Politi-flicks: Southern Strategy

Back in 1964 when Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Right Act, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, he is said to have remarked, "We have lost the South for a generation." And sure enough, the once solidly Dem South became, over the next 20 years, a Republican stronghold.

In the election of 1968, Nixon campaign strategist Kevin Phillips coined the phrase, "Southern strategy." This meant for conservative GOP politicians to use the euphemism, "state's rights," to signal they were against federal anti-discrimination laws, appealing directly to those unrepentent Southern white folks who did not share the goals of desegregation and its kin.

Phillips has since decried the very strategy he helped create, and as recently as last year Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, told the NAACP national convention in Milwaukee that "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Welcome, even if overdue, sentiments. Now the healing can begin.

So what's all that ruckus down in Tennessee? According to The New York Times:

The Tennessee Senate race, one of the most competitive and potentially decisive battles of the midterm election, became even more unpredictable this week after a furor over a Republican television commercial that stood out even in a year of negative advertising.

The commercial, financed by the Republican National Committee, was aimed at Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the black Democrat from Memphis whose campaign for the Senate this year has kept the Republicans on the defensive in a state where they never expected to have trouble holding the seat.

Ford is up against Bob Corker, a wetlands-selling businessman, white skin, white hair, almost seeming like an incumbant especially because it's an open seat being relinquished by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Harold is running pretty conservative except on abortion -- for border control, against gay marriage, traditional Southern positions with a dash on Libertarian.

The Corker campaign, lately, seems to be running on mud. Per its accusers, the race-baiting kind.

The Republican National Committee began running the controversial ad this past week, where actors portray "people on the street" interviews cut rapidly, all a little broadly acted, beginning by slamming Ford's good looks. But the real heat:

The controversy erupted over one of the people featured: an attractive white woman, bare-shouldered, who declares that she met Mr. Ford at a “Playboy party,” and closes the commercial by looking into the camera and saying, with a wink, “Harold, call me.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ford, who is single, said he was one of 3,000 people who attended a Playboy party at the Super Bowl last year in Jacksonville, Fla.

The most offensive part of the clip, no longer readily available on the Internet, can be seen in this Wolf Blitzer interview with Corker. As Atrios puts it:

In the Northeast the appeal to racism involves a general association between being black and urban criminality.

In the South it apparently involves the notion that black men are jungle animals who are going to sleep with all "your" white women, who will all be overcome by their animal magnetism.

If anyone has their doubts about what the RNC is intentionally doing here, check out the radio spot they started running this week as well. From TPM Cafe:

It actually has what sounds like tom-tom drums playing in the background every time the ad talks about Dem Harold Ford, Jr. The ad -- which says it was paid for by the campaign of GOP Senate candidate Bob Corker -- can be heard right here. When the ad mentions Corker, the music soars and no tom-toms are audible. Throughout the entire minute-long ad, you hear the rumble of tom-toms every time Ford is mentioned.

Here's their link to the audio. I mean, it's like listening to the New York Dolls' "Stranded in the Jungle".

Ford has responded quickly with this confident three-shot rebuttal, all on him "Kicking The Dog". You can see his conservative angle, and by not addressing the attack ad directly, just allows Ford to present himself as the most civilized opposite of the jungle caricature.

Meanwhile, both Corker and Ken Mehlman have done their damnedest to act like neither on of them had anything to do with the TV ad. Mehlman went so far as to pretend to Tim Russert that he has no control over the committee of which he is chairman, the RNC which (by law) has its credit on the ad.

There's been no escaping the public culpability, though, as evidenced by the RNC's sudden replacement of the offending "white woman" shot towards the end with a slick looking man in black shirt and shades saying, "So he took money from porn movie producers, I mean, who hasn't ha ha ha." Check it out here for yourself.

What strikes me at the end of this ad is the chirpy cartoon music, as if it's okay to smear Ford with that smug racism because it's all done in a teasing tone. You know, you don't talk about it but everybody knows, winks to each other, silently agrees.

Then there's the lettering at the end. Hard black background. Harold's name in white...but the subhead, "He's just not right," in grey. Dusky. And what the hell does "just not right" mean? "Just not white?"

While the ads are still being spotted here and there, there's been some backlash including, again per TPM Cafe:

At least two Tennessee stations are refusing to run a new Republican National Committee ad attacking Dem Harold Ford, Jr., saying that they want more factual documentation of the ads from the RNC before running them, a Ford senior adviser, Tom Lee, has told Election Central.

And ABC News claims that:

Late today the Republican National Committee said the controversial commercial will be dropped, and while officials still defend it, they acknowledge the negative response forced their hand.

Even Chris Matthews, bless him, says the Corker ad campaign is out-and-out racism, no bones about it, no place in a campaign.

You might have thought Chris was right, by this day and age. But if Corker and George "macacca" Allen win, maybe there's a whole lotta juice left in that Southern strategy.

And, if those are indeed the results two weeks from now, what does that say about the Virginia and/or Tennessee electorate?


As always, Politi-flicks is cross-posted to The Daily Reel.