How To Lose Political Allies And Alienate People
Republican politicians have been greatly aided for decades by the condescending and sometimes hateful attitude of liberal Democratis to the concerns of certain segments of the population of these United States. Even Democratic attempts to demonize the Republican strategy of not hating, for instance, Southern whites demonstrate a very strange theory of electoral politiics.
Take this column by Juan Williams in the Wall Street Journal today. Williams complains that conservatives are lionizing the the recently dead Jesse Helms, who he makes out to be a sort of anti-Ronald Reagan. “Helms did not invite people into the party; to the contrary, he seemed to delight in excluding people and played on the anxieties of rural, older Southern whites,” Wiliams writes.
If you read that closely you’ll notice that “rural, older Southern whites” don’t count as “people” for Williams. They are, in fact, so subhuman that they can’t even be invited into the party. They have “anxieties” (rather than issues or concerns) that are “played on” rather than taken seriously. Basically, they’re twitchy little animals who will come running if you use the right kind of call.
I’m not going to get into an argument with Williams about whether or not those “anxieties” were or are justified. Let’s not even get started about whether the Republicans actually do anything about the issues that concern rural Southern whites besides make sympathetic noises near election day.
Instead, I just want to focus on Williams treatment of these people as subhuman. If he saw them as people, rather than animals, it would be impossible to say that Helms didn’t invite people into the party. In fact, Helms invited lots of formerly Southern Democrats into the Republican party. This was a key part of the strategy for Republican victory.
The problem with the Williams theory of the inhumanity of Southern whites is that it isn’t shared by the Constitution. Shockingly, the Constitution gives exactly the same amount of votes to each Southern, rural white as it does to each of the classes of people Williams prefers. Having a view of electoral politics that is very different from that of the Constitution is a recipe for failure.
This is mind-bogglingly retarded. I’m impressed how this piece has no external or internal logic.
