The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, n*****.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
This is the foundation of the current Republican party. There is nothing redeemable.
All the “I like Republicans’ fiscal conservatism” people in this thread need to read this. “Fiscal conservatism” and “small government” are and always have been dogwhistles for racism and other forms of bigotry. “Government waste” does not refer to inefficiency in government spending, it’s code for programs that help the poor and minorities.
The core of Conservative ideology is a belief in the existence of natural hierarchy, where all people owe privilege to the wise and righteous beings above them and are obligated to punish those below for their inferiority. The Conservatives themselves, having designed this hierarchy, are oh-so-conveniently at the very top of it. Everything that Republicans do makes sense when viewed from this perspective.
