Santorum and strategies

From the mailbag, Richard Einhorn writes in response to my ruminations on the Democrats vis a vis Rick Santorum:

The Democrats are a genuine puzzlement indeed. Are there really so few voters with brains that Dems really risk anything by standing up and forcefully denouncing Santorum?

As with the peace protests, the Republican powers that be have unilaterally declared the Santorum flap unimportant. One can only hope that both the peace protests and outrage against Santorum's perverted bigotry grow into something permanent and politically powerful that will make it far more difficult to take issues embarassing to the right wing off the national agenda.

I'd like to suggest that you elaborate on what you write here:

This shift in GOP strategy is in most regards a good thing; the more that extremist positions are marginalized within the GOP -- which has unfortunately tended to pander to such voting blocs in the recent past -- the more they are marginalized in the population at large. But so far there is no indication that recent Republican attempts to cast off their Cro-Magnon image and assert their "inclusiveness" are anything more than cosmetic.

I'm sure you realize GOP gay strategy is similar to their wink wink nudge nudge attitudes towards blacks, where code words were developed that meant one thing to the Cro-Magnons -- 'We're just as bigoted as you are' -- and quite another to the rest of us -- it looks like they're changing their attitudes. It would be good to hear more about code-words like "inclusive" or code-strategies like Ari Fleischer's "Bush is not interested in a person's sexuality, but only in their soul."

Finally, unlike blacks and gays, I think that the GOP is making serious efforts to woo Hispanic voters. I gather there is plenty of Hispanic homophobia and hatred of blacks for them to find common cause with the GOP base. But what is being downplayed is that the CroMags are just as bigoted against Hispanics. The opposition strategy should be to drive a wedge between Hispanics and the GOP by outing the extreme right's bigotry towards Hispanics.

And reader C.G. chimes in on a similar note:

This quote is questionable:

It became clear during the Trent Lott controversy that Karl Rove and Co. were writing off the neo-Confederate wing (for now, at least) in pursuit of the ever-elusive Suburban Voter, who might swing Republican if he/she could be convinced the GOP weren't awash with extremists of nearly every stripe.

Don't see this. Immediately following the Lott dumping the Bush administration communicated their commitment to the neo-Confederates loud and clear with a series of moves, including renominating the conservative judge [Charles Pickering] who was rejected by the Democratic Senate last year and announcing opposition to the Michigan Affirmative Action policy on MLK day.

I do agree that the Lott dumping, being positioned as a race issue (instead of him simply being pushed aside, as happened with Gingrich and almost certainly happened here), was an attempt to seek out middle voters. I just don't agree that Rove was writing off the racist wing of the GOP.

I probably should have been more clear about my paranthetical remark -- "(for now, at least)" -- by noting that this was something of an assumption that was made at the time by a number of observers. Rove and Co. clearly made an example out of Lott, and there's little question it created considerable anger among the neo-Confederate crowd. Many thought at the time that Rove was intentionally writing them off; in retrospect, it's clear he only intended to create the image of doing so -- knowing that no matter how pissed off they might become, they would have no trouble roping them back in later.

That Rove has been able to pull off this neat trick is abundantly evident in the great zeal for Bush's war among the rednecks.

And as Richard adeptly points out, the Republicans' techniques have altered very little since the early days of the Southern Strategy. The only change is that now they've added a full barrage of Newspeak to the repertoire: The new code words like "inclusiveness" actually stand the meanings of the words on their heads, which in itself serves as a kind of signal to the extremist blocs -- while simultaneously obliterating their potency as issues for the opposition. Nasty, but neat, and all too effective.