Two examples of how Reagan used "optimism" and "hope" to "unite" us

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Here's some advice for Republicans eager to attract more African-American supporters: don't stop with Trent Lott. Blacks won't take their commitment to expanding the party seriously until they admit that the GOP's wrongheadedness about race goes way beyond Lott and infects their entire party. The sad truth is that many Republican leaders remain in a massive state of denial about the party's four-decade-long addiction to race-baiting. They won't make any headway with blacks by bashing Lott if they persist in giving Ronald Reagan a pass for his racial policies.

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The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.

Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of his support for "states' rights" — a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters.

Then there was Reagan's attempt, once he reached the White House in 1981, to reverse a long-standing policy of denying tax-exempt status to private schools that practice racial discrimination and grant an exemption to Bob Jones University. Lott's conservative critics, quite rightly, made a big fuss about his filing of a brief arguing that BJU should get the exemption despite its racist ban on interracial dating. But true to their pattern of white-washing Reagan's record on race, not one of Lott's conservative critics said a mumblin' word about the Gipper's deep personal involvement. They don't care to recall that when Lott suggested that Reagan's regime take BJU's side in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, Reagan responded, "We ought to do it." Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court in a resounding 8-to-1 decision ruled that Reagan was dead wrong and reinstated the IRS's power to deny BJU's exemption.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html

while the great man praises the most successful racist since Andrew Jackson. :spray:

Does it bother anyone else?

It's like a Republican-think takeover of the party. I feel like one of the few who hasn't had a sip of the Kool Aid. :crazy:

I leave that to the Ann Coulter and Freepers of the world.

Liberals are much more intelligent than you pretend not to be.

because reagan was a racist and he deliberately set out to appeal to racists and continued the odious Southern Strategy. In doing so, he helped to mainstream racism in the GOP and thus the country.Look at the campaigns of bush the smarter, and dole and bush the dumber, and watch for whomever is the right wing candidate use what reagan taught em in this years election...

instead of securing his Democratic base he sets sail for the land of Reagan...Reagan was the penultimate repig asshole...only to be out~done by W.

:kick: and recommend

at least I hope it is just naivety.

Although I am pissed that he would resort to such blatant pandering to show he isn't a "typical" democrat (I am a typical democrat), I chalk it up to inexperience with the world outside of his Chicago Cocoon...

He so desperatly wants to be a uniter...

As per New Hampshire? He backslid on his campaigning there when the polls had him leading by double digits.

I think OB believes he pretty much has the Dem vote in the bag - he's beginning to believe his own press and all those 'oh so reliable' polls. He no longer feels he needs to appeal to Dems - they'll all walk in lockstep with the likes of John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, oh and let's not forget Oprah Winfrey. So now, the overconfident Obama is making an early move on the Indies and Left Leaning repugs and it could well come back to bite him in the arse. I don't think it's inexperience - I think it's arrogance.

I want a President that fights to win every Democratic vote, and for that reason alone, John Edwards is my man and Hillary Clinton my second choice.

I had not yet critized Obama in any thread, nor 'voted' for those that did - even though I don't comprehend the 'idolization'. But I remember, all too clearly, 'Reagonomics' and the joy that was 'Trickle Down Economics' - the 'Iran Contra' fiasco and the de-regulation policies that led to the 'Savings and Loan' disaster, Nancie's fucked up 'War on Drugs' and yes, the homophobia and apathy/disdain for AIDS/HIV.

Oh Reagan brought 'Change' alright - but it was 'Change' for the worse in so many aspects of our lives. That's why I'm still waiting for Obama to define 'Change'. What is he going to 'change' and how is he going to effect those 'changes'. All I've heard is he'll play nice with the Repugs - well gee - thanks Obama, but I was rather hoping for a President that would kick their collective arses - hard! You see experience has taught me that the Repugs don't know how to play nice and only suggest doing so when they are losing elections - have you noticed that? They never kvetch about polarization when they are the ones doing the 'polarizing' - they revel in it and taunt us with it and they've done it for the past 7+ years. I need a President that will fight tooth and nail for Democratic values not someone who will dilute our values to appease the Repugs.

And as for his other sparkly 'catchphrase' - 'Hope'.
Well let's be blunt here... Hope is all I've fucking had for seven and a bit years. I've 'Hoped' myself into a lather. I hoped through Elections, Scandals Beyond Counting, Committee Hearings, Grass Roots Impeachment Attempts, Fitzmas, Plamegate, the Iraq War, Downing Street Memos, Gonzalez, Abu Ghraib, Waterboarding - ad fucking infinitum. I'm 'Hoped' out .... and here he comes offering me 'Hope' like it was a fucking novelty emotion. Been there, done that - using the teeshirt as a dishrag already.

I Want more - I Demand more than 'Hope' and 'Change' - I want action, a plan, clear vision and bulldog determination to pull it off.I don't want to hear that any candidate intends to hand his/her cojones to the repugs on inaugeration day. I want a 'streetfighter' that knows how to play dirty if needed -'cause 'they will' - every chance they get - anyone that doubts that has been a 'Democrat' for about two weeks tops. Edwards can do it and will, Hillary can (and just might), but I'm really not sure about Obama at all.

One jawdropping, but well rehearsed, speech is not enough to build a Presidential candidacy on. And let's face it, if it hadn't been for that well delivered oration at the Dem Convention, we'd all be saying "Who the hell's Obama?" The media was already proclaiming him the next 'Presidential Candidate' then and they'll keep the Woman vs Black Man schism going for as long as they possibly can. He's the candidate of serendipity - it's all been too easy, too smooth from there to here. Anyone else old enough to remember the 'Ross Perot' fiasco? He was going to BE the next President until he dropped his millions of voters like stunned rocks, with little or no explanation. He just didn't want it badly enough, didn't have to fight hard enough for the adulation and support - he just somehow got 'annointed'. Then he seemingly woke up one day and just decided he didn't want to be President after all, packed his tent and went home. I want my candidate to want it with his/her very core, crawl across broken glass if they have to - no free passes and no 'annointed/chosen' ones - thank you.

I, and many of my colleagues, friends and family are sick and tired of the "Hillary hates Blacks" - "Obama hates Woman/Gays" pap that the media force feed us on a daily basis - and boy do we swallow it and regurgitate it - over and over and over - meanwhile avoiding, diminishing and glossing over the real issues.

In the mean time, while Hillary and Obama argue over who said what to whom and in what context, and then waste bandwidth explaining what they really meant, there's a guy out there busting his arse, with his devoted, intelligent, witty, grounded, hardworking wife by his side. Why, because they want to make real changes to the Status Quo so badly that Elizabeth is willing to possibly put her life on the line to get the opportunity to make good. Unfortunately, the conversation around here can't rise to the occasion.

This country is already in deep doodoo and it's going to get much worse. There are going to be a lot of people in a world of pain in the next couple of years and they are going to be the lower and middle classes. Guess who's specialty that is?

Besides, if I wanted to vote for a Reagan admirer, I'd write in Joe Liebershits name - and he already outpaces Obama by light years in 'reaching across the aisle' and playing 'nice' with the Repugs - we so admire him for it - remember? So, if uniting the parties is his strength, I'd say Liebershits is far more qualified. Yeah, what was I thinking? That's the ticket - Joe Lieberman for President - the 'Great Uniter'!

There, I've finally got that off my chest - been stuffing most of it for weeks and it feels good to get it out.

People can say what they want, but we've had 28 years of this shit because Reagan was able to convince the majority that it was "Morning in America".

If you don't want hope and you don't want more centrist bullshit, vote for Edwards. But don't pretend you're too fucking stupid to know how Reagan affected this country.

http://hnn.us/articles/44535.html

In which he divided the Democratic Party by pandering to bigots fears.

"A full account of the incident has to consider how the national GOP was trying to strengthen its southern state parties and win support from southern white Democrats. Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee. Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”

...

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan. In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.” Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech. The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County.

It was clear from other episodes in that campaign that Reagan was content to let southern Republicans link him to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past. Reagan’s states rights line was prepared beforehand and reporters covering the event could not recall him using the term before the Neshoba County appearance. John Bell Williams, an arch-segregationist former governor who had crossed party lines in 1964 to endorse Barry Goldwater, joined Reagan on stage at another campaign stop in Mississippi. Reagan’s campaign chair in the state, Trent Lott, praised Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, at a Reagan rally, saying that if Thurmond had been elected president “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

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Throughout his career, Reagan benefited from subtly divisive appeals to whites who resented efforts in the 1960s and 70s to reverse historic patterns of racial discrimination. He did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing and civil rights laws. He did it in 1976 when he tried to beat out Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he did it in Neshoba County in 1980."