Did Reagan run on racism?

[Adam Griffin]

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

[Adam Griffin]

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

[Adam Griffin]

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.

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

I don't feel like that is being said by him in a genuine context. It comes across to me more like a half-hearted absolution of his role in it. He's not saying "We didn't do that"; he's saying "So what if we did that? It's better than the alternative".

Spoiler alert: it totally isn't. The old kind you can blatantly call it as you see it. The new kind becomes so entangled in base social and economic philosophy that vast segments of the population don't even realize it and therefore pitch a fit when you try to separate it from the policies that were designed to covertly encase them.