Linwood Holton was governor of Virginia from 1970-1974, the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. He has an eloquent OpEd in the New York Times, “An End to the Southern Strategy?” that could be called “The Road Not Taken.” Holton, you see, was not in the conservative mold of most post-Goldwater Southern Republicans, and he forcefully objected to the “Southern Strategy” of welcoming racist Southern Democrats into the Republican Party.
I was part of a group of moderates from around the country who were urging the party to welcome black voters by supporting equal voting rights and equal employment measures. We felt that a coalition of moderates, blacks and pro-business voters would be unstoppable — even in the Democrats’ old stronghold, the South, where blacks made up as much as 20 percent of the electorate in some states.
Unfortunately a more cynical vision prevailed among the party’s national leaders. With Nixon strategists leading the charge, these few (but prominent) Republicans opted for the so-called Southern strategy to lure white racists into a coalition with the party’s traditional business constituency.
Holton argues that the fall of Lott offers “a chance for the Republican Party to decide whether it really wants to end American racial inequality or if it wants to continue its strategy of exploiting the issue for partisan gain.”
Unfortunately, in my view, Holton’s career (and his post-career punditry) has been characterized by a massive timing problem. In the 1960s and 1970s he was ahead of his time. It is sad, even tragic, that the Republican Party did not follow his advice, and his example, about the theory and practice of equality. Now, however, he is behind the times, ignoring the fact that the Republican Party, nationally and in the South, is committed to the very principle of colorblind equal treatment that he wisely advocated. It is the Democrats who have abandoned that principle, and the Democrats now follow the “strategy of exploiting the issue [race] for partisan gain” at least as much, and I think far more, than the Republicans.
I do, however, agree with Holton’s conclusion.
Republicans must now decide where we should take our party. We can go with President Bush, who reminded us that “every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals.” Or we can hang on to the divisive politics of racism and sink gradually, but inevitably, into oblivion.
What is racially divisive today is a racial spoils system built on racial preferences, double (or triple) standards, and replacement of a belief in individual rights with a new notion of fairness that regards proportional representation as a higher value than the principle of non-discrimination.
I too think we should go with President Bush, or at least I will if he affirms the principle of non-discriminatory racial equality. If, on the other hand, he follows the advice of those who say that the only way to prove the Republican Party is free of the taint of tolerating and even encouraging racial discrimination in the past is to tolerate or encourage racial discrimination in the present (whether to compensate or diversify) … well, we’ll cross that bridge (or not) if we have to.
UPDATE – Reinforcement for the above view comes in a Ron Brownstein article that InstaPundit says is Tennessee blogger Bill Hobbs-approved.
“The big news is that the Jesse Helmses are retiring,” said Rice University political scientist Earl Black, co-author of The Rise of Southern Republicans. “If you look at the whole generation of Southern Republican senators they too would like to move the Republican Party as far away from any hint of racial politics as they can.”
