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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

SC DEAC said:
holy crap...that Lee atwater interview! Never heard that before, but yes, that is the the republican party in a nutshell post civil rights era. Party of Lincoln my ass. Its the party of racists who only care about white people. Its been that way for years and Trump has only blown the roof off the the racist foundation.
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Atwater learned his politics at the knee of Strom Thurmond, the "diehard segregationist" who ran on the infamous third-party Dixiecrat presidential ticket in 1948, because some Southern Democrats opposed Truman's initial baby steps on civil rights (such as integrating the military). He then left the Democrats because they were no longer pro-segregation enough for him, and finally became a Republican in the 60s, thus becoming a prototype of the white Southern Democrat turned right-wing Republican. The fact that Thurmond had fathered an out of wedlock daughter with a black woman didn't become public knowledge until after his death in 2003, but he's the perfect example of the total hypocrisy of conservative white Southerners (Democrats then, Republicans now) on the issue of race. Atwater learned his lessons well from Thurmond, and later played leading roles in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations. He basically got the elder Bush to the WH (well, that and the miserable campaign run by Dukakis). Atwater's use of the infamous Willie Horton ad against Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign is a classic example of the type of racial code politics that he talks about in that interview. To anyone who doubts that the GOP has been using racial "code words" and racism for decades to win elections, reading and/or listening to Atwater's very candid remarks before his early death from brain cancer in 1991 is eye-opening.
 
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Are you talking about his apologies to Dukakis for the Willie Horton ad?

I remember hearing about him back in the 80s as a kid. I didn't realize how young he was when he died (everybody in politics was old to a kid in the 80s). No doubt Atwater would be an elder statesman in the GOP if he was alive today. He'd only be 67.
 
PhDeac said:
Are you talking about his apologies to Dukakis for the Willie Horton ad?

I remember hearing about him back in the 80s as a kid. I didn't realize how young he was when he died (everybody in politics was old to a kid in the 80s). No doubt Atwater would be an elder statesman in the GOP if he was alive today. He'd only be 67.
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Yes, he did apologize to Dukakis for that ad, although I believe he knew he was going to die at that point, and wanted to make amends for at least some of the things he'd done that he clearly felt guilty about (impending death will do that, I suppose). He really was a political wunderkind, however morally dubious his methods were. I believe that Mary Matalin regards him as her political mentor. He was definitely influential with a whole generation of GOP operatives.
 
Atwater made many calls on his deathbed asking forgiveness from political rivals. The willie Horton is just the most famous... er,.. infamous
 
Putting this here since it's more about Republican drama than immigration:

 
Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread

What’s nuts is that is how the right feels about liberals. They think they’re the victims.

Evangelicals think they were under siege like the Jews but Trump is their savior.
 
PhDeac said:
What’s nuts is that is how the right feels about liberals. They think they’re the victims.

Evangelicals think they were under siege like the Jews but Trump is their savior.
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I get the blowback over political correctness and being put off by how dogmatically outraged many on the left can get these days at the slightest offenses, er microaggressions. Many comics have complained about the same thing - folks like Seinfeld and Rock refuse to play college campuses as a result. But yeah, I'm completely lost as to how the right view themselves as victims here.
 
cville deac said:
I get the blowback over political correctness and being put off by how dogmatically outraged many on the left can get these days at the slightest offenses, er microaggressions. Many comics have complained about the same thing - folks like Seinfeld and Rock refuse to play college campuses as a result. But yeah, I'm completely lost as to how the right view themselves as victims here.
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Because their news outlets scare the hell out of them with inflammatory headlines about how MS-13 is going to murder your whole family and how God is dead.
 
Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread

And for 8 years, you couldn’t say “Merry Christmas.”

Seinfeld and Rock are just olds bitching about being too old for young fans.
 
Don’t be or work for a piece of shit human and you won’t encounter these problems.
 
Demonwolverine said:
Because their news outlets scare the hell out of them with inflammatory headlines about how MS-13 is going to murder your whole family and how God is dead.
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For some people, Facebook is their "news" outlet. Seriously. So the nutty memes we make fun of on the other thread, are informing these peoples beliefs. The reality is that there a ton of misinformed people out there.
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
Don’t be or work for a piece of shit human and you won’t encounter these problems.
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"Oh, so just because I spend 40 hours per week working to defend my world views that align with a nationalist bigot we can't be together? How shallow of you!"
 
On a similar note, has anyone stopped to think that the backlash Trump supporters face is partially because Trump himself accepts 0 responsibility? What I mean is that Trump indirectly throws his constituents under the bus with his lack of shame and refusal to bear any burden what-so-ever. With Obama, love him or hate him, he acknowledged his faults and gave his supporters a way to relate and say "he's not perfect, but I trust that he is trying and doing what he believes is best." It was the same thing with George W, and we all know he made mistakes. With Trump, his supporters are forced to be perfect and to not accept that anything he has done could even potentially be wrong, because that's what Trump himself says/portrays. Trump could relieve the bashing his voters receive if he wanted to, but it would come at the cost of his own image, and we all know he wouldn't risk that because it's all he's got.
 
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