Did David Brooks Tell the Full Story About Reagan's Neshoba County Fair Visit?

[NNN0LHI]

http://hnn.us/articles/44535.html

By Joseph Crespino

Mr. Crespino is the author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007). He teaches American history at Emory University.

In his November 9, 2007, column in the New York Times, David Brooks discussed Ronald Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 and his use of the term “states’ rights.” Brooks absolved Reagan of racism, but he ignored the broader significance of Reagan’s Neshoba County appearance.

A full account of the incident has to consider how the national GOP was trying to strengthen its southern state parties and win support from southern white Democrats. Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee. Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”

This Republican leader knew that the segregationist Alabama governor was the symbol of southern white resentment against the civil rights struggle. Richard Nixon had angled to win these voters in 1968 and 1972. Mississippi Republicans knew that a successful Republican candidate in 1980 would have to continue the effort.

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan. In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.” Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech. The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County.

[underpants]

1. As Krugman pointed out on C-Span's BookTV it was all an innocent mistake

http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8887&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No

Indeed, you do really have to feel sorry for Reagan. He just kept making those innocent mistakes.

When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting. But it was all just an innocent mistake.

When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. True, as the New York Times reported,

The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man.

But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.

Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.

In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.

And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.

Poor Reagan. He just kept on making those innocent mistakes, again and again and again.
http://libertystreetusa.blogspot.com/2007/11/paul-krugman-on-reagans-innocent.html

[Lasher]

2. Good one, Underpants.

One of your best, IMO. :thumbsup:

[chelsea0011]

3. As we all know and I keep hearing how Reagan was our greatest President, all this

has me confused.:sarcasm:

[underpants]

4. But don't you see? He was

He brought racism directly back into the White House!!!

BTW- if you didn't get these messages then it wasn't directed towards you. Much like W bringing up the Dred Scott in a debate ( that is "pro-life" code).

[Old and In the Way]

5. Brooks is the worst kind of Republican revisionist/apologist.

Being the rhetorical coward that he is, I suspect that he slink away from defending this trial balloon.

[xchrom]

6. krugman nails the real awful history of reagan --

and why leaving his legacy as a saint intact is a mistake.

great discussion on this thread.