Emotion, as well as economic benefit, influences how we vote. Emotional voting happens in both political parties, but the Republican Party's Southern strategy is built totally around it.
The core Republicans, before Nixon, were for the most part those with business interests. Their platform pushed subsidies for corporations, reduced regulations, and supported the removal of business restrictions, which hindered them from making money.
But today millions more are voting Republican, and they aren't voting their pocketbook. These voters consider emotional issues to be more important than economic issues. A big percentage of them are evangelicals and Southern, and to understand these voters, we need to look back at the generation who grew up in the 1950s and '60s.
It was a time in the South where courthouse "colored only" water fountains were still in use. In schools, when students studied the Civil War and the teacher talked about how the Southern troops routed the Yankees at Bull Run, the class clapped, and later, at the U of A, when the band played Dixie, we stood and yelled, not for the Hogs, but because we were Southerners.
Almost from birth white Southerners, from the time of the Civil War to the 1970s, were immersed in prejudice against Blacks and a romanticized version of the War. If you grew up in the South during the 50 years before 1975, you constantly received doses of prejudice and Southernized Civil War, and some of that core emotion is still in the recesses of your mind.
That's a bitter pill to swallow, but all white Southerners from that era have been subject to so much prejudice and such a false view of Civil War history during their early lives that it remains embedded in our emotions. We can't completely get rid of it, and that's because of the deep love Southerners have for the South.
The core Republican Party operatives understand that white Southerners not only love the South, but still have strong emotional ties to the past, and those ties override pocketbook voting. Our emotions are powerful enough to convince millions to ignore the loss of entitlements and push aside thoughts that the president's tax cuts heavily favor big business.
The president is a native New Yorker and was a businessman before he became president. On the abortion issue, he is on record of being pro-choice. Today, he is anti-abortion, and is against removing Confederate monuments and renaming military bases named for Confederate generals, and is OK with flying the Confederate battle flag. It fits right into emotional voting. Surely you don't think he believes any of that stuff.
According to the president's recent appointments to the Supreme Court, in Congressional hearings these men and possibly the woman under consideration strongly indicate abortion law is "settled law," and most scholars are predicting abortion won't even be considered by the Court. The Court has had a majority of Republican appointees for years, and Roe v. Wade remains unchanged.
The primary reason it won't be struck down is totally political. A wave of anti-Republican pro-choice women would make that vote political suicide. If we use an anti-abortion emotion to justify our vote, when in reality we know abortion is never going to be forbidden, our Southern emotions are directing our vote.
The present Republican administration has awarded its wealthy core supporters and big business an unbelievable fortune through whopping tax cuts, dropping out of the Paris Climate Agreement, stripping environmental regulations, cutting back on the Clean Water Act, allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, gutting the Endangered Species Act, reversing the control of emissions from coal burning plants, reducing acreage in our national forests, and advancing bills to allow clear-cutting there without public hearings.
Recently, the president staged a photo op standing in front of a church holding a Bible. A reporter asked, "Mr. President, is that your Bible?" The president answered, "It's a Bible."
Do you think the president, who may not even own a Bible and plays golf on Sundays, is pandering to evangelicals? I think he is just as sincere as he is about protecting Confederate monuments.
Yes, most of us know we're being lied to, but at least we're not being ignored, and even with all the South's dark history, anything that reflects our Southern ties is better than nothing. That is sad, but true.
My first vote was for Richard Nixon. However, in this coming election for president, I am going to vote for the Democrat nominee, because the Republican Southern strategy is trying to take advantage of our emotions. We're being thrown a bone--a dirty, worthless bone. I don't like to be called dumb, and I don't like being lied to.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.