Jan Brewer’s 'Southern Strategy': Dealing the GOP's favorite race card?

[pinboy3niner]

Source: TucsonSentinel.com


Columnist Jimmy Zuma has an interesting--and credible--take on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's political strategy:

Jan Brewer’s 'Southern Strategy'
Did Gov. Brewer find a new way to deal the GOP's favorite race card?

Posted Jun 14, 2010, 3:29 pm
Jimmy Zuma
TucsonSentinel.com


<snip>
For the past couple of months in Washington’s press corps, a media narrative has emerged about immigration, something to the tune of "everybody agrees that 'Washington hasn’t done its job.'"

Republicans like the narrative because it casts Democrats as failing. Immigration-reform advocates like the narrative because they believe it gives momentum to real immigration reform. Border fence advocates like Senator John McCain like it because, I believe, they are completely disingenuous phonies whose real intention is to prevent actual immigration reform. (They’d prefer to distract with a fence when the real solution is penalizing employers.) And Governor Jan Brewer likes it because it reinforces her own made-up story about an increasing horde of illegal Mexicans.
<snip>

So given that Brewer’s claims aren’t provable - just the opposite - what’s she really up to? One popular rumor is that SB 1070 was a gift of legal protection to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has an infamous and exceptional lawsuit problem. The suspicion is that she gave him legalized race profiling in exchange for him not running against her in the Republican primary.

The other explanation is that Brewer is trying an update of the Republican “Southern Strategy.” In every election from Nixon to Reagan, Republicans played to the racial fears of Southern whites, first using overt racist language and later using racial code language like “state’s rights.” This is not an opinion; it’s a fact of history. It was explained by famous Reagan political strategist Lee Atwater, in a quote that’s too coarse for me to repeat, but probably important for you to read.


Read more:
http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/opinion/report/061510_brewer_southern_strategy/#When:22:29:45Z

The NSFW Lee Atwater quote referred to can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Southern_Strategy

[blondeatlast]

1. Or, most likely, both. Good God--Governor Arpaio? I hadn'[t even considered that it might be a trade

but sadly, it makes sense. Even Janet Napolitano made a deal with that fat, sweaty devil.

[pinboy3niner]

2. Arpaio's 11th-hour announcement that he wouldn't run for Gov....

...can be explained by this theory. There was speculation at the time that the explanation was that he expected to be indicted in one of the investigations targeting him, and that was why he couldn't run. Zuma's theory makes as much sense (and perhaps more, as multiple investigations have yet to produce an indictment).

[blondeatlast]

3. He'll never be indicted--but I can dream, can't I? nt

[pinboy3niner]

5. That's my dream, too

Racial profiling used to be illegal in this country, especially after the gains of the civil rights movement (not that many didn't get away with it anyway).

My dream is that DOJ's Civil Rights Division will indict him and shut his operation down. I realize that Arpaio has been very careful, but the investigations are taking way too long. Others have been emboldened to emulate Arpaio, and to propose racist legislation in other states just like AZ's anti-immigrant law. DOJ action--both on the Arpaio investigations and in challenging the Arizona law in court--would go a long way toward at least slowing this trend.

[Bluebear]

4. kick

[blondeatlast]

6. kick

[RobertPlant]

7. will Arpaio run again in 2012?

he will be 80 by then and I could see him either having died by then or having retired.