Quirks of History

Recently I saw a play called "The Rivalry," written by Norman Corwin in 1959 to mark the centennial of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and more broadly, the 1858 contest between those two politicans to win a Senate seat in Illinois.  Though the play apparently didn't top the charts on Broadway in the late 1950's, some of its themes resonate today.

It was fascinating to see how time can wreak complete role reversals.  In the debates, it was Douglas, the Democrat, who argued what we now would identify as the racist point of view.  One of the key issues at the time was whether the people of the Nebraska Territory should be allowed to choose, after achieving statehood, whether to legalize slavery.  Douglas argued that they should.  Lincoln, a Whig at the time but only two years later, the first Presidential candidate of the new Republican Party, argued that preventing the spread of slavery to new states was a moral imperative not susceptible to decision by vote.  (Lincoln lost that election, by the way, though he won a more important one in 1860.)

In contrast, many of today's Republican politicans have assumed the racist cloak.  I say this not because they are necessarily committed racists themselves, nor because they oppose Obama (that's their job) -- but because since the mid-1960s, it has been politically convenient to pick up the votes of the old Democratic-segregationist South.  In a multitude of subtle ways, they curry favor with the racist element of our society, finding it prudent not to close the door on them. 

That's pretty much the GOP approach to the "tea party" (i.e., don't close the door, or as Reagan called it, "the big tent").  This Courtland Milloy commentary on a gent named Tom Tancredo, a former politician who is not surprisingly no longer in office, provides food for thought in this context.

Recently I saw a play called "The Rivalry," written by Norman Corwin in 1959 to mark the centennial of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and more broadly, the 1858 contest between those two politicans to win a Senate seat in Illinois.  Though the play apparently didn't top the charts on Broadway in the late 1950's, some of its themes resonate today.

It was fascinating to see how time can wreak complete role reversals.  In the debates, it was Douglas, the Democrat, who argued what we now would identify as the racist point of view.  One of the key issues at the time was whether the people of the Nebraska Territory should be allowed to choose, after achieving statehood, whether to legalize slavery.  Douglas argued that they should.  Lincoln, a Whig at the time but only two years later, the first Presidential candidate of the new Republican Party, argued that preventing the spread of slavery to new states was a moral imperative not susceptible to decision by vote.  (Lincoln lost that election, by the way, though he won a more important one in 1860.)

In contrast, many of today's Republican politicans have assumed the racist cloak.  I say this not because they are necessarily committed racists themselves, nor because they oppose Obama (that's their job) -- but because since the mid-1960s, it has been politically convenient to pick up the votes of the old Democratic-segregationist South.  In a multitude of subtle ways, they curry favor with the racist element of our society, finding it prudent not to close the door on them. 

That's pretty much the GOP approach to the "tea party" (i.e., don't close the door, or as Reagan called it, "the big tent").  This Courtland Milloy commentary on a gent named Tom Tancredo, a former politician who is not surprisingly no longer in office, provides food for thought in this context.