Dave Weigel reports that Republicans see Obama's declining poll numbers among white voters after the Gates saga, and perceive an opportunity to secure political victories by exploiting white anger and disaffection--even as changing American demographics are closing the door on the usefulness of this strategy.
“He would have been a whole lot wiser to shut up,” said Roy Fletcher, a Republican strategist based in Baton Rouge, La. “He got really close to losing the image he has as a post-racial president. For a few days, the question for a lot of people became, ‘Wait a minute. Is he the president of the United States? Or is he just the president of minorities?’ And that was a really unfortunate thing.”
By "unfortunate", Fletcher probably meant "freaking awesome."
That said, I actually agree with Fletcher. Though the GOP's strategy might be devastating to them in the long term, in the short term it's easy to see why going with the Nixon-Buchanan "larger half" strategy of pitting whites against minorities might work. To piggyback off Paul Krugman, the genuine anger we've seen on the right in opposition to Obama's policies, whether the stimulus or health care reform, isn't rooted in disagreement about Keynesian economics or whether the public option can hold down health care costs, its rooted in a cultural disaffection--ranging from the sense of rejection conservatives feel from losing the last election, to the upheaval of the traditional social order represented by a black man's rise to the presidency. But it's lit a fire on the right, and if Obama's base becomes disillusioned and stays home on election day--you get the picture.
If this strategy ultimately pays dividends for the GOP, it will be at great cost to the country--it can only work by driving the trenches of racial division ever deeper. Republicans haven't lost sleep over doing so in the past, and I doubt they will now. But we're all going to pay for it, whether it works or not. At the same time--I think race is genuinely diminishing as a factor in American society. As long as the stimulus keeps doing what it's supposed to do, and we see a strong economic recovery--it won't matter if Obama is purple.
-- A. Serwer
