The Neocons & Nixon's Southern Strategy ( Pat Buchanan slams Kristol )

washingtondispatch ^ | 12/29/2002 | Pat Buchanan

[TLBSHOW]

The Neocons & Nixon's Southern Strategy

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child.

Lear's reflection upon ingratitude comes to mind as one reads of the squabble among neoconservatives over who among them was first to stick his nail file in the back of Trent Lott.

Charles Krauthammer enters a claim for the Kristol-Bennett crowd, while Jonah Goldberg of National Review and cashiered Bush speech-writer David Frum insist they, too, played supporting roles.

Whether Lott may have been innocent of any hate crime, or whether they might have had a moral duty to step in to stop a lynching of one of their own -- even had Lott blundered -- seem to be thoughts that never once intruded upon these tiny minds. Yet their collusion in ruining Lott, their relish in the pats on the head they are receiving from the Left, confirm the suspicion. Neoconservatives are the useful idiots of the liberal establishment.

With Lott gone, Bill Kristol is now collaborating with The New York Times in its rewrite of the history of the 1960s, a decade of liberal debacles, to credit racism for the Republicans' success.

"Lott is really virtually the last of the products of Richard Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' to be in major positions of power in the Congress," Kristol assures the Times. "With his leaving you will have cleared out people who ... have a somewhat compromised image to the country as a whole."

Now, as a co-architect of the Nixon strategy that gave the GOP a lock on the White House for a quarter century, let me say that Kristol's opportunism is matched only by his ignorance. Richard Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column on the South (by this writer) that declared we would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the "party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice."

In that '66 campaign, Nixon -- who had been thanked personally by Dr. King for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- endorsed all Republicans, except members of the John Birch Society.

In 1968, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew for V.P. Why? Agnew had routed George ("You're home is your castle!") Mahoney for governor of Maryland but had also criticized civil-rights leaders who failed to condemn the riots that erupted after the assassination of King. The Agnew of 1968 was both pro-civil rights and pro-law and order.

When the '68 campaign began, Nixon was at 42 percent, Humphrey at 29 percent, Wallace at 22 percent. When it ended, Nixon and Humphrey were tied at 43 percent, with Wallace at 13 percent. The 9 percent of the national vote that had been peeled off from Wallace had gone to Humphrey.

Between 1969 and 1974, Nixon, who believed that blacks had gotten a raw deal in America and wanted to extend a helping hand:

-- raised the civil rights enforcement budget 800 percent;

-- doubled the budget for black colleges;

-- appointed more blacks to federal posts and high positions than any president, including LBJ;

-- adopted the Philadelphia Plan mandating quotas for blacks in unions, and for black scholars in colleges and universities;

-- invented "Black Capitalism" (the Office of Minority Business Enterprise), raised U.S. purchases from black businesses from $9 million to $153 million, increased small business loans to minorities 1,000 percent, increased U.S. deposits in minority-owned banks 4000 percent;

-- raised the share of Southern schools that were desegregated from 10 percent to 70 percent. Wrote the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1975, "It has only been since 1968 that substantial reduction of racial segregation has taken place in the South."

The charge that we built our Republican coalition on race is a lie. Nixon routed the Left because it had shown itself incompetent to win or end a war into which it had plunged the United States and too befuddled or cowardly to denounce the rioters burning our cities or the brats rampaging on our campuses.

Nixon led America out of a dismal decade and was rewarded with a 49-state landslide. By one estimate, he carried 18 percent of the black vote in 1972 and 25 percent in the South. No Republican has since matched that. To see Kristol colluding with the Times to rewrite that history to make liberals heroes and Republicans villains tells us more about him than about the era.

And where were the necons, when Goldwaterites and Nixonites were building the New Majority? Going all the way with LBJ.

[LibertarianInExile]

How does this explain why Pat ran a third-party candidacy, do you think? Is it that he disagrees with that premise?

This is why Pat will never have a place in a Republican administration again: he's willing to say just about anything as long as it's self-promoting. The whole Nixon staff is a bunch of cutthroats, with the single exception of G. Gordon, who was the only good guy in the whole mess. I'm glad that bastard Nixon will be greeting all of the rest of them when they walk through the gates--you pick which gates they'll be walking through, but I'm pretty sure the gates will have the words "Abandon All Hope" up on top...

[LibertarianInExile]

Um, could you generalize a little more? When you say something like "most paleoconservatives are bigots," you are further adding to the 'Republicans are sexist-racist-homophobes" bandwagon, since people think all conservatives are Republicans.

Further, the first thing that many neocons do when they want to defend their ideas against logically valid attacks is to trot out the anti-Semite charge, and I'm sick of it. I'm libertarian, and many paleos hate that viewpoint, but I will be the first to say that bigotry is not endemic to paleos any more than idiocy or lefthandedness is epidemic among neocons. It's a difference of opinion regarding government. Please don't jump on paleos because they'd like to take government back to the 1800s. Just because slavery was around then doesn't mean they're all for it.

[LibertarianInExile]

Well, yeah, but y'all know how the right has their tokens serving in the Massa's house...just ask the neocons whose heads were nodding when that jackass calypso singer started flapping his gums.

[LibertarianInExile]

A McGovern presidency would have turned the U.S. over to the left entirely. I can't imagine anything more important than voting "not-him" then, when the differences were so stark, and were I in Nixon's shoes, I can't imagine not doing everything possible to beat him. Especially bearing in mind that Nixon deserved the 60 election--he was paranoid but his legitimate persecution may have made him rightfully so.

Not that I liked the guy. I think Nixon's dodging pitchforks. But that doesn't mean I disagreed with EVERYTHING about him, and not disbursing money to Congress to use for his own campaign is definitely one move I am 100% okay with, even with Sam Ervin as the result. Coulda been much worse.

[hosepipe]

[ the rich fat cat heartless ceo's of corporations ]

I want to agree with you but damn you sound like a democrat or a RINO yourself.. Sorry, too many code words.. You must be brain washed as well...

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a393437456811.htm The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International

[jeremiah]

I always forget to put in the sarcasm alert, sorry. When I reread, it doesn't sound like a joke, it reads like the NYTimes front page.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

See I did not generalize because I said MOST not ALL. If I said all that would be generalizing. And no I am not adding to the Republicans are sexist-racist-homphobes bandwagon since I did not say Republicans are bigots but paleocons are. Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow, Thomas Fleming, Chilton Williamson, Jared Taylor etc etc etc. Have you read any of their articles? The make Trent Lott's comment seem like the I have a Dream Speech. I am a conservative because of my belief in traditional values and classical economics, not because I think that our white European Christian civilization is threatened by the colored masses of the third world. I am against affirmative action, illegal immigration, and the left wing version of multiculturalism. I also happen to be for a reduction in legal immigration levels. But I do not racialize the issue and I happen to believe that immigrants can assimilate, all of them no matter where they come from. I know I did it rather well. And you know what? I am not the one who labels myself a neoconservative, at least not originally. I thought that I was just a plain conservative until these paleocons labeled ME and everyone conservative that thinks as I do a neocon. Paleoconservatives are mostly intolerant, of other viewpoints and of people who are different from them.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

Most of these are on the table but liberals are blocking their implementation. That does not change the fact that it is neoconservative scholars and think tanks that developed these ideas. Oh and the borken windows theory was implemented by hizzoner Rudy Guiliani and that worked very well. NEOCONS RULE!!!

[Ohioan]

You do some nasty labelling. But the bottom line seems to be that you are intolerant of people who want to preserve more traditional values than you do. What really is your point? Because you are 80% as Conservative as some of those whom you assail, is that a reason to assail them, rather than the "Leftists" with whom you agree only 20% of the time?

This need to throw bones, as it were, to the propagandists of the Left, who have spent three generations trying to condition Academia to what is now "politically correct," is tearing the Right apart in America. And when dysrons like Bill Kristol actually work with the New York Times--no moderate news media, it--the pattern becomes even clearer.

Let me, then, attack head on, what you seem to be saying. You would limit immigration and restraints on economic freedom, motivated by Leftwing social engineering, but you want to make it perfectly clear, that you do not like Conservatives who want to preserve their ancestral faiths, blood-lines--the ties of kith and kin--and the celebration of a common history and shared struggle. But why--other than the staccato cries of "xenophobia," "racism," "nativism," and "bigotry," which the Left uses because they have no valid argument--would you feel that way?

Since Biblical times, the greatest motivation for positive social behavior in the West, has been to pass on your values, heritage, material and spiritual achievements, etc., to your descendants. Nationality has always been about those things. It is ludicrous how many otherwise intelligent Conservatives and moderates, feel a compulsion to distance themselves from normal human motivations. It is also fatal to our cause.

If you are concerned about acts of cruelty directed against other peoples, I have no problem with that concern. I share it. But let's not put people down, who simply want to preserve the cultural and biological heritage that they were born into. That is not a rational basis to put anyone down!

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Ohioan]

I forgot to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Bill Flax

[Classicaliberalconservative]

You want to talk about "nasty labeling". What about people who say thaty every non-white immigrant is a threat to the American nation, or that the conservative movement was hijacked by "politically correct" liberals i.e people who think the government should have color blind policies on EVERYTHING, immigration, quotas, etc. I have no problems with people preserving ancestral faiths since I happen to be an evangelical Protestant. And guess what? I like celebrating our common histroy too. Common meaning all Americans. We are a nation of immigrants after all. And I believe in American values too: free markets, property rights, civil rights, opportunity and the influence that Christianity and Western Civilization has on our country. So why do I attack these people who agree with me 80% of the time? Well the 20% of the time they do not agree with me is on what it means to be an American as well as who can be considered one. I love and respect all people in this country and I do not think that our "biological heritage" is limited to one race or one group of people. So yes partially it is about acts of cruelty directed against other peoples (who are Americans also btw). But it is more than that. It is about acceptance of people like me who came after 1965 as Americans too; people who were not really allowed to come before then. So no I am not throwing bones to the left. I am focusing on people who seek to divide our nation, just like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Antonio Villagrosa, and Angela Oh. They and the Jared Taylors and Sam Francises(spelled right?) deserve each other while the rest of the country moves on. Furthermore I also believe in globalization, free trade and yes spreading our values abroad. We are right afterall, most of the time.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

"I forgot to wish everyone a Happy New Year!"

You too

[Ohioan]

Let me thank you for responding to my query as to why you focus on the 20% of the issues on which you disagree with the traditional Conservative position, rather than where you agree. You have been frank, and I would like to be frank in my response--answering you in a spirit of good will, but anything but agreement. I think that the continuing exchange might be very helpful to many "on the fence," as it were. However, there seems to be no one else, who is still interested in this thread.

I will check back, and if there are indications of any more general interest, I will respond here. If not, I am sure our paths will cross again, and we can pursue this further, later.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site