This is the presidency George Wallace never had

[marble falls]

This is the presidency George Wallace never had

By
Max Boot
Columnist
May 29, 2020 at 3:14 p.m. CDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/29/george-wallace-was-too-extreme-gop-now-trump-channels-him




<snip>

A few minutes later, shedding his jacket and clenching his fist, Wallace shouted: “We don’t have riots in Alabama. They start a riot down there, first one of ‘em to pick up a brick gets a bullet in the brain, that’s all. And then you walk over to the next one and say, ‘All right, pick up a brick. We just want to see you pick up one of them bricks, now!’ ”

As historian Dan T. Carter notes in his history of the modern conservative movement, “The crowd went berserk.” It was obvious to both supporters and detractors what Wallace was saying. An African American protester held up a poster proclaiming “Law and Order — Wallace Style.” “Underneath the slogan,” Carter writes, “was the outline of a Ku Klux Klansman holding a noose.”

In 1968, most Republicans did not support Wallace, who spent most of his career in the Democratic Party. He was considered too much of an extremist even by conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr., and in those days, there was still a substantial number of more liberal “Rockefeller Republicans.”

But now, in Donald Trump, we have the closest thing we have ever had to having George Wallace in the White House — and Republicans are nearly unanimous in their approbation. The president is pouring gasoline on the flames of racial division, and the Republican Party is holding the jerrycan for him. This is where the Southern Strategy has led after half a century.

[SCantiGOP]

1. Good article, but Wallace would have been better than Trump

1- Wallace was a racist, but at least he was open about it. Trump is just as racist but claims to be, in his preposterous words, “the least racist person in America.”
2- Wallace had served a career in government, and was a Governor at the time he ran. He understood how government worked and, regardless of his policies, would have at least known how to run a reasonably competent operation.
3- Wallace, unlike Trump, demonstrated a capacity to learn and grow, and to adjust his views and policies as conditions changed. He apologized for his earlier racism when he was nearing the end of his life, and admitted that it had been wrong, and was largely a result of political expediency rather than genuine dislike of the black race. This was in large part because of the lifelong and close relationship he had with the black man who served as his assistant and caretaker in the latter stages of his life. Trump, with no capacity at all to feel empathy for another human, could not have used that experience to examine and change his lifelong prejudices and hatreds.

Wallace was a horrible and hateful man for most of his active career, but I really think Trump is worse and more dangerous.

[empedocles]

2. wallace was somewhat typical sourthern Governor of his time.

traitortrump is not 'typical' - trump is, in his perverse way, 'exceptional'/

[Chainfire]

3. By the end of Wallace' life

He had begun to come around. Trump will go to his grave being an unapologetic hater and racist.

It is a damn shame when a US President compares unfavorably with George Wallace, but it is what it is.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. Birmingham 1963

Some of us remember.



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[marble falls]

5. I remember. Its was the spark that got me away from the racism I learned at my grandfather's ...

knee and my father's dinner table.

[2naSalit]

6. K&R