A few years ago, then-RNC Chair Ken Mehlman went before the NAACP and apologized for the GOP's "Southern Strategy," or the deliberate exploitation of white racial anxieties for political advantage. Rush Limbaugh responded by utilizing his favorite metaphor when discussing racial matters, and preemptively described Mehlman's apology by saying he was going to "to go bend over and grab the ankles."
Now fast-forward. Last week, embattled RNC Chair Michael Steele recently made waves by saying:
For the last 40-plus years we had a "Southern Strategy" that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, "Bubba" went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.
Steele also said that black people didn't "have a reason" to vote Republican, because the GOP hadn't given them one. Dave Weigel quotes Bruce Bartlett arguing that this is Steele's "biggest gaffe so far," and I think Bartlett's right -- but not because the GOP never had a Southern Strategy. Tell it to Jackie Robinson. (Jamelle Bouie provides a good rebuttal to Bartlett here.)
Steele didn't say anything most black Americans didn't already know or believe. The reason this remark has provoked so much outrage is because Steele was elected RNC chair for the specific purpose of exonerating Republicans from charges of racism. When running, he told Republicans that they shouldn't go easy on Obama "just because the President of the United States happens to be a black man." In short, Republicans, who are very sensitive to the perception that they are hostile to minorities, would have in Steele someone who could inoculate them against charges of racism. For Steele to explicitly focus on GOP racism is a violation of the implicit contract he made with Republicans, so of course they're outraged. After all, it's not like Steele's proved himself to be the world's most effective manager.
The response to Steele's remark and the burgeoning cottage industry of books arguing "But no, Democrats are the real racists" is indicative of a problem I wrote about last week, which is that Republicans are far more committed to developing a kind of plausible deniability about racism than they are actually abandoning racial animus as a political tool or seriously addressing the problems faced by people of color.
Steele's comment holds -- and stings -- not just because Barry Goldwater opposed federal efforts to secure black rights a few decades ago: The past isn't even past, but there's also no use pretending this isn't very much a problem of the present.
-- A. Serwer
