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.

[Jhoffa_]

Thank you..

[iconoclast]

"X-conservatives"

?? Now you've got me.

What/who is an "X-conservative"?

I'm pretty much a Paleo. If your curious see www.chroniclesmagazine.org (.com?) for a start. It's a whole lot different than the Weekly Standard or Empower America (neo-cons).

[Jhoffa_]

Oh, the "X" was meant to represent the various flavor of conservatism. (paleo, neo, or what have you.. It's a placeholder.)

[iconoclast]

Kristol is a simpering pseudo-intellectual poseur, without a clue as to how the world is really wrapped.

Ouch. Cut him a little slack ... he's actually just pretty much his father's son, isn't he? ;o)

[TLBSHOW]

here is another interesting item I found

In 1860, the U.S. Census reported that around 10,000 free blacks owned some 60,000 black slaves. It was a black slave master named Anthony Johnson, who sued and won his case in a Virginia Court in 1653 that changed temporary servitude to lifetime servitude."

[iconoclast]

Good stuff.

Pat writes a lot of good stuff. But an awful lot of "Republicans" get their news and form their opinions entirely from Time magazine, NYT, WSJ and other such.

[xm177e2]

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.

This is crazy talk. This is exactly what the neocons and classical liberals debated. They decided that Lott was NOT innocent of expressing hate (that's not a "crime," nobody accused Trent Lott of committing a "hate crime," Buchanan is slimy to use that term), and they decided not only weren't they going to stick up for him, but they were going to drive him out.

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.

Getting rid of Lott had nothing to do with wanting praise from left-wingers. That Buchanan sees the civil rights movement solely in terms of "we lost to the liberals" speaks volumes about how icky he is. Buchanan is just mad because he's not in the Republican party anymore, few people want him there, and few people think his beliefs have a future in this country.

[Ligeia]

I can't figure out why Bill Kristol thinks he knows so much about southerners. He's always so wrong when he tries to characterize us or determine our motivations.

It's true, of course, about southern realignment and the Republican party. Where Kristol's argument is flawed is the why the migration occured. I have plenty of southern family who were FDR and Truman Democrats who moved to the GOP beginning in the early '70's due to what they perceived as the anti-Americanism of the anti-war movement and the weakness of the Dems on fighting Communism. Combine that with candidates like McGovern, Dukakis, and Ferraro and it's a wonder any southerner ever voted for a Democrat again when the Republican alternative was a patriot like Ronald Reagan.

The move was further encouraged by the Roe vs. Wade decision and Dems favoring abortion on demand, the push for acceptance of homosexual behavior; in short, the whole family values groundswell was against the Democratic party. Add to this the rise of the Democratic party's belief in big government and tax and spending solutions all contributed to conservatives leaving the DNC. The southerners of the late '60's and early '70's left the radical America-hating and God-denying Democratic party and joined the GOP. It's that simple -- nothing less, nothing more.

[Torie]

Except we have our own "x" conservative on this very forum, who probably has one of the most refined educated and thoughtful minds on this site. Do a search for him, and read everything he writes for real protein. By comparison, I am mere junk food.

[iconoclast]

As for your reference to Clinton, I find the Patsy knuckle-dragging paleocons to be more dangerous in the long run.

Thank you. Our prayer is to be dangerous to Washington D.C.

And I'm fairly confident that the Kristols would be more comfortable with Clinton, too.

As well they should be.

[gcruse]

Xcellent point!

[Classicaliberalconservative]

I think former New York City public official and mayoral candidate Herman Badillio put it best when he said (roughly paraphrased):

"Yeah I was for a lot of the government poverty programs when they were passed, but they didn't work"

"If being for standards means being a Republican, I guess I am a Republican."

[Classicaliberalconservative]

The difference between most paleos and neos is race. WSJ is considered neoconservative by most paleocons because of its support of open immigration (not something I am in favor of). Frankly, most paleoconservatives are bigots. Paleos never accepted the the changes of the 1960s over race and immigration. Trent Lott was defended primarily by conservatives who consider themselves paleocons: Sam Francis, Lawrence Auster, Jared Taylor etc. Don't get me wrong; the current civil "rights" establishment is scum and I believe in lower immigration levels for all nations. Still paleoconservatives tend to disturb me and they tend to label anyone who does not accept their white supremicist doctrine as "neocons", which for many of them is a code word for J-E-W-S and their allies.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

What big government solutions? Neocons are the ones who came up with every good idea for the past decade: privatization of Social Security, tax cuts, school vouchers, privitization of government services when logical, free trade, funding of science and technology research, the broken windows theory of crime fighting. All of them are neocon ideas. It is the paleocons who have their heads in the sand trying advocating "big government solutions" like protectionism, and disincentives to globalization. Thomas Fleming said himself that he agreed with the leftists and Seattle protestors about globalization, McDonalds and the modern world. Listen if I had a time machine I'd send these people to the 19th century which is what most of them seem to be pining for.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Reagan was the exception, not the rule.

Exactly. I remember how Reagan was treated in '76 and in '80 by the GOP. They were embarassed by him.

[Paulie]

"If the Republican party wants the black vote, they need to show (A) what Republicans have done for blacks and (B) what Democrats haven't done for blacks."

or (C), what Democrats have done TO blacks all these years.

[JMJ333]

But an awful lot of "Republicans" get their news and form their opinions entirely from Time magazine, NYT, WSJ and other such.

Just goes to show you that the left is still carving out the path. They keep leaning farther and farther left and the Republicans move to the former position the liberals held. They are still on defense, and have made so many concessions in the arena of ideas that they no longer resemble anything conservative.

[weikel]

Pat Buchanan slams Kristol

A national socialist slams an international socialist.

[dogbyte12]

but I think I am the only real card carrying neocon on this board.

actually, I am somewhat in the middle between Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke on most issues, but labels while interesting block reality as much as they illuminate.

I happen to be more of the liberal mugged by reality. I think that is why I as a "traditional" neo-con was very ticked off by Trent Lott. I stopped being a liberal because I realized that liberalism wasn't the best way to create justice in this world and a color blind society, not because I abandoned those ideals.

It is an interesting intellectual divide in the GOP. The paleos are on their death bed, but just don't know it quite yet. Of course I shall be flamed for this, but... c'est la vie. Viva Irving Kristol!