Tuesday Night Video – Rachel Maddow on Republican Racism

The modern Republican Party is built on a bedrock of racism. Most political observers know about the Southern Strategy. In 1964, Barry Goldwater and the Republican Party began using “states’ rights” as a code word for their anti-black and anti-voting rights strategy to win the Southern states away from the Democratic Party. Nearly 50 years later, the Republican Party is still attacking voter rights in their attempts to suppress minority voting.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan kick-started his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, with a speech about states’ rights. Philadelphia is where Civil Rights activists Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were killed in 1964. Reagan also created imaginary Welfare Queens to infuriate white voters with this idea of black women somehow getting a free ride in this country. In 1988, the infamous Willie Horton ad made fear of black criminals a mainstay of George Herbert Walker Bush’s presidential campaign.

Now Mitt Romney is using “obvious dog whistle racism” to attack Barack Obama, lying that Obama is dismantling Welfare to Work, and we should not be surprised. Melissa Harris-Perry joins Rachel Maddow to discuss this and rightfully includes Bill Clinton in the history of this Republican-created racist strategy. For the Republicans, racism has been a mainstay of their presidential campaigns for the past half century. When might it ever stop?

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