Let me say up front here that I’m not sold on this reporting by Eve Conant of The Daily Beast. Maybe David Duke is going to run for the Republican nomination but, by her own reporting in this article, it seems like the White Nationalist movement is more interested in an insurrectionary strategy. Anyway, here’s her lede:
Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke.
A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Republican executive-committee chairman in his district until 2000, Duke has a significant following online. His videos go viral. This month, he’s launching a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid. He hasn’t considered running for serious office since the early ’90s, when he won nearly 40 percent of the vote in his bid for Louisiana governor. But like many “white civil rights advocates,” as he describes himself to The Daily Beast, 2012 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year.
Now, I can believe that Duke is considering an independent bid. But going for the GOP nomination doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Or, maybe it does. Here’s how it could work. With Duke on the ballot during the primaries and caucuses, every racist asshole in the country will turn out in support of a bunch of insurrectionist white nationalist candidates for, e.g., positions on the water board and in the state assembly. When he loses the nomination, Duke declares as an independent to make sure the racist assholes come out in the general election to vote for downticket Republicans from the white nationalist movement. Voila!! Now, all of a sudden, the GOP has a bunch Nazis in positions of low to moderate power who can then move up the ranks over time.
Most of these candidates will lose. But some of them will win by simple virtue of having an (R) at the end of their name. An independent bid by David Duke would create some interesting dynamics in the Electoral College and in lesser races. Duke would drive up turnout on the right, but at the expense of the Republicans’ presidential candidate. His mere presence in the campaign would also scare the crap out of a lot of people from all spectrums of life, and probably help the left rally itself to the polls.
Duke would certainly chew into the Republican nominee’s numbers, but it’s hard to say if he’d change the outcome in any states. I suppose he could draw enough support to throw the outcome of his home state of Louisiana into question. More likely, he’d put Mississippi and Georgia into play. He might even have the potential to throw Montana and the Dakotas in Obama’s lap, depending on how effectively he appealed to those voters.
Remember, President Clinton won Montana, Louisiana, and Georgia in 1992, based on the appeal of H. Ross Perot. So, any right-leaning candidate has the potential to do some damage to the Republicans in some otherwise unlikely places.
And if the White Nationalist goal isn’t to help the GOP win the presidency, but to successfully infiltrate their lower ranks, this strategy can further that goal.
… but I think you NAILED it.
David Duke can’t run for office because of his tax fraud conviction.
where in the Constitution does it say that? Nowhere. He’s a natural born citizen, he’s over thirty-four years of age, and he has not served two terms as president already. He can run. He might not be able to vote, however.
It’s not in the Constitution, but it may be in his plea bargain. I distinctly remember when Duke plead guilty, it was reported that he was ineligible to run for political office.
In any event, Duke represents a fringe of a fringe. If he does appear on a ballot somewhere, I don’t see him getting more than 1% of the vote anywhere.
Maybe he can’t run for office in Louisiana. But his right to run for president can’t be impacted in other states. If he’s really coming here to tour 25 states and test his support, he must be unaware that he’s ineligible.
As for your other prediction, I would hope that you’re right but fear that you are wrong. The linked article has several examples where openly racist candidates pulled double digits in recent elections.
And Duke is a pretty good politician, not some nobody from down the street.
I don’t see Perot-like numbers, but he could put together a pretty compelling populist campaign based on issues unrelated to race and get in double digits in a few states. I wouldn’t put it past him, or the American electorate in these difficult economic times, and with a black president.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It would be interesting to see if a Duke candidacy would pull the GOP even more to the right, or whether it would give them an opportunity to define themselves as not racist – i.e. anti-Duke – and which option different candidates would take. After all, who in the GOP, besides Gingrich, has openly declared as anti-Ryan.
If Duke did get traction within the GOP it could further marginalise the party and leave the way open for Dems to define themselves as the centre of realistic policy debate, but would it mobilise them sufficiently to keep all sorts of wingnuts out of lower offices?
As Obama’s failures have revealed – the real battle is for a more disciplined and coherent Dem controlled congress…
I’m not sure what “pull the GOP even more to the right” actually means. I seriously doubt that more Republicans (well, more than before) will become racist as a result. Might it encourage racists who tend to vote Republican to participate more? Maybe. Might it encourage more racists who don’t vote to vote? Maybe.
But what I think it does more than anything else is marginalize the more mainstream GOP candidates. From Romney who gutted companies then shipped their jobs overseas prior to sale to Ron Paul who wants to legalize heroin to Gingrich who suggests that GOP candidates go into black neighborhoods to inform black voters of how bad Obama is for them NO GOP CANDIDATE CAN CRITICIZE ANOTHER!
Adding Duke to the mix will only make all of them look more irrational, fuel defections from the GOP and set independents leaning towards the Dems.
I hope he’s welcomed into the GOP with open arms. It just gives me the ability to ask my Republican friends if they’re “Duke Republicans” with a straight face. I love to see them tongue-tied. What a refreshing sight!
Could anything be less likely or less helpful?
And you thought the Democrats only thought they were “reality based.”
Afterthought.
Is he considering a run in the GOP only because he thinks that’s where the racists are?
That it’s the white party?
Because he’s a racist people call him “right wing” but whenever the Klan has had any political clout in the past it’s been among the Democrats.
And even if you’re a one-issue candidate politics is about more than one issue.
How did Klan or Klan supported politicians in the past vote on progressive issues like regulation, trust busting, wages and hours legislation, and so on?
When the Klan had power among the Democrats in the past, those Democrats were right-wing. There was no Republican Party in the South until 1960.
I have no idea who made up the Klan in the 1920s in Indiana or Michigan or upstate New York or other states. It seems as likely they could be Republican as Democrat.
The Klan always was a one-issue organization. “The protection of Southern/Christian womanhood” from “savages”. Judging from who were the progressives in the South, the Klan likely voted with the bosses; in some communities, they were the bosses and lawyers and prominent merchants and sheriff and other folks who joined out of fear of not joining.
All Republicans are not racist but all racists are Republican. Remember? They claim the GOP is a “big tent” but if the candidates are any indication then that tent houses the clowns exclusively. They remain the old white mans party aside from the lone token black candidate…hardly representative of blacks in this country. America has changed but regrettably the GOP has not.
I’ve had many GOP heroes in the past — Lincoln, Roosevelt and Ike. None of this crew comes close and most are really out there.
Meanwhile, progressives don’t want to serve on the water board or a small-town city council or a school board or even state legislature. The bright lights of DC are the only place it’s happening in their view.
Come on folks. Don’t worship Bernie. Be like Bernie.
Your analysis of what Duke’s strategy might likely be correct. But it doesn’t depend on an (R) on the ballot alone. There are more than partisan offices at stake. School boards, township councils, agricultural boards, soil and water conservation boards.
A lot of “nonpartisan” offices in some states are elected on primary day. It doesn’t take much research to find out how many votes it takes in a Presidential primary year to win. (It’s a lot fewer than you think.) And if you focus on what needs to be done in the office you’re running for, there might be crossover votes from otherwise nutty Republicans. Just don’t start running as “progressives” until you run for partisan offices. Build your record as publicly prominent and non-partisan.
But it seems that “standing up for something” (i.e. mouthing off) and “signing petitions” and going to the streets are the only tactics a lot of progressives are willing to do themselves.
Wading through boring staff memos and recommendations and making routine decisions about everyday operations of government just aren’t as exciting as Da Revolution.
Local Tea Party here in the Chicago suburbs has this strategy. My boss is now a township chairman.
Interestingly, he does not really like any of the declared Presidential candidates except Cain and some black ex-Colonel. They are not “pure” enough. The Tea Party hates the bankers worse than Unions, black people, or Democrats. I try to tell them that they are playing into the bankers hands, but they tell me either that “we will control the Republican Party, not bankers”, or I don’t understand economics (they are all gold bugs). It’s interesting that they have purity problems too.
I’ve been running in local partisan elections for just over 20 years now and have not lost yet. All but one were part-time, but the last 3 terms came with a gold star benefit for this otherwise self-employed person – health care. Don’t overlook the benefits as well as the opportunity to do a lot of good in your community. Also a caveat, it ain’t as easy as it looks, trust me.