In 1981 Interview, ‘Rove’s Brain’ Lee Atwater Connects the Dots Between Jim Crow Racist Policies and GOP’s Push for Budget Cuts
Jon Ponder | Aug 17, 2011

Lee Atwater

Lee Atwater

In 1981, the late Lee Atwater, political mentor to Karl Rove and George W. Bush and one of the originators of today’s Republican propaganda attack machine, was interviewed anonymously by political scientist Alexander P. Lamis for his book, Two-Party South. In the interview, Atwater explained how the GOP, in its appeal to Southern voters starting with Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, reconfigured overtly racist policies from the Jim Crow era into Reagan-era economic policies, including particularly budget cuts targeting the poor:

LEE ATWATER: As to the whole Southern strategy that [Nixon political strategist] Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

QUESTIONER: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

ATWATER: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

(Sources: Hullaballoo, New York Times)

3 Responses »

  1. Kuni August 17, 2011 @ 3:55 pm

    • Since 1960 we have had five tax increases on the rich: Four out of those five times unemployment went down.
    • Since 1960 we have ten cuts to the top marginal rate: Six out of those ten times unemployment has gone up.

    The only question that should be asked is: So do you support giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda in its attempt to weaken our economy, by supporting tax cuts on the rich; or do you support having the rich pay the costs incurred maintaining the civilization that not only allows for their existence, but is also responsible for them being wealthy?

  2. Joy August 20, 2011 @ 7:18 am

    Why don’t you use your computer to research tax rates in the US? I think you’ll be surprised at the huge fortunes that were amassed when the rich paid 70% or more.

  3. Joy August 20, 2011 @ 7:20 am

    P.S. I like your post and only wish you had posted some of the extremely high taxes that the rich paid at one time.
    Thanks.

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