Posted on 12/29/2002 8:35:58 AM PST by 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.
I am not really a "fan" of either of them, but they are both very intelligent and are worth listening to.
In this case I think I side with Buchannan. Nixon was not the "evil right winger" some people paint him to be. In fact, I bet he would be called a RINO if FR was around at the time.
I think he's unfairly maligned allot of times.
Kind of like "Monopoly" If it wasn't in the dictonary, you would never know what the word truly means, it's misused so often.
"Historically, neoconservatism has been marked by a strong anti-Communism, a deep appreciation of America, a critical celebration of capitalism, a stress on the importance of religion and virtues, a sense of tragedy about the effects of social action and a cons tant aversion to individualistic heresies - either on the libertarian right or the licentious left."
I view Neocons as being internationalist, interventionist, for a strong military, pro free trade and anti-protectionist, pro civil rights in a color blind way, pro welfare reform, valuing religion even if not religious themselves, concerned about the dysfunction of the educational establishment and pro voucher, and while not against government, or big government, of centralized government per se or a social safety net, desirous of continual engagment in an honest evaluation of its effects, efficicacy and consequences.
I pretty much take a Neocon position down the line in most things I post here. But then I am a Neocon.
Another definition requires that you had to be once a liberal, and it helped to be Jewish as well. That defintion is silly and outdated, and doesn't fit me. In fact, I used to be more traditionally conservative with a moderate amount of libertarian coloration, than I am now.
I hope that helps.
If I could press you further.. that's pretty broad, imo.
What are the points of contention between these "neo-cons" and the non-neo-cons"
I mean, this is so ambiguous as to leave me wondering if I am indeed one of these "Neo-conservatives" or not.
(Actually, I don't even know if they/we are a majority at this point.)
I suppose the Fiscal-conservatives and the Pro-government RINO's and open border types could definitely fall into the "neo" category, but so could many social conservatives and Christian conservatives as well. This is very confusing for me.
It's so broad as to be almost meaningless.
For Pat, it was abolished when he left the Republican party.
Mostly, it is a matter of emphasis. Some traditional conservatives are more isolationist, some not. The Paleos disagree with most of what I listed. Beyond that, traditional conservatives of the WSJ editorial page ilk tend to be more anti-redistributionist, more hostile to a social safety net, more impressed about supply side economics, more concerned about the evils of big government qua big government, more into subsidiarity (the devolving power to states and localities and away from Washington), and more cautious about government initiatives in general.
I wish there were other neocons around here to add their two cents, or disagree with my take on this, but I think I am the only real card carrying neocon on this board. :)
Mostly, it is a matter of emphasis. Some traditional conservatives are more isolationist, some not. The Paleos disagree with most of what I listed. Beyond that, traditional conservatives of the WSJ editorial page ilk tend to be more anti-redistributionist, more hostile to a social safety net, more impressed about supply side economics, more concerned about the evils of big government qua big government, more into subsidiarity (the devolving power to states and localities and away from Washington), and more cautious about government initiatives in general.
I wish there were other neocons around here to add their two cents, or disagree with my take on this, but I think I am the only real card carrying neocon on this board. :)
You had to toss the "paleo's" in there didn't you! (LOL!) Oh my! I am missing in action on that one also.
At some point I would like to see a thread on this.. It's would be interesting to hear the self described "X-conservatives" define themselves and maybe dispute some of the other characteristics attributed to them.
Well, that is only to be expected from a "dysron," i.e., one of normal or even slightly above average intelligence, whose fears and compulsions reduce his analytic abilities to a moronic level. There is no way that any person operating functionally with a "full deck," would think it in the Republican interest to (a) smear Trent Lott; (b) publicly disparage the contributions of Southern Conservatives to the improved Republican prospects since the 1960s; or (c) work with the biased and extremely Leftist New York Times on a project that incorporates "a" and "b."
Kristol is a simpering pseudo-intellectual poseur, without a clue as to how the world is really wrapped.
But the bright side of this, is that it sounds like he is in the process of self-destructing.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
And for Lott?
Oh, I dunno.
Probably when Lott went on BET, and sold out his party, in a selfish and pathetic effort to save his own skin.
Explain this - 90-92% of Blacks vote Dem. But if you poll them on their positions on vouchers, Fed. money for faith-based institutions, and SS reform, they are overwhelmingly for the GOP position.
A growing number - certainly far more than the 10% who don't vote Dem - are against quotas.
What part of the GOP message don't they like? The part that says that if you educate Black kids, they will be able to compete with whites on ability alone?
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