The not so permanent Republican majority

Today, Krugman lobs another salvo at the Reagan apologist camp with an editorial focused on the tactics and limits of racial polarization.

Now, about the Philadelphia story: in December 1979 the Republican national committeeman from Mississippi wrote a letter urging that the party’s nominee speak at the Neshoba Country Fair, just outside the town where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It would, he wrote, help win over “George Wallace inclined voters.”

Sure enough, Reagan appeared, and declared his support for states’ rights — which everyone took to be a coded declaration of support for segregationist sentiments.

Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong.

The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time. The “macaca” incident, in which Senator George Allen’s use of a racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for the better.

And because conservative ascendancy has depended so crucially on the racial backlash — a close look at voting data shows that religion and “values” issues have been far less important — I believe that the declining power of that backlash changes everything.

Can anti-immigrant rhetoric replace old-fashioned racial politics? No, because it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites — and alienates the growing number of Latino voters.

Krugman makes two important points here. First, Americans change for the better. This seems pretty obvious to me but I think it bears repeating. We are, by and large, a fair-minded, egalitarian people. We may not get it right from the start but we will get there. Forty years ago, some Southern states (my beloved Virginia included) still outlawed interracial marriage. That is something most Gen X’ers like me don’t even think twice about and I firmly believe that the next generation will look back at this time and ask why gay marriage was such a big deal. Americans may not be perfect but damn it, we will try to get better.

The second and narrower political point deals with the immigration issue. Here in Virginia, during this fall’s election season, the state GOP ran on what was essentially an anti-immigration platform, in which they tried to make brown the new black. The Republicans got crushed for their efforts, proving Krugman’s point that there is an ever-shrinking group of crackers moved by identity politics. As we become more diverse, we are also becoming more tolerant. That, my friends, is a very good thing.