I wish that people like Phylis Schlafly and Pat Buchanan would be totally honest. They come closer than most Republicans to being candid about their racist beliefs, but I still want to know what they really think. The one thing that is obvious is that they don’t want more brown people in this country, and they certainly don’t want them to vote.
But, are they primarily motivated by racism or politics? In other words, do they oppose Latino immigration because they assume it will empower the left or because they just don’t want to live with Latinos?
The premise of the pro-immigration reform right is that the GOP cannot afford to lose more than 70% of the Latino vote, so the party needs to stop being an anti-immigrant party and show that they want to compete for Latino votes. Not so long ago, in 2004, President Bush won well over 40% of the Latino vote, and it helped him win reelection. The idea isn’t that Republicans are a natural fit for the Latino community, but that they can compete for their votes and get a decent share. Either Schlafly and Buchanan simply disagree that the GOP can improve their performance or they simply don’t care.
And that distinction is what puzzles me.
Many have noted that Latinos, taken as a whole, have some fairly left-wing views on both social and economic policy, but the GOP is not yet proposing that they change their policies to better attract Latinos. What they’re really saying is that they should just stop insulting and antagonizing them.
To give a corollary example, the GOP doesn’t have to adopt a pro-gay marriage platform in order to do somewhat better with the gay community. They can do better by being silent on the issue and focusing on other things, especially economic ones, where they are bound to have more appeal. It’s kind of a “First, do no harm” strategy.
As conservatives, I can understand why you’d be concerned that the party is going to water down its principles in order to appeal to a browner electorate. Keep the brown people out, and that risk disappears. I suspect that this is really where Schlafly and Buchanan stand. But, if that is where they stand, they are not being very clever about it. After all, the proposed reform would keep new Latino citizens off the voter rolls for the next three presidential elections while also reducing the degree to which the GOP looks like an anti-Latino party. In the short-term, they’d be in position to do better with Latinos, which would allow them to avoid changing their conservative principles for a little while longer, and maybe elect at least one more conservative president.
On the other hand, maybe there really isn’t much strategic thought involved. Maybe it’s just hate.
It’s a total waste of time looking for sense in Schlafly. She’s been a crazy old windbag for decades now. Her one consistent quality is her dream of being an avatar of Margaret Thatcher.
Buchanan wants the Confederacy to rise again, and can’t abide all the changes that threaten the Dream. Plus he makes good bucks blathering ill-disguised nativist bullshit.
Neither is interested in strategy. Schlafly is too stupid and Buchanan is too corrupt. Why you’d bother with these tiny brain pimples is beyond me.
I suspect that the answer to this:
“But, are they primarily motivated by racism or politics?”
is:
Yes.
In my view there is so much overlapping that they are nearly one in the same these days.
I had the question copied to paste into a comment with exactly that answer. But I thought someone might beat me to it. 🙂
I’m with JeffL here. Why pick? They’re motivated by both, though I would lean to a conclusion that their racism and sexism were elemental in creating their politics.
One thing you wrote, BooMan:
“Either Schlafly and Buchanan simply disagree that the GOP can improve their performance or they simply don’t care.”
I think there’s a third and more accurate choice. These two and so many others are made VERY VERY VERY ANGRY by the suggestion that the GOP could improve their performance by dialing back the nativism. They disagree with this conclusion, because their naked hatred and obscene self-regard prevents them from accepting that the GOP will be disabled in the future if they double down on the Old White People’s Party stuff.
They occasionally appear to reflect understanding that the GOP future is demographically challenged without major policy changes, but their responses are to demand truly radical anti-voter and anti-immigrant policies. Unfortunately, much of the GOP is responding to their recommendations by saying “Those policies don’t sound radical to me, they sound American Fuck Yeah!1!!*#!1!”
Given how humans in large numbers choose up sides, the two factors are inseparable.
Were racial difference utterly devoid of political consequence I doubt Pat B would care much if at all.
I know nothing about PS.
But it’s not devoid of political consequence, it won’t be in the foreseeable future, and it is dishonest to deny pro-immigrationists often have the same sorts of motives as anti-immigrationists, but in the opposite direction.
That includes people whose express and leading aim in these matters is to color America brown, to submerge forever America whites in minority status and deprive them thus of power.
And people (like Pat and maybe PS) who would prefer to avoid that.
And people who really do want to detach the American Southwest from America and either return it to Mexico or found a new Indian/mestizo country there.
And people who would rather we didn’t even have to deal with agitation for such a thing.
Were racial differences devoid of that sort of tribal political weight people like Derbyshire or the folks at V-Dare would still want to limit immigration by race or nationality, I think, ostensibly based on their beliefs about average IQs.
But immigration policy filtering for high (or low!) IQ doesn’t appeal to that many folks, and anyway if you want to filter by IQ then filter by IQ and NOT race, since filtering by race is a wildly clumsy and uncertain way to filter by IQ.
Or is it too expensive or impractical to require an IQ test of prospective (lawful) immigrants?
Anyway, no doubt some of the pro- or anti-immigration sentiment is founded in simple racial hostilities, either toward whites or toward non-whites.
But I think mostly it’s not that real gut level stuff.
But it might well be in good part about the tribal stuff I alluded to at the beginning.
And I haven’t said a word about the economics of the thing.
Phyllis Schlafly’s defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment was totally based on homophobia and the equation feminist=lesbian.
Yesterday, Phyllis Schlafly lost the homophobia argument; the US in 2013 is not the US of 1976.
The day before, Pat Buchanan saw that a long-term strategy conceived in the Reagan administration of stacking the courts and the lower court bench can pay off.
Racism and homophobia (and sexism) have always been political tools. Go reread your Kate Millett to see how it works even in the confines of academic departments.
It doesn’t matter what they believe; it matters how they act. A cyncial racism isn’t any more or less noble than an honest racism.
Nope. It was all about keeping most women as second class citizens — housewives making lots of babies for the Church and dependent on their breadwinner lord and master. There would be a few exceptions for the exceptional and married white women with lots of babies like her. The 1950s were for her the golden era.
There was a lot of support of women who were for the Equal Rights Amendment who became silent when Schlafly started highlighting the fact that lesbians were at a Houston conference of feminists. It was after that line of attack began that states started failing to pass the ERA.
Churches, even evangelical and Catholic churches, had not started the propaganda about returning to raise families by the time the ERA failed. It was still the “You’ve come a long way, baby, era.” in which career opportunities were encouraged by the dominant culture.
Sclafly’s motives were clear. She was organizing the conservative movement among women who felt they were being slighted by the emphasis on careerism. It seems to have worked, especially when joined to the abortion issue.
Meanwhile, the other scare tactic–“unisex bathrooms”–continues to rock on. As a result of equal accessibility rules and tight budgets, there is an increase in single-unit unisex public restrooms.
Now that those are handled, can politicians get back to ratifying the Amendment? Oh, that damn sunset clause–wonder who stuck that in?
Schlafly was out of step with the GOP women early in her political career and only made a splash in 1964 with her advocacy for Goldwater.
Personally, Schlafly was like high profile Republican women — educated and middle- to upper-middle-class, but unlike them she preached a different sermon as to the role of women. (As a teen I read enough of her garbage to appreciate that she was a hypocrite and sexist and that I would never have anything to do with whatever political party that welcomed her.)
The ERA was passed in 1972 — and supported not only by Republicans but had long been part of the GOP party platform.
Ratified by two more before it began to stall in 1973. The year the decision in Roe v. Wade was issued and gave Schlafly the hook she needed to mobilize religious conservatives (Catholic and Protestant). Oh, and the GOP was also a bit under fire with Agnew’s resignation and Watergate percolating. That all become organized in time for the 1980 election.
This is a really informative historical rundown. Thanks, Marie2.
You’re welcome — I often credit Phyllis Schlafly for having turned one good little Catholic girl into an atheist, radical feminist, and socialist.
hate to say, but sociopaths of the type represented by Schlafly and Buchanan don’t speak honestly unless they’re standing over you, prepping the coup-de-grace
No offense, BooMan..
but, you’re talking White Privilege.
I don’t need to know their ‘ reason’
racist muthafuckas that mean me and mine harm
and just racist muthafuckas.
Maybe people like them would be more honest if they felt that they could be a paid talking head on national television (especially someplace that isn’t Fox News) without being fired for expressing the views that, presumably, they would be hired to represent.
I doubt they’d have “more appeal” on economic issues. The GOP very nearly destroyed the american economy. You don’t GET worse on economic issues than the modern GOP (or Hoover’s GOP, either, for that matter).
No, What’s happening here is that racism blinds the GOP base to evaluating GOP performance in the real world on real issues. People who are alienated from the GOP don’t have that problem, because they are not emotionally invested in defending the GOP. So they can read a newspaper article about the economy and make some sense of it. Republicans just can’t.