Lee Atwater, former advisor to Ronald Reagan and veteran of
South Carolina politics was tape recorded in an interview in 1981, while he was
working in the Reagan administration, by a Case Western Reserve professor. The
recording has been in hiding until now, and has been outted by James Carter IV,
President Carter’s grandson - the same
person who released Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% video.
What Atwater revealed is truly astounding. Atwater
opined to the prof an analysis of how the Republican Party can appeal to
racists in an era where overt racism is political suicide.
Take a listen to this YouTube recording, your hair will
stand on end.
What Atwater essentially said was that you could appeal to
racists in 1954 by shouting the N-word, but not in 1968 – nor 1981, nor now.
Now, Atwater said, you have to be more abstract, more coded.
The code at the time, as revealed by Atwater was “forced
busing” and “state’s rights.” Either of these codes appealed to racists. But
now, or in 1981 (and apparently ongoing until this day), Atwater claims that a
more abstract, but equally appealing code word that appeals to racists is
“cutting taxes.”
Cutting taxes, he explains, is an economic issue but an
abstraction that appeals to racists as it hurts African-Americans more than
most of us. How that happens I will leave up to the racists.
So it’s quite a revelation, isn’t it? All of this talk of
cutting taxes is just code words to appeal to racists to vote for the
Republican Party.
As if they needed a code word.
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