The Republican politics of hate, a Rice study and Lyndon Johnson was right

Paul Krugman lays it all out for us.

The centrality of race — and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans — is obvious from voting data.

For example, everyone knows that white men have turned away from the Democrats over God, guns, national security and so on. But what everyone knows isn’t true once you exclude the South from the picture. As the political scientist Larry Bartels points out, in the 1952 presidential election 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic; in 2004, that figure was virtually unchanged, at 39 percent.

...

The G.O.P.’s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.” So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

Wikipedia has more on the Southern Strategy. Lyndon Johnson knew what the racists would do.

There goes the South for a generation," Lyndon Johnson is said to have predicted as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law. Actually, it's been two generations, but otherwise Johnson was dead-on.

A recent Rice study of Anglo opinions on immigration in the Houston area illustrates the fear and bigotry are still strong, but demographic changes are marginalizing Anglo political clout.

"Anglos who live in predominantly Anglo areas are less likely to interact and meet minorities," said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the annual survey for 26 years. "And they have more reservations about ethnic diversity."

Paul Burka highlights the real problem facing our population:

Klineberg began by saying, the most critical issue facing this state--and if we don't deal with it, "not a whole lot of things are going to go right"--is a demographic revolution, accompanied by a restructured economy. He traced recent Houston history. From 1970 to 1982, the price of the region's principal industrial product [oil, of course] tripled. Houston was booming. An astounding 82% of the primary jobs were related to energy. You didn't need an education to succeed. You could get a job in the oil industry for good money. The biggest employers in Houston in 1970 were Hughes Tool and Cameron Iron Works. Then, in May 1982, what was essentially an 80-year boom suddenly collapsed.

* The resource-based industrial-era economy (land, cotton, cattle, timber, oil) has receded into history. It has been replaced by an increasingly high-technology, worldwide, knowledge-based economic system.

* The traditional "blue-collar path" to financial security has largely disappeared. Most good-paying jobs today require high levels of technical skills and educational credentials.

* "What you earn," as the saying goes, "depends upon what you've learned."

Charles Kuffner, being the nice guy he is, sees the silver lining in the Rice study.

It's been my opinion for awhile that what's driving a lot of the anti-immigrant sentiment is economic anxiety.

That's true, but Republicans have focused the anxieties of their base into hate of a particular group. It's all the hippies, Liberals, blacks, gays or Mexicans fault. Wedges make a nifty marking tool that takes away Republican accountability. Too bad, so sad the demographics are coming back to bite them!