Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, beating out moderate conservative (and possible robot) Mitt Romney by 12.5 percentage points. With his win, I, along with many other independent voters, cannot take the Republican Party seriously anymore.
The South Carolina Republican primary has traditionally been won by the party’s most electable candidate who goes on to win the nomination and the backing of the Republican establishment. In an upset that turned the tables on the Romney campaign, Gingrich won S.C., riding high on a campaign strategy of divisive politics and fiery rhetoric.
While Gingrich’s win may have had, in minor part, to do with Romney’s poor debate performances, his racially charged language is what endeared him to S.C. voters, in a state charged with far-right politics and deep seated racism (South Carolina started the Civil War, kept electing Strom Thurmond, etc.)
Gingrich’s win was made possible by his successful use of the “Southern strategy” that the Republican Party has been leaning on more heavily since the election of President Barack Obama. This divisive strategy relies on stirring up resentment of the poor (and especially minority Americans) to rile up the ultra-conservative base.
Right-wing candidates like Gingrich have used this strategy to great effect, suggesting that poor minority students in inner-city schools should work as janitors so that they might learn the value of earning money (rather than waiting for a handout, as was implied).
In the debates, Gingrich’s statements on the work ethic of poor and minority Americans, and his repeated referral to President Obama as a “food stamp president” were met with cheers and applause from the audience.
When Fox News moderator Juan Williams questioned Gingrich at the Jan.16 debate on his racially charged comments (such as: “I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps,”), Williams, who is an African-American, was met with loud boos from the audience. When Gingrich once again repeated his stand on work ethic, along with a few offhand gripes at Obama’s welfare state, he was met with applause.
After the debate, Williams confessed that his supervisors had warned him that any questions regarding Gingrich’s racial comments would be met with opposition from the audience, but he wasn’t aware how scornful the reaction would be. It was uncomfortable to watch Williams lean forward in his seat, as if that would put a safe distance between him and the jeering people behind him.
Ironically, while Gingrich made appeals to the predominantly white audiences of the debates by making insinuations about the laziness of poor minorities, it is whites that receive the majority of federal food stamps, and not African-Americans. Whites take 35.7 percent of food stamps, as opposed to 22 percent taken by blacks. For welfare services in general, 66 percent of welfare recipients are white, while 33 percent are black.
The old stereotypes of the lazy “welfare queen,” is statistically untrue, according to the federal statistics. But that makes these appeals to racial stereotypes no less effective today with white conservatives in the South than it has been in the past. The racially condescending idea that poor, disadvantaged people are only poor and disadvantaged because they’re too lazy to change their circumstances is not only ugly, but also irrational.
Gingrich did not earn his victory in South Carolina with constructive dialogue on improving America’s economic prospects; instead he based his campaign on negative rhetoric, appealing to the lowest reaches of American politics.
