Originally written 04/11/2013, it’s been sitting on the back burner, and something I wanted to get off my chest.
Rand Paul recently visited the hallowed grounds of the largely black Howard University and delivered a speech that some would call foolish. Others would call it ballsy, or ‘bold’ if you’re in polite company, and I tend to agree with them.
Since the monumental loss of the 2012 Presidential elections the Republican Party has been in, not quite a tailspin, but one of the four engines is out and numbers two and three aren’t looking too hot. We have an internal war going on that should be internal, but is getting played out on every medium imaginable (be you blog, newspaper, website, television, or radio). It’s not cloaks and daggers, but ad campaigns and public statements about how Tea Party X doesn’t agree with Congress member/ Senator/ Attorney General Y. These sorts of condemnations use to be behind closed doors, where negotiations could be done, and grandstanding was reserved for both parties to bask in the credit of compromise and a job well done.
Those days are damn near dead.
While the efforts to re-brand the Grand Old Party go on, Rand Paul is marching to a tune of his own. Speaking at Howard University he talked about issues that were both relevant to the audience but elucidated on the principles of the Republican mindset while doling out a bit of history. The snagging point: That Democrats were responsible for the Jim Crow laws of the day, and, ultimately, responsible for the monumental disgraces of racism and segregation in America.
History, as it turns out, is not a monolithic collection of information, painstakingly gathered by individuals who have devoted decades to the logging of the actions by those who have come before us. No, rather it is a whimsical land of talking points gathered and quantified by not what is right, but what is convenient. Welcome to Politics 201.
The “Republicans are Racists bastards” dialogue comes from a key point in the party’s history. A bleak and hideous time known as the Presidential election of 1964. Ignoring the internal power struggle that was going on years before and the first real rise of the ‘Conservative’ movement in the United States (yes, the modern conservative movement is a little older than the tea party to the tune of a few decades), this campaign cycle saw the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater to the stage of Republican candidate for President. Quick, go google “presidential election 1964” and look at the electoral college map, I’ll wait. Once you’ve seen the monumental failure that 1964 was for the Republican party come on back, and we’ll continue.
Pretty rough ‘eh.
I’ll go into Goldwater down the road, but there are some specifics to the election of 1964 that need to be pointed out to flesh out the Democratic talking points. Goldwater made a deal with the devil, lovingly referred to as the “Southern Strategy” where he would sally up next to the segregationists of the southern states, like George Wallace, in an attempt to free up some votes from those states, and, by their logic, win. The result, as you saw above, was that Goldwater did two things: 1) he effectively turned off an entire nation to the Republican party, which suffered massive losses in both the Senate and House of Representatives and 2) gave the loyal opposition a talking point that has lasted nearly five decades.
How does this all fit in to Senator Paul’s statement? Republicans, going back to post-Civil War reconstruction through the mid 1960’s, were largely in favor of equal rights amendments. Prior to 1964 the Republican party enjoyed roughly 30% of the black vote in America. This would all change in 1964 when it dropped to a mere 2%, peeking under Bush in 2004 at 11%.
Republicans were identified as the party of Lincoln, fighters for strong moral values, and the American way of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, etc. In that vein they have faltered, focusing more on screaming about regulation rather than small-business tax credits. They haven’t addressed how General Electric and other mega-corporations can drop their cash in off-shore tax havens, but haven’t given a thought to creating business incentive zones in major metropolitan areas to encourage growth a new businesses in blighted areas. The party, rather than standing on the principled idea of a representative republic, swings for big dollar corporations (least we forget the god awful Citizens United decision and subsequent abuse) and align themselves with a rogues gallery of religious leaders, social engineers, and, frankly, hideous people who appear to have agendas that appeared nowhere on the ticket of common sense, but have a seat at the table regardless. The ‘Big Tent’ as it were, is big enough to fit in the beast we’ve become and we have to excuse some folks from the table and clean up a bit (okay, a lot) before we can begin to change the perception of an organization.
Senator Paul was right in stating that our history is different from what is said about us as a party, but there is validity to the talking points of today. There were stronger representatives back then, with a greater sense of purpose not only to the constituents that voted them in, but to those who voted against them as well. The talking points exist because our history, that noxious cloud from 1964, still looms over us, and until we exorcise our demons, and apply some good housekeeping, then we will suffer the slings and arrows of not an outrageous fortune but, rather, one all too well deserved.
Old Jeffersonian 
