As the Romney campaign unskews, will the GOP's racist id take over?
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The Republican id and the vestiges of racism.
In 1948, Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond, bolted from the Democratic Party to form the States' Rights Democratic Party, better known as the Dixiecrats. Why? Because these Southern Democrats opposed desegregation:
Harry Truman established a highly visible President's Committee on Civil Rights and ordered an end to discrimination in the military in 1948. Additionally, the Democratic National Convention in 1948 adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals led by Hubert Humphrey calling for civil rights; 35 southerners walked out. The move was on to remove Truman's name from the ballot in the South. This required a new party, which the Southern defectors chose to name the States' Rights Democratic Party, with its own nominee: Governor of South Carolina J. Strom Thurmond. [...] They later adopted a platform in Oklahoma City that said:
We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.
Of course the Dixiecrats ended up in the modern Republican Party. And they came to dominate it. A sad trajectory for the Party of Lincoln. As times changed, the overt racism was cloaked in dogwhistles. See "Law and order." But on occasion, the cloak was unmasked. For example, Jesse Helms' infamous "Hands" ad in his 1990 North Carolina Senate race against Harvey Gantt:
