Did Reagan run on racism?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Yes and he was better at it than Nixon.

How else could he support Apartheid South Africa? He literally ended up overridden by Congress for that.

He didn't support Apartheid any more than Obama is supporting imprisonment of dissidents by wanting to end the embargo against Cuba.   

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Uh, there's a reason "Reagan Democrats" were a thing.

Not that "Reagan Democrats" were all that much of a thing, but did it ever occur to you that blue collar whites might be motivated by something other than racism?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Uh, there's a reason "Reagan Democrats" were a thing.

Not that "Reagan Democrats" were all that much of a thing, but did it ever occur to you that blue collar whites might be motivated by something other than racism?

Yes, because 25 percent of Democrats voting for a Republican isn't "much of a thing".

It depends on how it is meant. Most Reagan Democrats were also Nixon Democrats, and often Goldwater Democrats and/or Eisenhower Democrats. Every Republican candidate in the 2nd half of the 20th century, even those who lost, won a large number of Democratic votes. Reagan certainly made further inroads into traditionally Democratic communities, but the image of Reagan Democrats as being of a certain type can be misleading, and the gains made were on the margins rather than wholesale.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

That's stretching pretty pathetically thin to say "reducing spending" is racial code. Might as well just say being a Republican automatically makes you a racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

" 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 then we’re doing away with the racial problem one way or the other, you follow me?"

Atwater was saying one way or another, racism was not relevant in the 1980 campaign.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-bashir-broadcasts-misleading-edit-of-lee-atwater-quote-to-portray-gop-as-racist/

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

I don't know what a "deconstructionist hermeneutic" is, but how exactly are you connecting that ominous Atwater line about "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other" to the claim that racism wasn't relevant to the 1980 presidential campaign?

He is taking the premise of this question:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

and accepting it for the sake of argument.
He is arguing that a campaign that might appeal to racists by pointing to other issues that might be subconsciously related to racism is going to leave racial politics behind anyway by focusing on those other, substantively nonracial, issues.  There's some weakness to that argument, but this is one of many things he is saying in defending against the charge that the campaign was racist.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

I don't know what a "deconstructionist hermeneutic" is, but how exactly are you connecting that ominous Atwater line about "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other" to the claim that racism wasn't relevant to the 1980 presidential campaign?

He is taking the premise of this question:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

and accepting it for the sake of argument.
He is arguing that a campaign that might appeal to racists by pointing to other issues that might be subconsciously related to racism is going to leave racial politics behind anyway by focusing on those other, substantively nonracial, issues.  There's some weakness to that argument, but this is one of many things he is saying in defending against the charge that the campaign was racist.

I've never seen anyone maintain that explicitly racist language was a staple of Reagan's campaigns. What claim are you arguing against?

the claim that the Atwater interview was a confession that Reagan's campaign was intentionally race-baiting by talking about cutting spending.