’)Everything old is new again.
Strategists for Rudy Giuliani are quietly preparing a significantly
race-based campaign strategy to strengthen support among socially
conservative white voters, in the South as well as in the North.The former Mayor carries the burden of three marriages and a
Brooklyn accent, but he has more race cards to play than any of his
opponents, and his success in the fight for the nomination – according
to close observers of the campaign — may depend on how aggressively he
plays his hand.The themes the campaign are lining up for renewed emphasis are
those reflecting Giuliani’s confrontational stance towards black New
Yorkers and their white liberal allies, as well as his record of siding
decisively with the police against minorities who launched protests
alleging police brutality during the years he was mayor from 1994-2001.Giuliani’s eight years as New York’s chief executive exemplified a
Northern adaptation of the GOP’s politically successful “Southern
strategy” – the strategy playing on white resistance to and resentment
of federal legislation passed in the 1960s mandating desegregation -
resistance that produced a realignment in the South and fractured the
Democratic loyalties of white working class voters in the urban North
from 1968 to 2004.
Kind of explains those “scheduling conflicts” that crop up every time Giuliani is invited to an event with black voters.
So he’s going to campaign on repealing the 13th amendment?
Time to grab the popcorn!
Nah, the 14th. The 14th Amendment has been a thorn in the sights of right-wingers ever since it was adopted. It ultimately bothers them more than income tax.
The comment about the 14th amendment is telling. Note that the amendment, along with the 13th and 15th amendments, were passed only after a horrific civil war. A civil war that, in many ways, was a fight between progressives and fascists. Oversimplification? Yes. But suggestive, nonetheless.
The fact that corporate power was mostly on the northern side then, suggests a very interesting wrinkle for today, that’s for sure.
I suspect that the fascist right-wing in this country will never be defeated by peaceful means. We’ll need another civil war to crush them again. And, of course, they’ll never go away entirely. The grover norquists and Addingtons and Cheneys and their ilk never go away. They’re like roaches. You have to declare war on them periodically.
consider that the “disaffected white man” in the South is the direct descendent of the people the North crushed in 1865. They never gave up. They never gave in. They’re the same as they ever were…and they are the source of the GOP’s power.
I’m thinking it’s about time to fight the Civil War all over again. It’s not a geographical war though…not this time. The crazies are embedded everywhere, now.