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I enjoyed going back and forth online over a 3 month period with a group of older, white, Ivy League conservatives. Before social media I never would have gotten the opportunity to share thoughts with them.
I certainly would not have had the opportunity to confront so elite a group of Republicans with the truth that their Presidential election successes had depended largely on appeals to social diseases of the past --racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, super nationalism, militarism, greed, and evangelical hatred.
The appeals were called the Southern Strategy and the group was impressed that I had lived in the freshman dorm at Colgate University across the hall from Kevin Phillips, and had known him very well and could share some personal insights. Phillips was the person who pulled the Southern Strategy together for President Nixon back in the late 1960s.
I could gloat that Phillips had an "oh, my God, look at the damage we've done" moment when he saw how masterfully President Reagan used the Strategy to consolidate enough power for the moneyed elite to rape the financial system that served a significant portion of the world's population.
With my mocha-colored face smiling out from the photo beside my comments, I wrote: "Lee Atwater became an Advisor to Reagan and took over as chief spokesperson for the Southern Strategy and actually invented the technique of using code words that you gentlemen employ today. Atwater said: 'You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.'"
I knew how much these august men hated my saying that some of their language was code words for the n-word, but I continued pontificating by giving a definition of subliminal bigotry: "racial animosity below the threshold of conscious perception, hidden so deeply that there is no overt awareness of it, yet it influences deeply held beliefs and judgments. This is why some of you gentlemen have such personal hatred for our non-white President."
This was the mood of the contentious discussion I described in A Foolproof Plan for Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2012: Part One. I am absolutely sure that if this were a private club they would have taken umbrage, which is what they like to do, and would have had me thrown out; or they would not have admitted me to membership in the first place; but here we were slugging it out.
Even while I was being combative in the public discussion I had gotten into "Private Messaging" exchanges in which some of them got to better understand the virtues of my political and economic thinking and I got to better understand theirs. In these private exchanges, described in Part Two of a Foolproof Plan for Republican Victory, we saw that my defense of the President and their attack on him might not be all about racism.
Because of the private exchanges I conceded that the basic argument could well be an economic argument rather than a racial one. Yes, I admitted, the Civil War was fought to stop the expansion of slave labor' depressing effects on wage labor and to prevent plantation owners from controlling the best land leaving the small, independent farmer to earn money by farming the leftovers.
"African-American slavery was an economic system into which African slaves fit after Native Americans and Irish indentures did not fit. Hating black people was not the basic issue. Economic issues created the social conditions responsible for that hatred," said one of the men, an investment banker headquartered in Kansas City.
I got him to concede that racism could be used only because it was an emotional issue. It had been used to appeal to certain groups and now the groups had taken over and were running Republican candidates for President, --white ethnics (Santorum), evangelicals, (Bachmann), libertarians (Paul), neo-Confederates (Gingrich), and Romney, a Mormon whose Church until recently taught that black people were damned.
In light of mutual concessions, I decided to give the group the long awaited Foolproof Plan for Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2012. I had had everyone strung out long enough. I pasted the Plan into the "Add a Comment" box:
THE PLAN
Remember we talked about how 60 years ago no American president could travel to Communist China without suffering political damage at home. Nixon was able to do it because he was such a big anti-communist that the voting public would not feel he was being soft on communism. No Democratic President would have dared.
So the Republican Party in 2012 is so strongly associated with racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, super nationalism, greed, and evangelical hatred, it can speak and act vigorously against these anti-social diseases as no Democratic President can, and especially not Obama.
Here is how I feel Republicans can attack each one of the social diseases.
Racism -Republican candidates could hold a Presidential debate focused on equal justice at the campus of a Historically Black College or University. Obama wouldn't dare.
Sexism -Since a candidate must profess faith in God, Republicans could create a platform that says God is not male and that at least 50% of the time the Party will pray "Our Mother in heaven, Thy will be done."
Homophobia -Have Don Lemon, of CNN, and Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC, moderate one of the post-Iowa debates. Both are homosexual.. The moderators wouldn't even have to focus on gay issues. The symbolism would not be lost on the public
Xenophobia -Have all the candidates make major speeches on global cooperation in non-western countries around the world.
Super nationalism -Have one of the debates focused on how America's "need" for oil and illegal drugs created problems in other nations just as illegal immigration has created problems in ours.
Greed --Embrace the Occupy Movement and spell out what ways Republicans will address the problem of income inequality. .
Evangelical hatred -Create a plank in the Republican platform that says God does not want America to punish anyone whose national interests are different than America's.
Okay, there's a problem. Which conservative candidate could run on that platform? Not one of the present ones. So in this scenario Republicans could engineer a deadlocked convention and draft Barack Obama as the Republican candidate. Half of him is conservative anyway-the black half.
Obama would then have Republican support for the kind of economic policies that saved the American banking system and avoided what happened in Europe; and he would have Democratic support for extending food stamps, Medicare and other protections for those American who need help.
Okay, I'm telling a joke to make a point. The point is that Obama is more conservative than any of the Republican candidates, if we give "conservative" its most useful meaning -preservative of what is most valuable about the past, not the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, super nationalism, militarism, greed, and evangelical hatred of the past.
The first two parts of this series are at:
Part Two of a Foolproof Plan for Republican Victory
A Foolproof Plan for Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2012: Part One
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from sources across the nation and around the world, that give deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
