After inviting Southern Whites into the Party leading them to take it over and kick out distastful Republicans its worth pondering the results. The last post pointed out the new more war like GOP. This one is about one of the worst domestic mistakes the inflicted on the nation.
I used to call myself a Rockefeller Republican. Certainly in 1964 when he fell to Barry Goldwater I supported the New Yorker. Then 1968 happened and Tricky Dick Nixon ran a campaign to peel southern voters away from George Wallace. He did it by promoting “law and order.” To notherners it was a message to keep the drug addled college kids from rioting in the streets and to Southerners it meant keeping blacks out of sight. Rocky, who never gave up his wish to be President, became a hardliner in 1973 as this NPR story today relates.
It was a good liberal who took us from a nation of 300,000 convicts to a nation with 2 million largely non threatening druggies in costly prisons. He did it because that’s what Nixon and Reagan’s new southern strategy called for. Million of blacks have been put in prison and no longer can vote. It costs us a ton to keep them there. Its more expensive than putting them through public school but it keeps millions of blacks a few steps behind the rest of us law abiding white folks.
How Ironic that Rocky would have left the nation this inheritance. Experts saw its uselessness early on. Political operatives (especially GOP operatives) saw its political usefulness early on too. Guess which set of folks prevailed?
