How Ronald Reagan built his coalition

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

He took all the white people in the Republican party, and reached out to white people in the Democratic Party.

That was the vaunted coaliton... white people versus everyone else. Jesus, I could build that coalition! Hey kids, let's gang up on les autres.

"Reagan Democrats" no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle-class aspirations, but instead saw them (Democrats) as working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, the unemployed, African Americans, and other political pressure groups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Democrat

All you do is tell white people that people of color are stealing all their money and are responsible for all their problems and failings. The coalition forms as if by magic. (This is nothing special against white people. The same thing works everywhere. I'm sure Rawnada saw similar processes.)

I cannot believe we are talking about the political genius of a man who did the easiest, cheapest most demagogic, destructive and irresponsible of all political acts, which is to turn an ethnic majority against the minority as a means of unification.

To paraphrase Marge Simpson: "I never said you couldn't do it, I said you shouldn't do it."

(Bear in mind that anglo white people were 60 or 65% back then, unlike today. So the white coalition could spare the die-hard white liberals and intellectuals who stuck with the Democratic party and still have a big majority.)

[billbuckhead]

1. Remember Reagan started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi

"Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of his support for "states' rights" — a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters."
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<http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html?cnn=yes>

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. In the fullness of history, we can look back now and say, "just another racist asshole"