Reply #19: Republicans are THE MAJORITY among white voters in Presidential

[AirAmFan]

elections, and have been so ever since 1968. The last Democratic Presidential candidate to win a majority of white votes was Lyndon Johnson. This fact indicates that racial fears are at the heart of American voters' love affair with the GOP. But these racial fears mainly stay hidden in racially-coded discussions of guns, "crime", religion in public life, and other Republican demagoguery.

Racial fears play big but rarely-mentioned roles in many of the key "social issues" Republicans exploit. They use racially-charged hot-buttons to get the majority of whites to vote against their own economic interests. For instance, why do Americans love guns? "Bowling for Columbine" pointed out that the ghetto rebellions of the 1960s caused explosions in gun ownership and gun demand, city by city as African-Americans rebelled against police brutality. To understand Republican voter psychology, just follow the fear.

The strong correlation between attending church regularly and voting Republican also has a strong racial component. Martin Luther King often said that "11am Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week", and there's no indication what he said forty years ago is any less true today. Republican courtship of the religious right with "school vouchers" and other subterfuges for taxpayer funding of churches would help ensure racial separation of future generations, in racially exclusive churches and in racially pure church-run schools.