of what you have become when you look at what you?ve done?whether you vote in favor or against the federal health care option.

The interesting consequence of killing the health care bill is that those people who support killing it may well find themselves, or their spouse, or their children, or grandchildren or some other loved one in a position one day where they are one of the 300,000 that Gingrich and his right wing Republican supporters so proudly prevented from having a federal health care policy.

The only way I can understand such people is to accept the fact that, in the final analysis, money has become their god. Jesus said it another way------?It?s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a wealthy man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!? In other words, ?Don?t share the wealth!? ?Just say ?No? to health care!? I think that about captures your commitment to the teachings Jesus, don?t cha, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee?!? If there was anything to you, you?d be leading the fight for health care programs for the poor. What does "Feed my sheep" mean to you anyway??!!?? You have the gall to ask Americans to vote you into office because you have the ethical makeup to lead us into the good and right. What a bunch of hypocrites!

[gcstone]

Ace922040
Did the Jesus act get to you? I'm laughing out loud at your comments. I'm curious. You seem to know a great deal about political philosophy and economic theory. Where did you learn all that you know about a communist or socialist government? For that matter, where did you learn all that you know about capitalism? Did you study political philosophy and economic theory? I?m asking that because your argument is somewhat strange. It seems to be based in an ?either-or? mentality.

There never has been a perfect capitalistic society, or a perfect socialistic society, or a perfect communistic society. Human kind takes bits and pieces of all of them to make a workable government. The key is to do it properly so that we keep our freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. So, in a capitalistic society such as ours, there are government funded public schools, co-ops of all kind (education co-ops, electrical co-ops, etc), as well as military pensions and military health insurance policies for retired military people, social security, social services for families in trouble, NASA, interstate highways, state universities, and many other such services for our people. Before you get too excited about those kinds of things, you can also go to the business section of the newspaper and see pages, pages, and pages of companies listed on the private stock market in 6 point type. That, of course, doesn?t cover all the businesses by any stretch of the imagination. Those are only the ones on the stock market. I have a few dollars myself in the stock market, and I plan to keep investing in stocks. This is a pretty great county, and I'm very proud to be an American, but let me go on.

One of the serious problems corporations have today is the enormous amount of cost for health care policies for their workers---all their workers---blue collar as well as management. That cost is added to the price of their products, and, according to them, the total cost of their products places them at a disadvantage in world markets. So, many corporations want the government to take on health care so they won?t have to do it. If that should happen, then American products will cost less and we?ll be able to sell them much more competitively on the world markets.

By the way, your accusation that I am a parasite and that I live off the sweat of society is funny. I have five children and ten grandchildren, and, surprisingly enough, I have worked for more than forty years in a private university and have held private health insurance all that time. I'm still working there and still have private insurance. A private university, you know, doesn't take tax money. State universities do, but not private universities. So, I don't live off society, and I do take care of my own. I don't advocate stealing from my neighbor and I seriously doubt the next election cycle will change anything. The point is that if you had no health insurance, and if you were sick, I would still be advocating a health care plan for you. Finally, I actually do understand your argument, although I doubt that you understand the consequences of it. I doubt seriously you'd want to live in the society you advocate. By the way, what do you do?