You must be IGNORANT about Lee Atwater then. He admitted it was real. He was Reagan's Carl Rove back in the 70's before god gave him a brain tumor.So, at what point did the Dems join in? Because they are there now. They were there in 88 when Gephardt tried to make an issue of it, and failed, despite the support of the UAW.
This isn't me refusing to blame just the GOP.
This is me pointing out the reality that while Free Trade got it's start in the GOP, it is now a bi-partisan consensus.
YOu know, if it were not for the bullshit you libs pile on the GOP, Trumps message of walking back that "Free Trade" would be pulling tons of those old Rust Belt dems to him.
We could see that consensus go up flames even if Trump did not win.
I probably agree, the Dems have given up on this issue when they shouldn't have.
But please note the GOP Establishment will throw the election to Hillary before they ever let Trump roll back free trade.
But, as I have said, you libs can't allow that any Republican can have any valid perspective. Everything we do has to be Evul for Evulnesses sake.
MEanwhile the black punks that used to kick your white ass because it was white? THem you understand.
BUT at least you know you are on the side of Good. Since you are certainly against Evul.
Oh, I don't think your leaders are doing it for "evilness' sake". I think it's a very calculated plan again going back to Nixon's Southern Strategy. On one side, whittling away at the nice white middle class through free trade, union-busting, At-will employment, "right to work", and on the other hand, playing on white middle class fears about minorities, gays, abortion, religion, and sexual equality.
So that's why even though Republicans appointed 8 of the 12 SCOTUS justices since 1973, Roe v. Wade has never been overturned. They don't want to ban abortion. That would get a lot of women off their asses to vote them out of office. They just want to keep the Christian stupids voting against their own economic interests because abortion makes them so darned angry.
Libs can't point to one example of Nixon pandering to SOuthern Racist that doe not boil down to "code word" bullshit.
The SOuthern Strategy is a myth.
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigga, nigga, nigga." By 1968 you can't say "nigga"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigga nigga.
Like I said, nothing but "Code word" bullshit.
NOte how he in no way says this "plan" operated anywhere but inside of his head.
No discussions with Nixon. No, he told Nixon, "We'll get those Racists Rednecks voting GOP for a Hundred Years".
From that right wing rag, the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html?_r=0
Everyone knows that race has long played a decisive role in Southern electoral politics. From the end of Reconstruction until the beginning of the civil rights era, the story goes, the national Democratic Party made room for segregationist members — and as a result dominated the South. But in the 50s and 60s, Democrats embraced the civil rights movement, costing them the white Southern vote. Meanwhile, the Republican Party successfully wooed disaffected white racists with a “Southern strategy” that championed “states’ rights.”
It’s an easy story to believe, but this year two political scientists called it into question. In their book “The End of Southern Exceptionalism,” Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.)
The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn’t.
To be sure, Shafer says, many whites in the South aggressively opposed liberal Democrats on race issues. “But when folks went to the polling booths,” he says, “they didn’t shoot off their own toes. They voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences.” Shafer says these results should give liberals hope. “If Southern politics is about class and not race,” he says, “then they can get it back.”