What I am about to say may come as a shock to the readers of this blog, but trust me, I’m not saying it because I got my first vaccination yesterday and lost my mind. I’m saying it because I believe it may be true.
I believe that Donald Trump may turn out to be the person who saved the Republican Party from what otherwise would have made it a permanent, minority party with no chance of future electoral success.
Why do I say that? Because the way Trump has behaved, both before and after January 6th, may finally give the GOP the cover they need to break away from a reliance on racial politics which has been the Party’s hallmark for more than fifty years.
How did the Party of Lincoln end up as the Party in which racism and White supremacy became the cornerstone of its political beliefs? Because Richard Nixon sat down in 1968 with Strom Thurmond, Richard Russell and other Dixiecrats and promised to ‘go slow’ on civil rights.
This wasn’t kept a secret. None of the men who got together with then-Presidential candidate Richard Nixon felt the slightest degree of discomfort in letting it be known that a deal had been made. I remember seeing a picture of the meeting in Life Magazine.
This ugly agreement was refurbished and renewed in 1980 by Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell and was renewed again by Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell, Jr., in 2016.
There was only one problem. Now it’s 2020 and the GOP is running out of White votes. Or better said, running out of White voters.
In 2020, Trump got the same percentage of the White vote in the battleground states (62%) that he got in 2016. But as America moves inexorably closer to being a majority of non-White residents, holding onto White voters won’t be enough. It particularly won’t be enough when the other side nominates a candidate who appeals to some Whites, and also does a first-class job of getting out the non-White vote.
Trump’s extreme and overt racism was a combination of his personal views, along with a cynical attempt to pull out every, last White vote. But it wasn’t enough to get him re-elected, and going forward, it won’t work for anyone else. Who’s now leading Trump faction within the GOP? Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some legacy, I must say.
The GOP needs to figure out how to bite off some of those non-White voters who right now strongly support Kammie and Joe. And in that respect I have a suggestion, notwithstanding the fact that I believe we can have a viable, two-party system within the ranks of the Democratic Party itself.
When was the last time you walked into a corner deli and the manager was a White man or woman from Anglo or European stock? When was the last time you saw someone like that running a gasoline convenience location, a Motel 6 or just about any other retail store? Even though the Pandemic has curbed walk-in retail sales, the bottom line is that the most important segment of our economy happens to be overwhelmingly in the hands of non-Whites.
Having owned a retail store for the last twenty years, there are two types of individuals with whom I don’t want to deal with at all. These are the folks who work for the State Revenue Department and always come around to audit my sales tax receipts, and the folks who work for other state agencies and come around to inspect the lighting, the emergency exits and the other things I need to have working properly in my store. Thank God I don’t sell food.
The point is that every time you go past any kind of store selling anything to the public, the owner of that establishment hates paying taxes, hates government regulations, and there’s also a good chance that he’s non-White.
Want to show me a better target for a post-Trump GOP?
Yep. Nixon's Southern Strategy. An ugly strategy but it worked until it doesn't. Now it doesn't.