The Ideal vs. the Possible
First I want to explain that White advocacy and electoral politics are two distinct matters. There is some relationship between the two, but they are different with their own guiding principles (especially in this winner-take-all electoral system, which rewards inscrutable blandness). To the extent that one is guided by the principles of the other, it is done less than optimally. Electoral politics must be approached with a readiness to accept some tolerable compromise rather than demanding the full realization of an ideal: “Politics is the art of the possible,” said Bismarck. But at the same time the ideal has to be maintained.
White advocacy and general political discussion must not be degraded to the level of rhetoric that is calculated to win an election. We must not internalize the limits of electoral politics as the limits of our own thinking and discussion. Those of us who might choose to engage in the grubby business of electoral politics must not become creatures of this corrupting system but remain White people with White interests, despite whatever compromises might be required by circumstances.
By maintaining consciousness of the difference between what is actual and what is ideal, our people should always realize that whatever they have gained is not all that they want, so that progress will not stop and will not be lost through a relaxation of efforts.
How the Republican Party has Failed and Succeeded and Failed Again
Many White people, especially in the South, support the Republican Party because they perceive it as the Implicitly White Party. This affiliation of racially conscious White people with the Republican Party was induced by the so-called Civil Rights movement, which had its main base of support in the Democratic Party. The South had always been solidly Democratic until the Truman Administration and its support for “Civil Rights.” This provoked a rift in the Democratic Party in the form of the short-lived States’ Rights Democratic Party, or “Dixiecrats.” A decisive shift occurred when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. That was when Senator Strom Thurmond became a Republican. Many other Southern segregationists, like future senator Jesse Helms, followed.
Before the Solid South turned Republican, the Republicans had been known as the party of big business. In other words, it was a plutocratic party. The Republicans were blamed for the Great Depression, and for not doing enough to meliorate its effects, such as unemployment. The fact that the Democrats were willing to address those effects of the Great Depression made them the dominant political party from 1933 until 1981. It was the fact that the Democratic establishment’s racial policies had offended White Southerners that enabled the Republican Party to become dominant again, beginning with Ronald Reagan.
The politics of the rejuvenated Republican Party therefore represented a synthesis of muted White racialism and plutocracy. The 19th-century notion that dog-eat-dog capitalism was somehow eugenic became attractive as a meeting-point between the two motives. However, although budgets were cut, the effects on the underclass were far from drastic. (Nor did Ronald Reagan turn Iran into a glowing parking-lot.) There seemed to be a strong anti-social impulse in all this; not infrequently the supporters of the less-government ideology will express it in terms of owing nothing to the government or to society.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the established plutocratic motive in the Republican Party forced the recently introduced racial motive to take a back seat. Instead of concentrating on pro-White politics (such as restricting immigration), which is the most fundamental form of conservatism, the Republicans, with an ideology of free trade, deregulation, and less government, concentrated on dismantling the economic and social adjustments that had become necessary by the time of the Great Depression.
The fact that the Republicans had become the party of unnecessary wars also did not help. Barack Obama was able to beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because she had supported war in Iraq and he had not. This consideration also surely had some bearing on Obama’s victory over John McCain, who repelled people with talk of 100 years of Middle-East war.
The combination of dishonest wars and a wrecked economy caused the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Republican attempts to exploit some presumed amnesia on the part of the voting public, so as to blame Obama for the resumption of the Great Depression, had little success. Unemployment also became worse during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term than it had been under Herbert Hoover, but somehow that did not make people forget under which party the crisis had begun.
Why did three-million Republicans not turn out to vote for Mitt Romney?
Rush Limbaugh characterizes movers and shakers in the Republican Party as a bunch of elitist snobs who despise many of the ordinary people that vote Republican.
How many times have I told you this story? Early 90s, in the Hamptons. Dinner party, mostly establishment Republicans. And major figures, you’d know the names, big donors, fundraisers, come up to me, point their finger in my chest, actually jab my chest, “What are you going to do about the Christians?” “What do you mean, what am I going to do about the…?” “This abortion’s killing us! We’re never going to win a damned thing! They listen to you. You’ve got to get them to shut up about this!” I said, “They’re only 24 million votes. You can’t win anything without them.” “We don’t want them! It’s embarrassing!” Well, that’s 1992, 93. We’re now at 2012. That’s 20 years. That’s how long it’s been building. That is something that existed then; it existed during the 80s with Reagan. There was embarrassment over Reagan. (Rush Limbaugh, 29 August 2012: sound)
While this anecdote gives a useful insight, Limbaugh seems to tell only part of the truth, probably the part that he can tell without getting into really serious hot water. Abortion is clearly only one, perhaps the least of the issues dear to some Republican voters that the bigwigs find abhorrent. Other such issues are control of legal and illegal immigration, opposition to free trade, and opposition to wars for Israel. The fact that Limbaugh managed to discuss the conflict over the rules-change at the Republican National Convention at length without mentioning Ron Paul, whose movement was at the center of the conflict, demonstrates that with Rush Limbaugh, while some things are revealed, much is suppressed.
A large part of the cause for three-million registered Republicans staying home on election day, no doubt, is the treatment given to Ron Paul’s genuine and enthusiastic (if ideologically wrongheaded) grassroots movement. The abuses include what seems to be rigging of results in some primaries, and a rules-change at the Republican National Convention that rankled not only Ron Paul’s supporters but Tea-Partiers and anybody that was not strictly with the plutocratic Republican establishment. The behavior of the Republican establishment during the primaries and at the convention represents the contempt of a plutocratic party for ordinary people who do not heed their supposed betters.
Essentially, the establishment Republicans, the RNC, the GOP, the Romney Campaign want to change the rules of delegate-selection. They want the presidential nominee in future years to be able to choose the actual delegates to the convention so that he owns them, so that they do what he wants. And what it really is, is an effort to eliminate grassroots people from the Republican convention. That’s really what this is all about. And what that means is that the party has decided it doesn’t want to have to put up with a bunch of conservatives showing up, affecting the platform, and all other things that happen at the convention, including influencing the party. [Rush Limbaugh, 29 August 2012: sound]
Limbaugh speaks cryptically about “conservatives” when it was mainly a matter of Ron Paul’s supporters. That was not the only offense against Ron Paul’s supporters at the convention:
Prior to the rules vote, there was also a contentious vote on the report from the committee’s credentials committee, which prevented half the delegates from Maine — many of them Paul supporters — from being seated after ruling that there were problems with their selections.
The credentials report also passed by voice vote, prompting chants of “Seat Maine now” from Paul supporters in the crowd. At one point, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus had to gavel them back into order as the chanted over the next speaker. [Aaron Blake, “Ron Paul supporters come up short in rules fight,” Washington Post, 28 August 2012]
Ron Paul’s opposition to war and foreign entanglements generally would have represented a real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats and a change of direction that many people favor, one that would have attracted many who favored Obama in 2008 because of what appeared to be his disinclination for war.
The question for me is not why Obama was re-elected, but why anybody is surprised about it, given what the Republican establishment really represents, and the contempt with which it treats the people whose support it seeks.
The Overemphasis on Demographic Change and Why they are Doing It
Fox News commentator Bill O’ Reilly made this dire assessment as exit polls suggested that the Republican Party’s White male challenger Mitt Romney would lose to the mulatto incumbent:
The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore. And there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it, and he ran on it.
And whereby twenty years ago President Obama would be roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney, the White establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that this economic system is stacked against them, and they want stuff.
You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming Black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way.
People feel that they are entitled to things, and which candidate between the two is going to give them things.
O’Reilly tries to cast the problem in terms of the old saw about how democracy cannot last because the people will vote largesse for themselves until they ruin the state, but he ends up interpreting that largely in racial terms (which is probably what really concerns the average Fox News viewer anyway, so that we probably should not consider this a slip but intentional pandering).
Who is the “White establishment” that O’Reilly says is now the minority? He cannot mean all White people, because White people are not a minority yet, nor did all White people vote Republican. O’Reilly is implying that the Republican Party got as much of the White vote as it could possibly get, which is simply not the case. The thesis here is that a less plutocratic Republican Party would draw a larger share of the White vote and be able to win elections at the national level.
After O’Reilly made his statement, Jewish political pundit Dick Morris stated on Fox News, “If this candidate, in this economy, against this opponent, couldn’t win … nobody ever can.” Morris specifically mentioned immigration as a position where the Republican Party would have to change. Morris and certain others seem far too eager to embrace the conclusion that demographic change is the reason why the Republicans lost, and overly determined as to what should be done about it.
Neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer was one of the first notable voices after the election to call for the Republican Party to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens:
The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.
For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. [Charles Krauthammer, “The Way Forward,” National Review, 8 November 2012]
King-Neocon William Kristol expresses himself a bit more timidly. He advocates that the Republican Party should continue to be the enemy of “big government liberalism” but should exhibit “fresh thinking” in other regards. Then he cryptically suggests that a change of the party’s position on immigration might be in order: “If a senator or a representative has a good proposal on immigration or monetary policy or education or tax reform, he or she should introduce it“ (William Kristol, “Losing Can be Liberating,” The Weekly Standard, 19 November 2012)
The Zionist owner of Fox News and funder of the Project for a New American Century, Rupert Murdoch, tweeted that the United States “must make sweeping, generous immigration reform.”
The dominant theme in Neoconservative propaganda at present is that the Republican Party must become even less the party of White people while remaining the plutocratic party.
The Neocon position was echoed by Sean Hannity, who has always seemed weak-kneed on matters of racial importance, claiming that he had “evolved.”
Among elected politicians, while Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner came out for amnesty, other Republicans, who depend on the support of White constituencies, disagreed.
Rush Limbaugh: Demographic Change is not the Problem
Limbaugh denies the premise of the Neocons’ rhetoric, that amnesty for illegal aliens would significantly win Hispanics over to the GOP. He points out that 75% of the Hispanic vote is more interested in the social safety-net and progressive taxation, than in immigration. (8 November 2012)
Rush Limbaugh says that that the Republicans did not lose because of demographics, but because the party had alienated the three million registered Republicans who stayed home on election-day.
It wasn’t an election lost because we didn’t get the women’s vote, the Hispanic vote. We didn’t turn our vote out. It’s just that simple. Could it be, ladies and gentlemen, three million Republicans sat at home because they didn’t see enough of a conservative campaign?
These are the things that have to be pondered, why all the party beats itself up over amnesty and single women and contraception. But I’m just going to tell you, if you think that the only reason why you’re not winning presidential races is because you’re not for amnesty, and because you’re not for abortion, if you change to that, if you moderate, modify your positions, you are going to cease to exist, because those who are with you are going to abandon you. (Rush Limbaugh, 8 November 2012: sound)
Limbaugh says that if the Republican Party tries to cater to the Hispanic vote by embracing amnesty for illegal aliens, the party will cease to exist. That is very likely. However, it does not mean that the Republican Party will survive if it does not do that.
If the Republican Party is defined by opposition to the social safety-net and progressive taxation, then indeed it will cease to exist, whether it pursues non-White support or not, because these are adjustments that the conditions of late capitalism (where efficient production, exacerbated presently through offshoring of jobs, causes massive unemployment) make indispensable.
As with O’Reilly, Limbaugh’s rhetoric loosely ties plutocratic thinking with racial thinking by associating the desire for a social safety-net and progressive taxation with Blacks and Hispanics. The listener is given the hint that the Republican Party’s policies are a good way to give a relative advantage to Whites over and against non-Whites. The downside to this is that the White working class is put in the position of choosing between an impersonal racial interest and personal economic interest. Of course many choose the latter, especially outside of the South.
The Non-Southern White Working Class
A new report on the White working class by Elisabeth Jacobs of the Brookings Institution indicates that the White working class was the key to Obama’s victory in Ohio. White working-class voters everywhere tend to be more culturally conservative than other White people, but outside of the South White workers are more influenced by economic policy. A movement away from the plutocratic less-government ideology would bring the Republican Party closer to being the party of all White people. Here’s a chart from Mother Jones showing the White working class vote in various regions of the U.S.:
Since the Southern White working-class voters who now vote Republican were once solidly Democratic, and have adopted plutocratic rhetoric as a (perceived) sneaky approach to racial politics, we can say that these voters are not really wedded to the less-government ideology and, if they can remember why they started mouthing that rhetoric in the first place, will abandon it when they see that the racial interest is better served in some other way.
What about the Black vote?
It must be recognized that White people are not the only population in the United States that suffers from a false leadership that despises it. The Blacks also have their Judas goats, most notably Ben Jealous of the NAACP and Al Sharpton. The NAACP was created by Jews and is essentially controlled by Jews today, through funding. (When the NAACP started to take an independent course under Ben Chavis in the 1990s, it suddenly ran into funding problems.) Al Sharpton, who has a daily radio show and a television show on MSNBC, supports the cause of illegal immigrants, to the detriment of Black people in the United States.
Despite the effect of these Judas goats, about half of the Black population understands that illegal immigration adversely affects Black people, and they oppose amnesty.
Jealous and Sharpton together were prominent in stirring up irrational anti-White rage among Blacks regarding the Trayvon Martin case. This irrational hostility hinders understanding and cooperation for the common good of Black and White as natives of the United States, and helps the Neocons and others who want non-White immigration to continue.
While the false Black leaders try to maintain racial animosity, the false White leaders try to overcome that animosity using inducements that are transparently bogus.
The arguments that the Republicans have been using to try to get the Black vote are ridiculous. Those arguments are (1) that the Republican desire to take away the advantages that Blacks currently enjoy is really good for Blacks, and (2) that the Republican Party happily puts on display token successful Blacks and other non-Whites at its convention and even appoints some of them as figureheads in the party.
The reason why Blacks are not impressed with the Blacks who speak at a Republican convention or are made titular head of the RNC may be that they understand something that Whites should also understand. Those people speaking at Republican conventions do not represent any racial identity: they represent a cosmopolitan bourgeois identity. Bourgeois Republican Blacks no more represents the Black community than Mitt Romney represents the White community. They are simply money-people.
Here’s the real argument, which some Blacks should find convincing: if non-White immigration continues, if the United States of America cease to have a White majority, it will be very bad for Blacks. It’s a genuine argument, not an attempt at fooling them with empty symbolism and slick talk.
About half of Blacks are already hostile to immigration. What is needed is an effort to make Blacks think about immigration more and to treat it as a key issue in coming elections. This can be done through publicity that emphasizes the conflict between Black interests and immigration, and by getting Black preachers, who exercise considerable influence, to support that position. They need to understand that they are on a ship that will sink if they do not limit their demands and cooperate with others who want to prevent an incipient disaster.
The Democrats’ period of dominance from 1933–1981was based on addressing the economic needs of ordinary people, but they spoiled that with anti-White racial politics. The Republicans’ recent period of dominance has been based on being Implicitly White, which even now should be enough to win a presidential election, but they are ruining that by not addressing the economic needs of ordinary people, White and otherwise.
It is clear that the Republicans must change something to broaden their appeal. The Neoconservative answer is that the Republicans should try harder to appeal to Hispanics by embracing amnesty for illegal immigrants, and become in that respect a copy of the Democratic Party. There is a respect in which the Republicans should become more like the Democrats, and even go far beyond them, but immigration is not it.
Non-White immigration is the main threat to all of society in the United States today. There happens to be a ready constituency for curbing immigration, but to win it the Republicans must abandon plutocratic economic and social thinking. That constituency consists of White working-class people everywhere (many of whom have not been voting Republican), as well as about half of the Black population.
What I propose is that the Republican Party should continue being Implicitly White and culturally conservative but take away from the Democrats their main source of appeal, the social state. Given the economic conditions of late capitalism and the post-colonial period, it is in any case inevitable that the party that makes this adjustment will in the long run defeat the one that refuses it.