Sunday Book Review: "Strom Thurmond's America"

Jonathan Yardley reviews "Strom Thurmond's America," a new book by Emory University history professor Joseph Crespino which traces the critical role the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (Racist Rethug-SC) played in the evolution of the New Confederate/ Rethuglican Party. Here's a snippet:

"Here we have one of the most perfervid racists of the 20th century — one to rank with Theodore Bilbo, Leander Perez and George Wallace — fathering a child by a black servant and then keeping that child’s existence a secret while riding white hatred of blacks to a political career that spanned seven decades. [snip]

"It is possible that Thurmond didn’t believe in anything, that the fiery rhetoric of racial hatred that he spouted for the first four decades of his career was as calculated and opportunistic as his eventual retreat from it. [snip]

"But Thurmond was a child of his time and place. The time was the early 20th century, when the South was firmly in the grip of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, and the place was a state with a history of racism as deep as that of Mississippi or Alabama. If there ever really was such a creature as a 'Southern gentleman' — a highly debatable proposition — Strom Thurmond most surely was not one. In every sense that matters, his legacy is malign, as is evident now in the sub rosa racism that fuels the appalling changes in the Republican Party that he did so much to bring about."

Sunday Book Reviews

In today's Kaplan Daily, Jonathan Yardley reviews two books on the devolution of the Rethuglican Party, and consequent paralysis of the American political system, thanks in large part to the radicalism of the tea baggers and their plutocrat string-pullers.

The books are "Rule and Ruin," by Geoffrey Kabaservice (Oxford Univ. Press) and "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism," by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson (Oxford Univ. Press). The Kabaservice book takes more of an historical look at the devolution, starting with the post-war Eisenhower years, through the Civil Rights movement, into the "Southern strategy," Reagan years and emergence of the right-wing noise machine (Fox "News," hate radio, radical right think tanks, etc.). Here's a snippet of Yardley's commentary on the tea bagger movement that Skocpol and Williamson document:

"It isn’t clear to what extent the tea partyers realize that they are being used as cat’s-paws by organizations such as the Club for Growth and by professional loudmouths such as those in the employ of Fox News, but at this stage in their evolution they aren’t the independent, grass-roots force they may have been at the beginning. They are, as Skocpol and Williamson amply document, 'overwhelmingly older white citizens, relatively well educated and economically comfortable compared to Americans in general.' They 'are more likely to be evangelical Protestants than mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, or nonbelievers.' More of them are men than women, and many are 'small business owners, often in fields like construction, remodeling, or repair,' endeavors that have been hit hard in the present economic climate. They speak angrily about big government and budget deficits, but cherish their Social Security and Medicare benefits and do not want them diminished or stopped. They believe these are benefits they have earned, as opposed to social support programs extended to the 'undeserving' needy who have not, in their view, earned such benefits. And they absolutely loathe President Obama.

"They are people with passionate political views who are, in many respects, just like the other ordinary Americans whose views they so detest. Skocpol and Williamson found many of them to be likable and hospitable. But they also are privy to some pretty wild fantasies — that what they call 'ObamaCare' includes 'both death panels and the abolition of Medicare' or that 'the Obama administration plans to seize all 401k savings to pay off the deficit' — and they are absolutely opposed to compromise in any form. Given that what remains of the Republican establishment is scared to death of them, and that moderate Republicans have gone underground, this explains why Capitol Hill is in what is beginning to look like terminal deadlock. The tea party seems to believe that the best way to save the nation is to destroy its government, an interesting notion to say the least."