Book of the Week Club: The Rise of David Duke
Here’s a question: just how close did David Duke actually get to being elected either US Senator for Lousiana or Louisiana Governor, in the early 1990s? The answer is that if he were any other candidate, not terribly close, but because he’s David freaking Duke … close enough to warrant a chill down the spine.
His best chance would have been if the election were held just after the first debate with Edwin Edwards, a lackluster performance by Edwards and a strong effort by Duke. The bumper sticker went “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important” — an acknowledgement that you’re holding your nose to defeat a Klansman, but really… please don’t sit this out. The second debate completely flummoxed David Duke, and Edwards better articulated the moral hazards of David Duke…
… while the state was swamped with advertisements serving as mainly an economic appeal. The hazards of David Duke’s brief moment in the limelight was that the lowest common denominator for defeating him turned out to be simple dollars and cents: Elect David Duke, and nobody will want to do business with Louisiana. And venturing into the harm that his Klu Klux Klan associations met with the public, everything suggests that it his anti-semitism was the real negative for Duke — the hue and cry against Blacks was something of a double edged sword. Affirmative Action? Racial Quotas? Bussing? Welfare? Crime? You can slide into this arena with the Republican Party, trying to keep his supporters while doing away with David Duke, by saying that he “touches on many issues dear to Conservatives” but “his real motives are odious.” Indeed, Pat Buchanan is credited with putting a stake in his political career by running for the Republican nomination for President in 1992, and thus sucking out the air from David Duke, because realistically if you align Duke’s platform with Buchanan’s — they are strikingly similar.
Had David Duke only steered clear of his swastikas during his times as Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard and head of the “National Association for the Advancement of White People”, maybe he might have won something.
The story of David Duke, between 1988 and 1992, was the story of his political foes not wanting to take him on, because they figure that in the next go-around they might win over his supporters. Thus the Louisana Republican House leader saying that he won’t judge Duke for what he did when he was a Democrat. And thus his ability to squeeze through the vaccuum when Governor Buddy Roemers’ switch from the Democratic Party to Republican Party failed to follow with full support from the Louisiana Republican Party apparatus, and as his aloofness turned sour — the story being that he started to take advice from the book ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN.
A strange story, that. File the discontents of a bunch of politicians nobody likes and the politicians it allows for into a sequel to the book “Forerunners to American Fascism”.