WHAT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY ABOUT THE GOP AND RACISM

Reproduced with the permission of the Austin Statesman on August, 2 2015

For a long, long time Texas and the rest of the South was a rigid one-party region. For reasons lost in the mists of Lincoln and Reconstruction, the region was so solidly Democratic that the Democrats themselves basically took it for granted.

Then the 1960s and ’70s happened, the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson, and suddenly segregation and the way of life it represented was in mortal peril. White Southerners were aroused.

The Republicans noticed this. For a long time they had chaffed at being the minority party, tied to their twin beliefs of Big Business and Small Government, but suddenly Republican strategists had an “aha” moment: Here was a huge chunk of the electorate ripe for the taking, and all it would really take would be the proper use of rhetoric.

And so they came up with the so-called Southern strategy, a plan for turning the South Republican by appealing to racial fears and the legacy of segregation.

The Republicans didn’t use this strategy up North, where there certainly are racists, too; they used it down South, and definitely in Texas. They disguised it with all sorts of spin, but everybody — black and white, Northerner and Southerner — knew exactly what was being said, and why. And it worked. Texas and the white South flipped from solid Democrat to solid Republican in no time at all, more than 100 electoral votes. Flush with their success, the Republicans went on to expand the policy to the rest of the country, and in time they became the majority party in Congress.

But in the process, they made a pact with the devil. As much as the Republican establishment expected to keep “those people” on the fringe of the party — and we don’t mean black people — “those people” turned out to be indispensable as activists. They grew, their influence grew with them, and billionaires joined up, and in time, the Republicans became dependent on this huge tactical and financial base that has a racist and xenophobic streak. Sure, this base now reaches all over the country — which makes it more indispensable than ever — and it reaches out to other racial groups and other issues as targets, but through all of it runs the same thread of intolerance that started everything off to begin with. There is no escaping race and the role it plays.

And so the Republicans are trapped. The nation as a whole has moved on, at least a ways, and so have large parts of the South — including parts of Texas — but the GOP itself cannot, not on race. No matter how they feel personally, Republican politicians can’t speak openly about it for fear of losing this indispensable group of supporters: activists who bring their racist baggage with them. It’s just worked too well. There’s a reason Rick Perry and so many others stumbled when forced to talk about the Charleston church shooting. They were, and are, afraid of upsetting their radical base.

It’s the same reason the GOP is so afraid of Donald Trump. There are people out there listening to his racist rants, a lot of people, and now it is debate time on Thursday. Now all the other candidates have to go on national television. Now people like Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and Jeb Bush have to take a stand on what Trump says, in front of the base and the nation at the same time. And it terrifies them.

There’s a saying that’s worth noting: “Not all Republicans are racists; but all racists are Republicans.”

Sixty years ago, this would have been a ridiculous saying, but it’s ridiculous no longer. And as long as there’s even a shred of truth to that saying, the Republicans are indeed trapped by their own rhetoric. No matter how much spin you put on it, there is a thread of racism and xenophobia that runs through the center of the Republican Party. A lot of GOP strategists know this, and there’s all sorts of wishful thinking about “inclusion,” but trying to reach out to minorities while still holding on to the racist and xenophobic base is impossible.

No matter what the Republican establishment wants, no matter how many good people hold to sincere conservative views — and there are a lot — they are all beholden to the same faction of supporters. Ted Cruz knows this. Rick Perry knows it. Donald Trump dances all over it. They’re trapped, all of them, and as long as they are, the golden ring of the presidency is forever out of reach.

Op-ed by J.M. Purvis