Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Tzu
Do you support affirmative action?
|
How is this relevant?
The Voting Rights Act was not about affirmative action, and neither really was the Civil Rights Act. "Affirmative action" as you know it was an executive policy developed under the Nixon administration, a means of enforcing the Civil Rights Act. There were other means of enforcing the act. Whether by design or accident, "affirmative action" turned out to be a brilliant move politically, because it proved to be an effective wedge issue which broke apart the Democrat's coalition. So, despite the Nixonian origin, the backlash against AA benefitted Republicans like Ron Paul & Ronnie Reagan. I know you guys like to think of him as a maverick, but on this issue RP is totally mainstream Republican.
Unfortunately, for him and the Republicans, it's not 1980 anymore. I think the politics of backlash were finished by 2001, but if it wasn't clear at the time, Obama's victory, particulary his showing in NC & Virginia, made it glaringly obvious. RP's "high-minded" stand against renewing the Voting Rights Act etc. is part of the Republican racism-once-removed tactics that began with Nixon's Southern Strategy and ended with Obama's victory last fall. The world has moved on.
But for all that, his racial politics are more up to date than his ideas on the economy, where he's an embarrassment even to neoliberals.