In a letter to the New York Times today, Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, the all-purpose, all-occasion, all-Democratic academic (Democrademic), comments on the Linwood Holton OpEd discussed here.
Holton, recall, had concluded his OpEd by noting:
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.
Now comes Wilentz:
Which George W. Bush? The one who, in a political crisis, denounces segregation? Or the one who, during the 2000 election, benefited from neo-Confederate supporters whom he has not renounced since?
The White House’s damage control during the Trent Lott controversy — orchestrating his downfall while insisting that he did not need to step down — is the latest illustration of its two-faced profile regarding America’s enduring racial divide.
Now that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond have been retired by History, perhaps Wilentz could submit a list of the “neo-Confederates” he thinks the president should renounce. It seems to me that the Republicans have been somewhat better at renouncing their unsavory fellow travelers (David Duke comes to mind) than the Democrats, who welcome Al Sharpton and a small host of lesser pols making anti-semitic comments with open arms. Sharpe James, recently re-nominated and re-elected mayor of Newark with blue-ribbon Democratic support against his primary challenger, Cory Booker, said Hooker was working with the Jews to take over Newark, as one example. Possibly Newark is not visible or audible from Princeton.
As for the no-fingerprints White House undermining of Trent Lott, the always race-conscious Wilentz somehow sees kowtowing to racists when everyone else saw concern over not ruffling Senatorial feathers. Since conservatives were at the head of the pack going after Lott, and since Wilentz surely thinks conservatives are more racist than moderates, one wonders what racists Wilentz thinks Bush was afraid of offending.
No matter. Increasingly, race is the Democrats’ hammer, as in the old saw that says when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.
UPDATE
One of the eminent American historian Richard Hofstadter’s best known works is The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Although Hofstadter was clearly a great historian, I was never much impressed with the analysis of his paranoid style argument. Reading Sean Wilentz, however, has about changed my mind. He has an essay in The American Prospect that, searching for and finding the Republican Party riddled with “neo-Confederates,” reminds me of nothing so much as the old McCarthy, pre-McCarthy, and post-McCarthy witch hunts. The main difference is that where the McCarthyites saw communists and communist sympathizers everywhere, but especially among the Democrats, Wilentz sees a neo-Confederate under every Republican bed, er, make that sheet, since in his telling modern Republicans are for the most part simply better-dressed uptown klansmen.
