The Southern Strategy at election time

Over the last few days, the 2006 elections have taken a dramatic turn. Debates about Iraq and the big policy issues of the day have been swept off the headlines, which are now dominated by charges of nasty campaign tactics by Republicans in Missouri (stems cells and Michael J. Fox) and Tennessee (race and Harold Ford).

Pundits like MSNBC's Chris Matthews are expressing shock and outrage at the GOP's "racist" ads. But shouldn't these seasoned politicos know better than to think it's anything new?

For example, CBS/AP notes that the mastermind behind the ads attacking Democratic Sen. candidate Harold Ford is none other than Scott Howell, a protege of Karl Rove and the late Lee Atwater. Some highlights from his campaign portfolio:

Howell is no stranger to controversy. He was media consultant for Sen. Saxby Chambliss when his campaign ran an ad showing a picture of then-Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

He also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash.

Howell also worked for Republican Jerry Kilgore in last year's Virginia gubernatorial race when Kilgore ran an ad saying that Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn't have used the death penalty against Hitler.

Howell's firm was also the mastermind behind the Swiftboat Veteran ads which cast a decorated war veteran, Sen. John Kerry, as unpatriotic.

To understand Scott Howell, you have to understand where he learned politics. He was molded in the far-right culture of the South Carolina Republican Party. Hastings Wyman, the former Republican Party activist in South Carolina and now editor of the fine Southern Political Report, describes the basics of GOP strategy in South Carolina while Howell was coming up through the ranks (as quoted in Alexander Lamis' book, Southern Politics in the 1990s):

"[A] major component of the Republican resurgence in the Old Confederacy was a racist reaction to the civil rights changes that were coming to the South. Not just a racist reaction that Republicans, in the right place at the right time, could take advantage of, but often a reaction consciously encouraged -- no, fanned -- by the GOP itself.

Racism, often purposely inflamed by many southern Republicans, either because we believed it or because we thought it would win votes, was a major tool in the building of the new Republican party in the South."

And the king of this racist strategy was, of course, Lee Atwater -- the man that recruited Scott Howell from being a losing local SC politico to working at the Republican National Committee. For this South Carolina powerhouse, no false allegation or innuendo was beyond the pale -- from attacking a candidate for having depression in his teens, to the infamous Willie Horton ads that helped torpedo Michael Dukakis in 1988.

On his deathbed, Atwater had a conversion and expressed remorse for the ugly tactics he used to win. He also became more candid about the role of racism in his campaigns. As he remarked in an interview:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964... and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the [George] Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'

Scott Howell isn't skipping a step in following in Atwater's shoes (he also went on to work for Karl Rove, which is another post). But he has yet to express any regret for his equally dubious campaign history. As Howell remarked in an interview, he thinks the only reason people criticize him is because he wins: "They don't like anyone who beats them."

As long as there are such operatives unburdened by conscience and willing to carry out the Southern Strategy, the TV pundits shouldn't be surprised when racism and other nasty tactics rear their heads when elections get tight.