The Rock and The Hard Place

Thirty years have passed since Richard Nixon invited the Dixiecrat night riders to abandon their old mounts, cover their regalia, and climb up on the Elephant. Trent Lott was among the first to take him up on the invitation. It is some how fitting that three decades later it is that same Trent Lott who has steered the Party (formerly known as the GOP) into a perilous passage between the reefs of genteel racism and the rocks of revulsion at the sudden transparency of the new clothes behind which the transplanted Dixiecrats had hidden their robes and hoods.

Does the Captain of that grand old political ship keep Trent the helmsman and veer his course to starboard and the reef? Does he alter course to port, cast Lott adrift, and make for the rocks? On the one hand he alienates that part of the electorate that shares Lott’s ideals and vision spoken in coded messages. On the other he alienates that part of the electorate that is reviled by the exposure of genteel bigotry dressed in new clothes.

Make no mistake, the Nixonian calculation that produced the Southern Strategy was apt and accurate. The majority of the 1972 public was uncomfortable in the 1964 movement to homogenize American society. We were but four years removed from the tumult of assassination and riot that was 1968. We were but two years separated from the Kent State killings and ROTC arsons. The political compass was skewed by those factors.

The Party has carefully followed the course that Nixon charted ever since. It is no coincidence that only Governors of two states of the Old Confederacy have been able to break through that southern strategy and defeat it for a time at the Executive level while the new Bourbons built their majority with former Democrats who crossed the aisle while the public turned a blind eye toward the decorous discrimination of the new Republicans.

Trent Lott unintentionally stripped off the public blindfold and revealed the rotten core that lay beneath the polished surface. The Republican’s secret strength has become the worm in the apple. It demonstrates the power of the modern communication. No more can the packaged politician be secure in the word spoken in the privacy of his own kind. With all pervasive cameras recording what is said in Biloxi this afternoon, it resonates in Bangor this evening. The Jolie Rouge has been revealed and can no longer be concealed behind false flags and coded signals.