GOP Pscyhoanalysis: The William Buckley-George Wallace Debate

     As promised here is our second session of GOP psychoanalysis.

     http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/psychoanalyze-gop.html

     What precipitated this was the GOP repudiating its own history with by reaffirming Dred Scott.

     http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/dred-scott-republicans.html

     By finally spitting on Lincoln's grave this becomes the only next step. What has made all this possible is Trump who is the id of GOP politics. He says what is not supposed to be said-but is felt.

    http://daily.jstor.org/donald-trump-the-id-of-republican-politics/

    I've argued that Trump is in a genealogical line that goes back through Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, and George Wallace-namely, Right wing populism.

    http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-question-is-asked-is-trump-false.html

    I have also argued that Perot is a little different in that he was that rare thing a populist of the Center. Perot's people were interestingly all prochoice across the board.

    George Wallace's run in 1968 worried the GOP-they would eventually win but it was very close and Wallace got over 15% of the vote.

    He ran on law and order-which stepped on Nixon's toes who was doing the same thing-and talked a lot about Communists and busing. His history of ;out-niggering' was notorious of course. But he combined this with a fairly liberal position on the welfare state. So he was also able to steal some racist Democrats-after all, the Jim Crow South had called the Dems home until very recently at the time.

  "George Corley Wallace, Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician and the 45th Governor ofAlabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms as a Democrat: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. Wallace has the third longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,848 days.[1] After four runs for U.S. President (three as a Democrat and one on the American Independent Party ticket), he earned the title "the most influential loser" in 20th century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter[2] and Stephan Lesher.[3]"

  "A 1972 assassination attempt left Wallace paralyzed, and he used a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. He is remembered for his Southern populist[4] and segregationist attitudes during the mid-20th century period of the African-American civil rights movementand activism, which gained passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s to enforce constitutional rights for all citizens. He eventually renounced segregationism but remained a populist.[5][6]"

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace

   He explains when he picked up segregation as his cause celeb:

   "In 1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor. Since the 1901 constitution's effective disfranchisement of the state's blacks, and most poor whites as well, the Democratic Party had been virtually the only party in Alabama. For all intents and purposes, the Democratic primary was the real contest at the state level. This was a political crossroads for Wallace. State Representative George C. Hawkins of Gadsden ran, but Wallace's main opponent was state attorney general John Malcolm Patterson, who ran with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization Wallace had spoken against. Wallace was endorsed by theNAACP. Wallace lost the nomination by over 34,400 votes.[14]"

   "After the election, aide Seymore Trammell recalled Wallace saying, "Seymore, you know why I lost that governor's race? ... I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."[note 2]"

   "In the wake of his defeat, Wallace "made a Faustian bargain," said Emory University professor Dan Carter. "In order to survive and get ahead politically in the 1960s, he sold his soul to the devil on race."[17] He adopted a hard-line segregationist stance and used this stand to court the white vote in the next gubernatorial election in 1962. When a supporter asked why he started using racist messages, Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."[18]"

   The actual Frontline debate between him and Buckley is fascinating to look back on.

   http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-would-wfb-do-1439829864

   If you watch him there, I think Wallace comes across pretty sympathetic. It's obvious that WFB is there to sandbag him and comes across as the pretentious bully he was. Wallace gives a homespun little history lesson of the South and it's clear he's pretty pro security net and New Deal. He gets outraged when WFB says the South caused the Civil War which is charming-if true. 

    Particularly charming was when he kept saying 'I thought you wanted to hear my ideas. This is your show, you're on every night. Why don't you let me talk?'

    His rich southern twang kind of adds to it. 

    That Buckley didn't want a discussion but simply to pigeonhole him is shown when he attacked Wallace for spending so much on the poor. When Wallace asked him if spending on the poor was  a bad thing, WFB triumphantly declared 'I thought you would say that. I'm a conservative, so I hate the poor.'

     As we observed yesterday, it's a real vote-getter to combine prejudices against immigrants-in this case blacks-with some liberal policies: Trump saying good things about single payer helps him as well. 

    http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/yes-donald-trump-is-moderate-candidate.html

    Ok, so this session is winding down. The GOP of course went on to win with Nixon and this begun a 20 year period in which they dominated the executive branch. 

    The 1968 race as a nail biter but the next 4 wins were blowouts in which they had at least 41 states and 400 electoral votes each time. They finally figured out how to win Congress in 1994 but by then the Dems had taken back the Presidency. The parties switched roles in the early 90s. The Dems became the Presidential party the GOP became the Congressional party. 

    If there is any thread that hangs through everything the GOP has done since the successful launch of the Southern Strategy that year is the party never learns anything. Will Trump finally change that?

   http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/morgan-warstler-on-trump.html