Major natural disaster. Unfathomable destruction. Loss of human life, major dislocation. And, cuing in five, four, three, two… !!!
“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Â “They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’
“True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”
No. Really. TRUE STORY!!! Wait. Who the heck is that black woman, alongside Pat Robertson, playing the same part Pat Robertson did with “I concure” in that Robertson / Falwell 9/11 bit — in this case agreeing that the Hatians made a pact with Satan when they pulled a Slave Revolt?
Based on recent racial awkwardness by major politicians, I’ve been ruminating a tad — and in a bit of a meandering manner. Follow me on this one, if you will.
Anyone who has seen/read/heard an interview or two with the author of The Family will know (if they hadn’t already) that Pat Robertson’s father was a Senator — the Junior Senator of Virginia, or more properly a loyal patron to Harry Byrd’s Machine (and — well too, member of the “C-Street” Family). Harry Byrd was the Virginia arch-conservative who tendered to the slenderest government and tax base, and slashed the voting roll to a manageable ten percent or thereabouts — for a manageable three statewide election positions. And, of course, he authored the “Southern Manifesto”. He last voted a Democrat in the White House in 1932. He himself was, in 1956 and 1960, a floating Southern electoral candidate for plotters scheming to throw the presidential election to the Congress to enact policies against Civil Rights. It’s the same theory of basis for the Strom Thurmond race of 1948 and the George Wallace race of 1968. And it had a particular possibility of occurring in the close 1960 race — some say, had it not been for ghost votes in Daley’s Illinois and Johnson’s Texas.
Curious to note, the Byrd electors, in the dashes to create the controversy after the election, and not fully aware of the Constitutional process that would saddle them with a vice president Lodge or Johnson — batted around the name “Goldwater” to roll with Byrd.
A recent Republican Party “Historic Republicans” page featured a bizarre roll call of 19th century Abolitionists and Women’s Suffragists. And Jackie Robinson. By any right, Goldwater would figure into an actually cognent page, indeed the man is honorable enough a figure. But somehow the modus operandi for the page — assert a tradition of inclusion even if you have to go back two centuries — forebade Goldwater (even as Reagan asserted enough of a presence that he couldn’t possibly be ignored). The page fell under the weight of its own absurdity, naturally, and it takes a minute to google up a Jackie Robinson quote comparing the 1964 Republican Party Convention to a Klan Rally.
Interesting to note, the first choice for some key Goldwater backers in fishing about for presidential candidates to reverse the marching tide of Socialism and Integration backed to the New Deal policies of Roosevelt (if then) was Orval Faubus — Arkansas Governor who rallied the public against the integration of the Little Rock high school as per the Brown v Board of Education ruling.* Also notable, in 1964, Strom Thurmond switched parties without much of a hitch, standing side by side with Barry Goldwater. At that time, negotiations were taking place for George Wallace to switch parties. He did not, in part not wanting to play second fiddle to Strom Thurmond — but for a matter of timing, another item of electoral realignment might have fallen into place. Barry Goldwater would not have been side by side at a Wallace party-switch press conference — he hated the man, and found him ideological compatible.
I guess this floats George Wallace down into the tradition of Benjamin Tillman, and separates a way from Strom Thurmond. The authors of the libertarian magazine Reason have seemingly recently rediscovered for their purposes the font of White Supremisist Populism and important key ally of William Jennings Bryan — South Carolina Senator and Governor Benjamin Tillman — er… champion of the White Common Folk. To quote him, from 1900, on the regional politics of the previous two decades:
“We have done our level best. We have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it.”
Somewhere with the words “we are not ashamed of it”, I hear echoes of Trent Lott’s statement that the people of Mississippi are “proud” in his famous quotation.
I am a tad surprised in the flourishes to the Populist tradition of Benjamin Tillman to have not seen Tom Watson pop through. Tom Watson is celebrated in, for instance, Howard Zinn’s book for leading blacks and whites together in strikes — a model of racially harmonious Class Warfare in the Populist uprisings of the late nineteenth century.  Shortly thereafter, he gave up the ghost, caved into political realities, aligned himself with the “White Common folk” — right there next to your Ben Tillmans.
