Comments on: Which Party Of John C. Calhoun?

By: JDP

JDP — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:40:39 +0000

when i say “not that it’s wrong” i mean that they’re right that the GOP has been more the “White Party” for a long while now. i just don’t really have a problem with that in principle, because i think it’s unsurprising that certain aspects of conservatism will not directly appeal to minorities as much.

electorally of course is another discussion.

By: JDP

JDP — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:38:34 +0000

my main beef with Tanenhaus (and Jonathan Chait’s) “white Republican” focus is not that it’s wrong, but that it completely rejects the idea that people in the Nixon era, prejudiced or otherwise, had plenty of legitimate reasons to reject the Democrats.

unless they want to argue that crime at the time wasn’t really a big deal, that people shouldn’t have been disgusted with the radical campus Left, that pre-reform welfare didn’t have deleterious social effects…i could go on. nope, it was all just a giant GOP mindtrick to channel people’s irrational racial frustrations into an opposition to big government (as Chait says,) and so all Republican victories from 1968 on are delegitimized.

it’s all part of a narrative where liberals remain noble and pure and it’s never really their fault when they lose.

By: djf

djf — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:51:27 +0000

My understanding is that Calhoun thought that slavery was a positive good. If so, I think that’s evil.

By: Robert Cheeks

Robert Cheeks — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:43:50 +0000

djf, could you expand on your statement regarding Mr. Calhoun: “…isn’t an insult to his undoubted (if evil) intelligence.?”
Tell me of Calhoun’s ‘evil.’

By: djf

djf — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:17:17 +0000

I’m no fan of Calhoun’s, but isn’t an insult to his undoubted (if evil) intelligence to compare him to the clueless Harry Blackmun? ;-)