Trump channels George Wallace with racial appeals
WASHINGTON >> If President Donald Trump putting race at the forefront of his reelection campaign rings familiar, that’s because another White House hopeful did the same half a century ago — and saw the strategy resonate with many Americans.
George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama as a Democrat in 1962 and vowed to safeguard “the great Anglo-Saxon Southland” while famously declaring, “I say, segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”
The onetime bantamweight boxer ran for president six years later, and, as Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey, Wallace won nearly 10 million votes on his own American Independent Party ticket, capturing Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi and one electoral vote in North Carolina. Those 46 total Electoral College votes remain the most recent won by any third party candidate in U.S. history — Texas tycoon Ross Perot garnered nearly 20 million votes in 1992, but didn’t win any states.
Wallace’s visceral populism was built on raucous rallies and the belittling of opponents under the slogan “Stand Up for America.” He once declared of those participating in the riots then sweeping the nation’s cities, “Bam! Bam! Bam! Shoot ‘em dead on the spot,” and energized many poor and working-class whites in the South and Midwest who felt disillusioned with both parties.
Trump’s supporters delight in his refusal to bow to “political correctness” at his own rallies. The president also gleefully deploys demeaning nicknames for opponents, has called some immigrant gang members “animals” and mused about using the death penalty on drug dealers — all while vowing to “Make America Great Again.”
Deeper similarities can be found, however, in Trump condemning Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore’s majority-black district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and suggesting that four Democratic congresswomen of color “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” as if they weren’t U.S. citizens.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany rejected the comparison, saying it “is absurd on its face and a desperate attempt from the fake news to distract from President Trump’s record of accomplishments for black Americans.”
“The facts tell the story,” McEnany said in a statement Tuesday that also detailed how unemployment and poverty rates have fallen for African Americans during the Trump administration, how funding for historically black colleges and universities has increased and the president’s signing into law of a sweeping criminal justice reform measure.
Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak said Trump’s attacks often have more to do with hitting back at critics like Cummings, who has decried the administration’s immigration policies, than longer term political strategy. But he said, “Is there a part of the country that responds to white resentment politics? I think there is.”
“The country is so divided,” Mackowiak added. “Even if you want to be a uniter, I don’t think it’s possible.”
Wallace’s 1968 presidential bid came against the turbulent backdrop of the Vietnam War and riots, though. It was also when Nixon began deploying what became known as the “Southern Strategy,” which used less overt opposition to desegregation to woo disaffected white southerners, many of whom supported Wallace that year but later backed Nixon, eventually becoming the backbone of enduring Republican success in the Deep South.
Trump also may be onto something. The Pew Research Center found in May that 8 in 10 Republicans feel too many people are easily offended over language — and even about 4 in 10 Democrats said the same.
Still, Dan T. Carter, a retired University of South Carolina professor and author of “The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics,” said that, as a presidential candidate, Wallace actually didn’t use race as directly as Trump is now doing. Instead, he talked in euphemisms about opposing the civil rights movement.
“In some ways it’s cruder,” Carter said of the president’s rhetoric. “Trump seems to think he doesn’t have the burden that Wallace had, a southerner where everybody knew his background.”