Paul Krugman Explains It All

At the end of his contribution to the great Chait debate, Krugman writes:

I’m surprised that Jon doesn’t talk at all about the key political role of race in the political shift in this country. Reagan didn’t start as a supply-sider: he started as the enemy of welfare queens in their welfare Cadillacs. And what I’ve learned from Larry Bartels, Tom Schaller, and other political scientists is that race is really central to the whole thing. Here’s a preview quote from my own book:

“The overwhelming importance of the Southern switch suggests an almost embarrassingly simple story about the political success of movement conservatism. It goes like this: thanks to their organization, the interlocking institutions that constitute the reality of the vast right-wing conspiracy, movement conservatives were able to take over the Republican Party, and move its domestic policies sharply to the right. In most of the country, this rightward shift alienated voters, who gradually moved toward the Democrats. But Republicans were nonetheless able to win presidential elections, and eventually gain control of Congress, because they were able to exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South. End of story.”

Really? That's it - that's the whole story? The Cold War, the crime wave, the sexual revolution and Roe v. Wade, the tax revolts, and about sixty other smaller things that I can think of were all trumped by the race issue? What an utterly ridiculous interesting idea.

You can find some of my earlier thoughts on this question here and here; I also think this Yglesias post (written in response to a previous Krugman foray on this topic) makes a great deal of sense. More generally, I would suggest that anyone who tells you that there's "an almost embarrassingly simple story" that explains thirty years of American politics (and happens to prove that their political opponents are evil bigots, and bigot-enablers) probably needs to do a little bit more reading on the subject.

Comments

It would be incredibly naive to believe that the Republican Party hasn't consciously sought out the bigot vote on the basis of bigotry over the past 40 years. It has done so blatantly. Of course in 2004 they shifted the focus to anti-gay bigotry, and they did their usual bang-up job with it.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 2:21 PM

And for 2008 they're planning on bashing them thar Mescuns!

Who Would Jesus Discriminate Against?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 2:23 PM

Dr. Krugman demonstrates how partisanship can overcome intelligence every time. Ronald Reagan won the presidency in the South? I think he won it everywhere. It's remarkable that people like Chait and Krugman simply can't believe that anyone could have an honest reason for disagreeing with them. They're rather like George Bush and Dick Cheney that way.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | September 11, 2007 2:23 PM

In the American South? Yes. It helps that the race issue coincides neatly with some of the other bugabears of movement conservatism -- abortion, guns, "don't tread on me" tax hatred, the religious right -- but all of it is wrapped up in racism in the south. If you don't think so I doubt you've looked too sharply at the region.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 2:27 PM

Ross demonstrates again his biggest weakness, an inability to understand social phenomena that were/are absent from his personal experience. No, race doesn't explain all of recent economic history, but race is the defining issue of American history and always has been. I don't think Krugman deserves ridicule for correctly assessing the importance of race in American political history. It's nice to live in a bubble but it can be tricky to see out.

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 2:35 PM

The first comment made after the Krugman piece says: "Which is why Reagan (Ray-gun) started his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the three civil rights workers had been killed in the 1960's. The message to racists was unmistakable."

If someone has an alternative, "honest" reason for Reagan starting his campaign in a crappy no-account backwater like Philadelphia, Mississippi, I'd "honestly" like to hear it. As I recall Dumbya started his own run at another Bigot's Holy Site, Bob Jones University. The message is always clear - the GOP embraces hate-filled morons.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 2:41 PM

Ross, there's not as much difference as you might think between you and Krugman. At least 2.5 of the things you mentioned (crime wave, tax revolt [see e.g. the refusal to pay for "welfare queens" and the entanglement of racial attitudes and attitudes towards welfare spending] and sexual revolution [miscegenation, etc.]) had a significant racial component. Or are you denying that any discussion of crime in this country is deeply and uncomfortably tied to race?

Posted by Dan Miller | September 11, 2007 2:47 PM

Not only did Reagan kick off his campaign in Philadelphia, MS, but he kicked it off with a speech about "states' rights." In elite conservative enclaves in the northeast where all they really care about is tax policy and hawkish foriegn policy that means "less federal intervention on most issues." In the American South it means "it was wrong to make us desegregate."

Again, if Ross doesn't think race is the defining issue in the south and the defining reason why Nixon's southern strategy worked, he doesn't know anything about the south. It wasn't called the Southern Strategy for no reason.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 2:50 PM

It’s amazing how liberals get all tied up with this southern strategy excuse. It's as if they need to say such things to reinforce their egos. Just what did the liberals call the southern strategy when it was their strategy? Many a liberal from FDR to LBJ gladly took those votes and that was when Jim Crow was legal! It wasn't till dogs were featured on television sets across the nation tearing at the flesh of black people did JFK refocus his blind eye. Do the Krugman's of the Left brainwash themselves into believing things like RFK wasn't a supporter of McCarty or didn't authorize the MLK bugging? Or that FDR and the great liberal Hugo Black didn't violate the constitution in the largest racist campaign since the civil war? I mean, really, what kind of rationalizing mind does one have to develop to believe that Ronald Reagan beat the Left because of the grand old party's conspiracy worked it's magic upon the racist vote? Nothing else, a bunch of racist votes and idea-less Reagan took down the great Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Yea, keep thinking like that.

Posted by Hugh Maguire | September 11, 2007 3:01 PM

It disturbs me when I find people I know through different parts of the Internets running into each other. Too bad about the Braves this year, Sam.

Certainly at the time in the 1980s, with California revolting against taxes and the Sagebrush rebellion and whatever people in New Jersey and Connecticut were unhappy with, the public had myriad reasons to be upset with liberal consensus. But over time, the conservative consensus has led to its own alienation in a lot of places, driven by outsourcing in the Midwest, antipathy to moralizing conservatism in the Northeast and California, and most recently water & drilling conflicts in parts of the Mountain West. That leaves the (white) South as the only place that has yet to experience conservative alienation. Well, Mormons, but we'll handwave over that one.

It is, of course, true that in Southern states, there is an inverse correlation between the percentage of African-American residents and the GOP margin of Victory among white voters. So while it might not have been the case in 1980s, it's pretty clear that at this point conservatism is tightly coupled up with jingoism/xenophobia.

I could go back and count the number of Moral Majority/Christian coalition figures who got their start by opposing desegregation. See Falwell, Jerry.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | September 11, 2007 3:04 PM

Hugh M writes: "It’s amazing how liberals get all tied up with this southern strategy excuse. It's as if they need to say such things to reinforce their egos. Just what did the liberals call the southern strategy when it was their strategy? Many a liberal from FDR to LBJ gladly took those votes and that was when Jim Crow was legal! It wasn't till dogs were featured on television sets across the nation tearing at the flesh of black people did JFK refocus his blind eye."

You're right. The Dems did indeed benefit from the votes of the Dixiecrat racists back then. But then the Republicans took those voters away from them. That's not an "excuse," it's called a "fact." Members of the reality-based community know what those are.

Reagan beat Carter for many reasons, but don't kid yourself - he did his best to pander to the Klan vote, and it helped. Not that he needed much in that election anyway, but he did it anyway, because that's the Republican way over the past 40+ years.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 3:15 PM

what did the liberals call the southern strategy when it was their strategy?

Nothing. The southern strategy was never a liberal strategy. It was a Democratic strategy, and when the Democrats used it for their political gain they were just as morally abhorrent as the Nixon/Reagan Republicans who carved the racist bloc off.

Oh, did you have a point? I didn't think so.

Hi Nicholas. Jo-Jo Reyes is not ready.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 3:15 PM

Ross is wrong-- race has a lot to do with Republican electoral success. Krugman is also wrong-- it is not the "whole story". Ross mentions a lot of stuff that bothers the communitarian right, such as crime and the sexual revolution. There's also a lot of stuff that bothered the libertarian right, like taxes, stiff regulations of business, and welfare.

But race certainly has a big effect, and not simply in the obvious way of racists deciding to vote for the party that caters to their beliefs. There's also a lot of hidden effects of people's racial views-- people who assumed welfare programs were bad in part because they thought the payments went mostly to blacks and hispanics; people who oppose illegal immigration because they don't like so many people speaking Spanish or assume that Hispanics will have more children; people who are full-throated "lock them up and throw away the key" types and death penalty supporters who assume that those techniques will fall mostly on black criminals. These sorts of things aren't even always conscious; they are just a set of background assumptions people have.

But to tie the tax cut and supply side idiocy unambiguously to race and only race is just wrong.

Posted by Dilan Esper | September 11, 2007 3:41 PM

"Hi Nicholas. Jo-Jo Reyes is not ready."

No, not at all. I really don't get how he can go from having decent control and lots of Ks in AAA to just sucking wind in the big leagues.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | September 11, 2007 3:46 PM

Dilan Esper writes: "But to tie the tax cut and supply side idiocy unambiguously to race and only race is just wrong."

Sure would be, but of course Krugman doesn't do that. "Reagan didn’t start as a supply-sider: he started as the enemy of welfare queens in their welfare Cadillacs."

I think once you start pandering to crackpots and idiots it becomes easier to adopt more and more idiotic crackpot notions. Just look at Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani rushing to dump their "moderate cred" and shudder.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 3:49 PM

My favorite thing about Krugman's contribution is that Krugman apparently thinks that the most profitable thing he can do in a book club discussion of Chait's book is ignore Chait's book almost entirely and instead discuss his own.

Next up: Steve Jobs - "What do I think about Chait's work? Well, it reminds me of how revolutionary the IPhone is, and what a bargain it is at the price!"

Posted by J Mann | September 11, 2007 4:13 PM

He did his best to pander to the Klan? Yea, like when he signed in MLK day? I’m sure he got em all to the booths with that one. Why don't you mention the black family Reagan personally visited as a new president after someone places a burning cross on their lawn? That would have lost him some Klan votes to Mondale hey? So all you liberals have is what? A states rights piece in Mississippi? Wow, that’s rich. I guess liberals can shoehorn supply side economics into a racist policy all they want but you’ll have call Robert Mundell (Nobel Laureate in economics) a racist too. It was he who got Reagan's ear and mind on economics while he was governor. The policy was not a conspiracy to subjugate minorities, as is popular folk lure with the Left, but a grounded economic policy to encourage risk based investment and work incentives that were utterly absent in the 1970’s. But no, liberals can’t argue that, they have an easy populist and conveniently race baiting point of view. Reagan pursued three overriding policies when he was president; supply side tax cuts, social security reform and anti communism. Anything there for southerners to like? No, nada? Additionally, just what about Bush Sr. or Jr. do some of the libs here (forty years….) find racist?

Posted by Hugh Maguire | September 11, 2007 4:14 PM

Gerard Alexander penned an excellent demolition of "backlash" accounts of the rise of conservatism several years ago.

http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp

Posted by scriblerus | September 11, 2007 4:25 PM

I believe Reagan actually started in politics as a foe of communist influence in unions.

more to the point, the shift to the GOP in the South and elsewhere wasn't based on race, it was the economy and the USSR.

The Dems had split with the GOP on race by 68 or even 64, but still did fine in the South in 1976 with Carter. Yet Carter won only Ga in 1980, which was the pivotal realignment year.

The two parties' stances on civil rights didn't change appreciably in those 4 yrs. what did change was the economy got even worse (giving birth to the misery index), and it seemed the USSR and its proxies were rolling over us everywhere.

race was there - it's always there, and cuts both ways (unless one believes that the Dems do not profit from race baiting themselves). But to say it's all that matters ignores what actually happened.

Posted by chris | September 11, 2007 5:06 PM

Read the Alexander article. Wasn't terribly impressed by his arguments. Specifically he wants to argue "sure, the GOP won over the south by catering its policies to segregationists, but it was out of political expediency, not malevolent racism." I would like to know exactly why that nit is relevant to pick. They did it. Period. Also his conclusion about the "end of racism" in the south is laughably false. It's not as overt as it once was, but it's hardly disappearing.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 5:29 PM

I could go back and count the number of Moral Majority/Christian coalition figures who got their start by opposing desegregation. See Falwell, Jerry.

While you are counting, perhaps you could gin up a reference to a reputable source which would indicate that Mr. Falwell had any history of political activity prior to 1979.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:10 PM

It has done so blatantly.

Can you think of an example somewhat less opaque than the location of a speech given 27 years ago (presuming the historical accounts of that sequence of events are not urban legends)?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:12 PM

Yes. It helps that the race issue coincides neatly with some of the other bugabears of movement conservatism -- abortion, guns, "don't tread on me" tax hatred, the religious right -- but all of it is wrapped up in racism in the south. If you don't think so I doubt you've looked too sharply at the region.

Can you explain what the meaning of 'coincides neatly' in this sentence? Are you asserting a logical relation?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:14 PM

he did his best to pander to the Klan vote, and it helped.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League offered an estimate of the sum of memberships of the various Klan organizations then in existence: 8,500. Shortly thereafter, the largest of them declared bankruptcy and in the course of proceedings provided its membership figures: 1,800 members v. the 3,000 the ADL had estimated. That being the case, 5,000 may be the single best guess as to the total membership of klaverns at that time. If the ratio of sympathizers to dues-paying members stands at 30 to 1, the size of the "Klan vote" would have been around 150,000 in a country which then had an adult population of around 160,000,000. I doubt Republican strategists took much of an interest in it.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:22 PM

A lot of liberals, like Krugman, have an unstated feeling that white Southern males shouldn't be allowed to vote. They're just too evil.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 11, 2007 6:22 PM

The point Alexander is making is simply that there were long-term trends driving Southerners towards the GOP, no matter what tactical alliances Nixon might have attempted to make.

I think people who want to make the "conservatives=racist morons" equation really need to pay attention to Alexander's point that:

"In effect, these critics want to have it both ways: they acknowledge that these views could in principle be non-racist (otherwise they wouldn't be a "code" for racism) but suggest they never are in practice (and so can be reliably treated as proxies for racism). The result is that their claims are non-falsifiable because they are tautological: these views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. This amounts to saying that opposition to the policies favored by today's civil rights establishment is a valid indicator of racism. One suspects these theorists would, quite correctly, insist that people can disagree with the Israeli government without being in any way anti-Semitic. But they do not extend the same distinction to this issue. This is partisanship posturing as social science."

Sam. Again, the scholarship doesn't really back up your pounding your fist on the table like that. Try David Chapell's "Stone of Hope". Southern ministers really didn't do much of anything stand up for segregation and it was very difficult to take hard stands for segregation when people like Billy Graham didn't support it.

Posted by scriblerus | September 11, 2007 6:24 PM

But race certainly has a big effect, and not simply in the obvious way of racists deciding to vote for the party that caters to their beliefs.

What Republican plank adopted after 1966 'caters to the beliefs' of 'racists'?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:25 PM

Can you explain what the meaning of 'coincides neatly' in this sentence? Are you asserting a logical relation?

No, I am not asserting a strict logical relation. I would say that none exists in the realm of pure reason. I would then note that we are discussing the realm of politics and pure reason has very little to do with things. The assorted planks of movement conservatism's platform play really well in the south, outside of the racist undertones. Religion is huge down here and the emotional appeals to religious fundamentalism as politics is right at home regardless. A side-car passenger of that religious zealotry is the "conservative" side of the abortion wars. Guns and "state's rights" about taxation have been rallying calls since the Civil War (if, even then, they were code for "don't take my slaves.") So what I'm asserting on the face is that those issues fit well in the south, even if the racist undertones were simply coincidental.

Of course, the racist undertones in the south are hardly coincidental. They are the roux that sets the pot for every political gumbo the region can cook up. The fact that we've gotten them to the point of _undertones_ is a victory for liberalism, in fact. And any good behavioral psychologist will tell you that human decision making is hardly a hard-line logical game. We pick which side of an issue to "believe" based on what our "side" is already backing, not vice versa, and we pick sides based on fundamental questions. In the south, the fundamental question is about race. In the 60's the Democrats turned on the south on that question, and the south turned on the Democrats because of it.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 6:26 PM

There's also a lot of hidden effects of people's racial views-- people who assumed welfare programs were bad in part because they thought the payments went mostly to blacks and hispanics; people who oppose illegal immigration because they don't like so many people speaking Spanish or assume that Hispanics will have more children; people who are full-throated "lock them up and throw away the key" types and death penalty supporters who assume that those techniques will fall mostly on black criminals. These sorts of things aren't even always conscious; they are just a set of background assumptions people have.

Can you quantify the effect of this on voting behavior?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 6:29 PM

Race had a lot to do with it, but the Reagan Democrats were heavily Northern and Catholic ethnics who had been burned by liberal Democrats on race.

Consider my in-laws. My father-in-law was a part-time public school teacher, working classical musician, and union leader of a long, bitter strike against the Chicago Lyric Opera company. My mother-in-law was a public school special ed teacher. Both had advanced degrees. You couldn't find two more sterotypically liberal Democrats in 1966.

But in 1967, their West Side of Chicago neighborhood started to flip black. They joined a liberal Catholic organization where all the white homeowners promised to stay in order to keep the West Side integrated. But in 1968, their small children were mugged three times on the street and looters burned down most of the neighborhood shops to commemorate the life and death of Martin Luther King. They were just about the last to sell out and move to the suburbs, and lost half their life savings due to their idealism. They never voted Democrat again.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 11, 2007 6:31 PM

They never voted Democrat again.

So racism played a part in areas outside of the south too? Okay.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 6:36 PM

Can you quantify the effect of this on voting behavior?

Not sure how you want this quantified (so I'll leave that to the comment's original poster) but if someone sits around and says "I'm for building more prisons and harsher sentencing laws" and her base assumption is that those laws will mostly effect black people (because she assumes black people are more prone to crime, etc.) then her voting decision was racist and the "tough on crime" line was a code to stand in for that racism.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 6:39 PM

Sam Hutcheson writes:

"'[My in-laws] never voted Democrat again.'

"So racism played a part in areas outside of the south too? Okay."

A big part of why my in-laws never voted Democrat again can be seen in Mr. Hutcheson's response. How much more should they personally have given to not be called "racist" by the likes of Mr. Hutcheson? On the street where they lived, their 7-year-old was mugged once and their 9-year-old was mugged twice. They couldn't shop in their neighborhood anymore because all the stores were looted and burned down during the Martin Luther King riot. When they finally did give up and move to the suburbs, they found they had sacrificed half their net worth to try to keep their neighborhood integrated.

And the thanks they get from liberal Democrats like Mr. Hutcheson is to be called "racist."

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 11, 2007 6:55 PM

And the thanks they get...is to be called "racist."

Was there decision to move based on the erroneous belief that the crime in their neighborhood was driven by race? If so, they are racists by definition. If not, you misrepresented them in your original post.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 7:14 PM

Hugh Maguire replies: "He did his best to pander to the Klan? Yea, like when he signed in MLK day? I’m sure he got em all to the booths with that one. Why don't you mention the black family Reagan personally visited as a new president after someone places a burning cross on their lawn?"

I'm glad that some of his bestest friends were black, chuckles, but I notice you don't even attempt to explain what made Philadelphia, Mississippi a good choice for his campaign kickoff EXCEPT as a signal to pigs. But of course you don't have an explanation. If Saint Reagan had opened his campaign from the spot where James Earl Ray shot King you'd say it was because he enjoyed the view.

Reagan may not have been a racist, but he certainly knew how to get their votes. Did he get yours? And if so, how long have you been a Welfare Queen?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 7:28 PM

Uh, Sam, did you miss the muggings and riots? I realize that you may be wearing blinders that make some anecdotes incomprehensible to you, but they seem relevant to the decision to move.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 7:30 PM

Art Deco quibbles: "In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League offered an estimate of the sum of memberships of the various Klan organizations then in existence: 8,500. Shortly thereafter, the largest of them declared bankruptcy and in the course of proceedings provided its membership figures: 1,800 members v. the 3,000 the ADL had estimated. That being the case, 5,000 may be the single best guess as to the total membership of klaverns at that time. If the ratio of sympathizers to dues-paying members stands at 30 to 1, the size of the "Klan vote" would have been around 150,000 in a country which then had an adult population of around 160,000,000. I doubt Republican strategists took much of an interest in it."

I think you should look into the fact that David Duke got the majority of the white vote in Louisiana when he ran for governor. When I said "Klan vote" I wasn't speaking about actual sheetheads, chuckles.

You might also try to explain why recently-departed RNC head Ken Mehlman apologized for his party's "Southern Strategy" - why didn't he just deny that there was ever a racist Republican? You would have applauded that.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 7:35 PM

I think it's pretty clear Reagan (or someone in the campaign) was thinking of a useful code there. There may be some other explanation for the bizarre choice, but it's buried by history, if so.

But this doesn't make Krugman's notion that this was the only real factor in anything irrelevant, and it doesn't mean that "crime" as an issue was always purely and simply code for anti-black animosity. History appears to show, unless a conspiracy of neoconservatives has cooked the books, that there was once actual crime, and various policies as to how to deal with it.

Race is still a factor in the south, but as someone who lived there for 20-years (including the 80s to early 90s) it's not generally the factor in national politics it is cracked up to be by folks like Krugman, who, by the way, I can understand his profound loathing for Bush, but wouldn't we all be better off if he'd stuck to something he's quite good at, like economics?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 7:39 PM

Steve Sailer writes: "A lot of liberals, like Krugman, have an unstated feeling that white Southern males shouldn't be allowed to vote. They're just too evil."

I've never met a single movement conservative who was bothered by Republican efforts to suppress minority votes. These are the same idiots who swore up and down that Macaca Allen was not a racist and was the victim of "liberals."

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 7:39 PM

TMoC writes: "Krugman's notion that this was the only real factor"

I don't believe that's his position. He sees it as the "key" or "central" factor. I think he's on solid ground there, and there's also little doubt that this was a deliberate choice made by Republicans.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 8:01 PM

by Republican efforts to suppress minority votes.

What are you talking about?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 8:14 PM

Certainly there are racist whites in the South, and also the North. But exactly what percentage of Americans are afflicted with this moral flaw? And what percentage of Americans are afflicted with equivalent moral failings? And what percentage of them vote Republican?

If you believe (without at least putting in a tremendous effort to quantify and measure this and make certain that your beliefs are justified) that Southern Whites are morally worse people than any other group of Americans, I think you are just a bigot.

And if Southern Whites are no worse than the rest of us, what exactly is Krugman's point? The theory seems to be that Republicans are guilty of sending coded signals to Southern Whites, who are (predominantly or at least to some extent) racists. But is it so simple? What if upper-middle class white Democrats promulgate policies (crime, welfare, affirmative action, say) that favor blacks and upper-middle class whites, and disfavor middle and lower class whites? When (if) Republicans signal opposition to those policies, is it necessarily racism they are appealing to?

It seems awfully convenient (as I think RD is suggesting above in the parenthetical comment of his last sentence) for X to suggest that the other party is deserving of opprobrium because among the 50% plus of the electorate that votes for them (or used to, pre GWB) are a particular morally-deficient demographic to which X does not belong. If this is really to be our guide to understanding the political course the nation has taken, we at least need more than a few anecdotes.

Posted by anon/portly | September 11, 2007 8:15 PM

I think you should look into the fact that David Duke got the majority of the white vote in Louisiana when he ran for governor.

The David Duke business was a surprise, and an embarrassment. There are several aspect of it you do not note.

1. Duke actually posed as a common-and-garden Republican in 1989, 1990, and 1991. He did not run as a Klan candidate.

2. He was running against Edwin Edwards, a man who was just this side of convicted felon. (One of Edwin Edwards' slogans was "Vote for the Crook. Its Important").

3. It somewhat complicates your thesis that prominent out-of-state Republicans (e.g. Gerald Ford) were making television commercials for his opponents in those races.

4. He was a flash in the pan.

5. Analogues to the David Duke fad have been rather few and far between in the Southern United States in the last 35 years.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 8:26 PM

No, I am not asserting a strict logical relation. I would say that none exists in the realm of pure reason..... roux... gumbo

I have read over this post several times and can make no sense of what you are attempting to say.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 8:36 PM

Was there decision to move based on the erroneous belief that the crime in their neighborhood was driven by race? If so, they are racists by definition. If not, you misrepresented them in your original post.

Sam, how is it you know their belief was erroneous?

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 8:38 PM

Re: but the Reagan Democrats were heavily Northern and Catholic ethnics who had been burned by liberal Democrats on race.

Many of the Northern Reagan Democrats remained Democrats, continued to vote Democratic for other offices, and even went back to voting for Democratic presidents after Reagan was gone. The voting history of Macomb County Michigan (once touted as Ground Zero of the Reagan Democrat phenomenon) is informative in this regard.

Posted by JonF | September 11, 2007 8:43 PM

Art Deco replies: "The David Duke business was a surprise, and an embarrassment. There are several aspect of it you do not note.

1. Duke actually posed as a common-and-garden Republican in 1989, 1990, and 1991. He did not run as a Klan candidate."

So I suppose that if Eric Rudolph gets out of prison and runs for governor as a "common-and-garden" Republican you guys will overlook the fact that he's a Christian terrorist?

I'm not sure what you're saying here - but if it's something about the incredible ability of Republicans to delude themselves, I might agree.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 8:43 PM

Art Deco quotes and asks: "by Republican efforts to suppress minority votes.

What are you talking about?"

You have got to be kidding me. Did you just arrive here from Ork?

Want a recent example so you can claim it doesn't matter, like you did with the David Duke case? Take a look at what wackaloon GOP sex kitten Katherine Harris did in Florida in 2000. "In addition, by Harris' decree, ChoicePoint — a private firm — was hired prior to the election to identify and remove thousands of names from the state voters list on the condition that these people were convicted felons. Many of these would-be voters were turned away at the polls or even prior to reaching the polling places. It would later be discovered that approximately 97% of the people removed from the list — and thus denied the right to vote in the election — were not felons at all. The majority of these voters were African-American, and as African-Americans predominantly vote Democratic, the situation suggested foul play."

Go ahead. Tell me that wasn't a deliberate move and that you vacation every year in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 8:48 PM

(without at least putting in a tremendous effort to quantify and measure this and make certain that your beliefs are justified)

Why do I have to do all that effort myself? After all, real social scientists have done real studies showing that racism is quite a bit more prevelant in the South, and specifically among Southern White Males. Personally, I find the whole argument hilarious. After 200 years of slavery in the South, followed by a bloody war to prolong slavery started by the South, followed by 100 years of Jim Crow in the South, some people just can't imagine there's a shread of evidence the South is more racist than anywhere else.

Posted by Bo | September 11, 2007 8:49 PM

If anyone is interested in Moe's penultimate contention, it is derived from this posting at a blogsite

http://codesmithy.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/the-assault-on-reason-background-and-a-short-review/

which in turn cites a Wikipedia article.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 9:10 PM

Not sure how you want this quantified (so I'll leave that to the comment's original poster).

Sam, you spoke with considerable confidence about the esoteric motivations of people whom you do not know and with regard to whom you have given little evidence that you have the tools to gain insight above and beyond what an ordinary person would have. What I asked you to do is provide an estimate about how large an effect such a posited phenomenon would have. (Consider for a moment that the mean percentage received by Republican Presidential candidates in the elections held in the years running from 1932 through 1964 was about 46%, and that it has been about 49% since).

.. but if someone sits around and says "I'm for building more prisons and harsher sentencing laws" and her base assumption is that those laws will mostly effect black people (because she assumes black people are more prone to crime, etc.) then her voting decision was racist and the "tough on crime" line was a code to stand in for that racism.

I am not sure how to break this to you, but the observable propensity to commit crimes does vary spatially, temporally, and socially - between town and country, between neighborhoods, between one decade and the next, between classes in society, between one country and another, and between different ethnic groups within the same country. I think you will likely discover that most urban residents have a rough-and-ready sense of this - whether they vote for prison bond issues or not.

Posted by Art Deco | September 11, 2007 9:25 PM

By the way, Michael Dukakis spoke in Philadelphia, Missisippi, in 1988. His speech did not endorse "states' rights," not surprisingly, but like Reagan, he made no mention of the three civil rights workers famously murdered there. Also, Reagan did not "open his campaign there," if by that you mean his primary campaign, which you seem to, but spoke there in September 1980 as his first major appearance after he was nominated. And the reason both Reagan and Dukakis appeared in Philadelphia has nothing to do with the murdered civil rights workers. Rather, the Neshoba County fair, which is the event at which they appeared, has long been an important campiagn stop for Mississippi and national politicians. The fact that Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were murdered in the same town is coincidental.

Here are two sources on the subject, one centrist/non-partisan and one ultra-leftist:

http://cookpolitical.com/column/2003/080903.php

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07022005.html

Posted by James Kabala | September 11, 2007 10:11 PM

Sam Hutcheson responds to how my then-liberal in-laws were just about the last whites to move from their West Side of Chicago neighborhood in the late 1960s after their small children were mugged three times on the street, and they ended up losing half their life savings:

"Was there decision to move based on the erroneous belief that the crime in their neighborhood was driven by race? If so, they are racists by definition."

No, it was based on a correct belief.

Indeed, their decision to move to the suburbs was based on the belated realization that all their former neighbors whom _they_ had called "racist" for selling out at a decent price as soon as blacks started to move in had turned out to be right about what would happen to the neighborhood's crime rates and home values.

There had been virtually zero crime in the all-white working class Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago in 1966 -- they let their first and third grade daughters walk a mile to school and back through the heavily urbanized area each day. Then blacks started to move in, and old neighbors said, "There goes the neighborhood" and sold out and moved to the suburbs. My liberal Democratic in-laws swore they would never flee integration and joined a liberal group of homeowners who all promised each other they wouldn't sell. But the crime rate quickly reached outrageous levels and even the middle class blacks who had bought in in 1967 started selling out because the neighborhood had fallen apart so badly due to crime and the vast MLK riot of 1968. Everybody in their liberal group sold out, with my in-laws being just about the last to throw in the towel. By then, their house was worth so little that half their net worth had been wiped out in two years.

Thirty years later, the once-thriving Austin district still looked like a dump with vacant lots everywhere.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 11, 2007 10:46 PM

Uh, Sam, did you miss the muggings and riots?

Yeah, I got those. Sorry to hear about them. They weren't based on race. Steve's bugabear is that race predicts crime and he's using his parents bad experiences in one neighborhood in Chicago to justify his assumptions. If they moved because the neighborhood was bad it's not racist. If they moved because the neighborhood was black, it's racist. If they thought the neighborhood was bad _because_ it was black they are racist, regardless of whether or not little Stevie was mugged as a child.

Race has nothing to do with it. If the assumption is that it does, the assumption is racist, by definition.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 11, 2007 11:34 PM

Art Deco "responds": "If anyone is interested in Moe's penultimate contention, it is derived from this posting at a blogsite

http://codesmithy.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/the-assault-on-reason-background-and-a-short-review/

which in turn cites a Wikipedia article. "

If anyone is interested in figuring out why Art Deco couldn't respond to the substance of the quote in question, it's because Republicans will avoid doing that at every opportunity. Old Artie should be filling Tony Snow's position any day now.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 11:49 PM

Steve Sailer writes: "There had been virtually zero crime in the all-white working class Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago in 1966 -- they let their first and third grade daughters walk a mile to school and back through the heavily urbanized area each day. Then blacks started to move in, and old neighbors said, "There goes the neighborhood" and sold out and moved to the suburbs. My liberal Democratic in-laws swore they would never flee integration and joined a liberal group of homeowners who all promised each other they wouldn't sell. But the crime rate quickly reached outrageous levels and even the middle class blacks who had bought in in 1967 started selling out because the neighborhood had fallen apart so badly due to crime and the vast MLK riot of 1968. Everybody in their liberal group sold out, with my in-laws being just about the last to throw in the towel. By then, their house was worth so little that half their net worth had been wiped out in two years.

Thirty years later, the once-thriving Austin district still looked like a dump with vacant lots everywhere. "

A rational person could look at the story Steve tells and conclude that it was the "there goes the neighborhood" racism of the "old neighbors" that ruined the Austin district, but I suppose blaming "liberals" works better for would-be Limbaughs like Steve.

Somehow I think of the Steves of the early 1900s complaining about how those "dirty Eye-talians" were ruining the neighborhood. The Steves will always be with us.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 12:15 AM

"Why do I have to do all that effort myself? After all, real social scientists have done real studies showing that racism is quite a bit more prevelant in the South, and specifically among Southern White Males."

But even if racism is more prevalent among Southern whites, that doesn't mean that Southern
white people are more deserving of moral censure than any other group. E.g. it's surely less of an achievement to have a racially enlightened attitude growing up where I did (the West) than growing up in the South.

Therefore I don't think it's necessarily wrong for Republicans to try to appeal to Southern whites, even if they are more racist. They're people, and are no less deserving of expressing their desires and beliefs in the voting booth than anyone else. The extent to which Republicans have captured their votes by appealing to their worse natures (e.g. racist attitudes), as opposed to appealing to their better natures, is unknown to me. Similarly the extent to which Republicans and Democrats in all areas of the county have found success by appealing to voters' worse natures is unknown to me. But I'm guessing I could be filled in by many of the knowledgeable commenters on this thread.

Posted by anon/portly | September 12, 2007 1:41 AM

Steve's bugabear is that race predicts crime

For whatever reason you might want to put out there, race does predict criminality, independant of variables like poverty. Its not racist to notice something that happens to be true.

http://www.gnxp.com/oldblog/nopub/85379116

Posted by Thursday | September 12, 2007 1:56 AM

MoeLarryandJesus:

Of course in 2004 they shifted the focus to anti-gay bigotry, and they did their usual bang-up job with it.

As opposed to anti-Christian bigotry, like that revealed by your screen name?

A few things:

"High-crime neighborhoods" is not a code for "black neighborhoods." Rather, it happends to be an accurate description of most of said neighborhoods. Idiots would like us to believe that whites shunned integrated neighborhoods because of racism, not because of the crime, as if they wouldn't have minded were whites committing the crime.

Same with welfare. Yes, people resent black people being on welfare more than white people. But you know what? That's largely because once the welfare really started flowing with the Great Society, 60-70% of black babies started being born out of wedlock. Crime rates also skyrocketed, and blacks committed a disproportionate amount of crime. If poeple treated blacks on welfare like they were parasites on society, it is because to a large extent that it how a lot of them behaved. But the liberals would like us to think that to be "non-racist" we have to elide over these unpleasant facts and pretend that black mothers on welfare enriched our society.

A rational person could look at the story Steve tells and conclude that it was the "there goes the neighborhood" racism of the "old neighbors" that ruined the Austin district, but I suppose blaming "liberals" works better for would-be Limbaughs like Steve.

How did that attitude ruin the district? Its main consequence was white flight. This would not have ruined the district unless losing white people and gaining black people were a negative thing for the district.

What Sam Hutcheson and MoeLarryandJesus seem to misunderstand is that the South didn't go Republican because the Republicans pandered to their racism. They went Republican because the Democrats essentially declared themselves to be anti-white, particularly, anti-Southern white. It was more that the Democrats actively hated Southern whites than that the Republicans hated blacks that turned the South.

Sam Hutcheson proved that with his utter indifference to the problems of Steve's in-laws.

He is probably really upset that they didn't stay until one of their kids got raped or something.

If they moved because the neighborhood was bad it's not racist. If they moved because the neighborhood was black, it's racist. If they thought the neighborhood was bad _because_ it was black they are racist, regardless of whether or not little Stevie was mugged as a child.

They moved because the neighborhood was bad, not because it was black. It just so happened that the neighborhood going bad coincided with it going black.

Race has nothing to do with it. If the assumption is that it does, the assumption is racist, by definition.

Good news, Bill! We've found something!

Posted by Glaivester | September 12, 2007 8:36 AM

But I'm guessing I could be filled in by many of the knowledgeable commenters on this thread.

I've got a better idea. How about you, to borrow a phrase, "put in a tremendous effort to quantify and measure this and make certain that your beliefs are justified"? Then, report back to us with what you've learned.

Posted by Bo | September 12, 2007 9:06 AM

Glaivester puts on his white sheet and writes: "What Sam Hutcheson and MoeLarryandJesus seem to misunderstand is that the South didn't go Republican because the Republicans pandered to their racism. They went Republican because the Democrats essentially declared themselves to be anti-white, particularly, anti-Southern white. It was more that the Democrats actively hated Southern whites than that the Republicans hated blacks that turned the South."

So Democrats hate Southern whites?

This will come as interesting news to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 11:09 AM

Given the information we have, I think you'd have to be a fact-challenged loon to have any guess that "there goes the neighborhood" ruined the neighborhood. Maybe it's true, but we have no reason to assume it is. Perhaps one reason many not-particularly-racist types turned against liberals was that they got sick of hearing that crime was their fault -- you know, the fault of the people not mugging anyone or burning anything down? I have a feeling Moe's either never been mugged, or if he was he blamed Giuliani, or Jesus, or Ronald Reagan, or Jerry Falwell, but not, you know, the guy (or gal!) who mugged him.

Democrats got a good part of this vote back in many places, eventually, when they became only slightly less happy to build jails and execute people than Republicans. That they still don't have it back in the South seems likely, in the present political climate, to have more to do with religion than with race or crime.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 12, 2007 11:52 AM

Its standard fair for this particular argument to break down to this level.

One side attempts to negotiate the intricacies of history, race, crime, demographics, housing prices, politics, family breakdown, and so on: while the other side sits back burnishing its anti-racist ego’s – sitting comfortably on the side of the angels.

Meanwhile we have created a permanent underclass isolated largely in our inner city cores, cut off from adequate education, family stability, and promising job prospects.

We have created not just a class system in America but a caste system. Only level headed policies and earnest thinking will allow us to slowly ameliorate what this latest sage in Americas longest and most vexing moral dilemma.

Posted by Fitz | September 12, 2007 12:06 PM

Fitz writes: "We have created not just a class system in America but a caste system. Only level headed policies and earnest thinking will allow us to slowly ameliorate what this latest sage in Americas longest and most vexing moral dilemma."

If you ever take the time to read the Constitution you'll find a true caste system written right into the document. And while an attempt was made post-Civil War to change that, it wasn't much of one. Pretending race isn't a problem doesn't work.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 12:23 PM

TMoC writes: "Given the information we have, I think you'd have to be a fact-challenged loon to have any guess that "there goes the neighborhood" ruined the neighborhood. Maybe it's true, but we have no reason to assume it is."

Sure we do. If you're familiar with mortgage banking history you might be familiar with the term "redlining." Once "there goes the neighborhood" set in it really set in. You can sit back and pretend that the crime came first and then "white flight" began, but that's not how it worked. White flight wasn't just over crime, it was over school integration.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 12:31 PM

For whatever reason you might want to put out there, race does predict criminality, independant of variables like poverty. Its not racist to notice something that happens to be true.

It is when you have no evidence to suggest that it's true. What you linked to suggests, weakly at best, that race predicts arrest, prosecution and conviction while trying to control for income. I don't think it controls for income very well, and even if it does that doesn't speak to any racial aspect for committing crimes, merely for being arrested, prosecuted and convicted.

In as much, it's racist.

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | September 12, 2007 12:42 PM

"How about you, to borrow a phrase, 'put in a tremendous effort to quantify and measure this and make certain that your beliefs are justified'? Then, report back to us with what you've learned."

Huh? You didn't pay attention to what PK says above, in quoting from his book. "But Republicans were nonetheless able to win presidential elections, and eventually gain control of Congress, because they were able to exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South."

My logical first step is to buy PK's book (or, more likely, check it out from the library or find a comfy chair at B&N) and see exactly what sort of story the words "exploit the race issue" summarize. Does Krugman show or prove that the Republicans wooed the Southern whites by appealing to their worse natures (to an extent unusual in politics generally), or does he not show it?

I'm guessing that he's going to be less than incredibly convincing on this point. (Like maybe RD, I am suspicious of political theories which focus on the moral failings of groups to which the theorist does not belong - in fact I find them unseemly). But I could be surprised - Krugman is a brilliant guy, and maybe he makes a convincing case.

Posted by anon/portly | September 12, 2007 1:47 PM

Speaking of Krugman, one of the reasons that I don't have higher expectations about the straightness of the stories he tells is because he writes things like this:

"It’s also – as I can report from my own experience – a result of asymmetrical intimidation. Quite simply, if you point out character flaws in a conservative, there will be an all-out effort, involving major media as well as blogs and talk radio, to discredit and ruin you, personally."

"Major media" put forward an "all-out effort" to "ruin" Paul Krugman? What exactly is he talking about? I know he's taken a lot of flak, but I thought most of it was from irrelevant types like Luskin.

I'd like to see Krugman do a comparison between the flak he's taken from the right and the flak Larry Summers has taken from the left. Notice the difference in terms of which flak was actually effective in terms of driving which person out of his position.

Posted by anon/portly | September 12, 2007 2:11 PM

As Ross stated, the absolutism of Krugmans claim does more to bolster the felt superiority of the Left than it dopes to explain Republican electoral success.

"Really? That's it - that's the whole story? The Cold War, the crime wave, the sexual revolution and Roe v. Wade, the tax revolts, and about sixty other smaller things that I can think of were all trumped by the race issue? What an utterly ridiculous interesting idea."

The famous Regan Democrat was a creation of the Midwest. Welfare reform was partially championed and signed into law by Bill Clinton. Tough on crime initiatives are now touted by both parties.

And on the list goes…

Race & racism is an obvious persistent facet of American life. Fine tuning the sensibilities of upper income educated whites will hardly solve this vexing problem. For any proponent on either side of the political spectrum to maintain some moral trump card is disingenuous and anti-intellectual.

Krugmans analysis is what Ross points out – a “just so story” that fails when subjected to any reasonable scrutiny.

Posted by Fitz | September 12, 2007 2:32 PM

Fitz writes: "Race & racism is an obvious persistent facet of American life. Fine tuning the sensibilities of upper income educated whites will hardly solve this vexing problem. For any proponent on either side of the political spectrum to maintain some moral trump card is disingenuous and anti-intellectual.

Krugmans analysis is what Ross points out – a “just so story” that fails when subjected to any reasonable scrutiny. "

I guess the fact that black Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and have during the entire period in which the Southern Strategy has held sway isn't worth considering.

Those silly Negroes have been duped! They should be voting for Republicans, who (deep down, really deep down) are swell fellows.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 2:45 PM

Well, "they've been duped" sounds about as plausible as what I assume is Moe's answer -- that the policies preferred by Democrats have done really really well by black voters, who vote purely out of a rational choice (vs. those evil Southern whites who vote almost purely based on racist code, unless they are the few virtuous souls like Moe and company).

I don't think anyone here is trying to pretend race and racism aren't part of the story of America. But some folks are trying to tell a very simple story of one set of villains (all of one political sort) and one set of heroes (all of another), and explain 80-90% of American politics by that factor.

Which, to be blunt, is nonsense.

Yes, I know about redlining. But the existence of the phenomenon does not serve as a magical tool to explain all neighborhood decline, everywhere.

Is it purely white racism or poverty that drives the much, much higher illegitimacy rate among black Americans? Maybe, but Moynihan and a few others folks have expressed some doubts, last I checked. That factor probably (partly) drives a lot of other things, including crime.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 12, 2007 2:55 PM

TMoC writes: "I don't think anyone here is trying to pretend race and racism aren't part of the story of America. But some folks are trying to tell a very simple story of one set of villains (all of one political sort) and one set of heroes (all of another), and explain 80-90% of American politics by that factor.

Which, to be blunt, is nonsense."

Of course it is. So is your claim of what "some folks" are doing. It's Dumbya Bush's favorite rhetorical device, too, so you're in the lowest possible company in terms of honesty. Congrats.

Absolutely no one here has presented such an all villains/all heroes argument. Set your straw man on fire and sit on it.

"Yes, I know about redlining. But the existence of the phenomenon does not serve as a magical tool to explain all neighborhood decline, everywhere."

Again, no one made that claim. I was answering your absurdly simple claim that we have "no reason" to think that "there goes the neighborhood" thinking is a part of the problem. In fact we do.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 12, 2007 3:04 PM

Mr Krugman needs to sit down and read Orlando Patterson, William Julius Wilson's, & Kay S. Hymowitz; before he launches such (obvious) self aggrandizing broadsides at his opposition party.

Posted by