only black people vote in this line up

[Sam Spade]

What race baiting ad?

Willie Horton I would guess, he was talking of 1988.

That was not even a Bush ad. It was made by an independent organization.

It was extremely effective...(not just the ad, Bush mentioned Horton in speeches IIRC)...both in driving White suburban swing voters to the Reps, and in alienating any Black with any sort of selfrespect from the Republican party for years to come.

The ultimate irony for Dukakis was that nothing (not even Willie Horton) caused the blacks didn't turn out for him at all anyways.

As for the historical impact, Patrick1 is quite correct that people today who weren't alive or functioning in 1988 frankly just don't realize how bad crime was in the inner cities then.  The ad was so bloody effective because it emphasized something that was factually accurate with the subtext (racial that it was) that people of that time related with.

Law and order was a huge issue in that day.  In fact, I think it's  probably the key issue that kept those inner suburbs from trending Democrat in the 1980s when the Republican party moved right on other social issues.

[© tweed]

Most blacks don't care who's racist, they care who has their best interest in hand.  That obviously is Byrd.  Also, Byrd isn't any more racist than your average millionaire white senator.

[they don't love you like i love you]

The racism in that ad may have been subtle, but it was definately there.

It was actually a REPUBLICAN Governor that started the furlough program. Dukakis ended it.

[dazzleman]

Lee Atwater was a genius and knew exactly what he was doing.
That ad had scary nig**** are coming to kill and rape your wives and daughters all over it.  The ad was factaully accurate in many ways but it was the subtext that made it so succcessful.  Dukasis being such a detached whimp in the debate question on what he would do if his wife were raped only enforced his image as completely wrong on law and order.  Law and order had a lot more resonance iin those days as most cities were spiraling out of control.  I don't think some of our younger posters can realize how horrible many cities were.

The truth is the truth.  When telling the truth is offensive to people, and a political philosophy relies on the truth not being told, that's a real problem.

The crime problem then was real, and it continues to be, though not as extreme.  Two black men came to break into my house Monday when I was home sick.  I live in a low crime area, but any time there is serious crime, it is almost always committed by blacks.  Everybody knows this, as was proven by the reaction I got from friends and relatives when I told them of my experience.  The most mild was, basically, "well, naturally they were black," and the most extreme was "those f**king ni**ers," but the basic subtext was there -- serious crime is largely a black enterprise, at least where I live, and everybody knows it and acts upon it.

Not running the Willie Horton ad changes nothing.  Nor does the Willie Horton ad tell anyone anything they didn't already know.

[Lincoln Republican]

The racism in that ad may have been subtle, but it was definately there.

It was actually a REPUBLICAN Governor that started the furlough program. Dukakis ended it.

Lest anyone think Dukakis signed the bill ending this monstrosity of a program and this gross miscarriage of justice, otherwise known as the Massachusetts Furlough Program, willingly, a few facts are in order.

It's true the program was begun during the term of liberal Republican Governor Francis Sargent in 1972.

In 1976, however, Governor Dukakis vetoed a bill to ban furloughs for first-degree murderers.  It would, said Dukakis, "Cut the heart out of inmate rehabilitation."

The program, in essence, released killers on an "honor system" to see if they would stay out of trouble.  On the average, convicts who had been sentenced to "life without parole" spent fewer than 19 years in prison.  By March, 1987, Dukakis had commuted the sentences of 28 first-degree murderers.

Of over 80 Massachusetts convicts listed as escaped and still at large, as of 1988, only four had acutally "escaped."  The rest simply walked away from furloughs, prerelease centers and other minimum-security programs.  These convicts included murderers, rapists, armed robbers and drug dealers.

When citizens began to protest, Dukakis and his aides defended the program relentlessly.  One commissioner stated that furloughs were a "management tool" to help the prisons.  Unless a convict had hope of parole, he argued, "we would have a very dangerous population in an already dangerous system."  But, critics wondered, if armed guards can't control dangerous killers inside locked cells, how are unarmed citizens supposed to deal with them?

It was through the efforts of a grassroots organization, Citizens Against Unsafe Society, that the issue was finally brought before the people.  With mounting pressure from his own aides to sign a bill ending the program - for fear that it would hurt his presidential campaign - Dukakis signed the ligislation in April of 1988.

This program, defended by Dukakis until the bitter end, who only signed the bill ending the program fearing it would hurt his presidential ambitions, was one of the many Dukakis policies showing he was woefully unfit to be President.

The Willie Horton ad was not race baiting at all.  It simply pointed out a policy that Dukakis held near and dear to his heart, coddling criminals.

 

[dazzleman]

Lest anyone think Dukakis signed the bill ending this monstrosity of a program and this gross miscarriage of justice, otherwise known as the Massachusetts Furlough Program, willingly, a few facts are in order.

It's true the program was begun during the term of liberal Republican Governor Francis Sargent in 1972.

In 1976, however, Governor Dukakis vetoed a bill to ban furloughs for first-degree murderers.  It would, said Dukakis, "Cut the heart out of inmate rehabilitation."

The program, in essence, released killers on an "honor system" to see if they would stay out of trouble.  On the average, convicts who had been sentenced to "life without parole" spent fewer than 19 years in prison.  By March, 1987, Dukakis had commuted the sentences of 28 first-degree murderers.

Of over 80 Massachusetts convicts listed as escaped and still at large, as of 1988, only four had acutally "escaped."  The rest simply walked away from furloughs, prerelease centers and other minimum-security programs.  These convicts included murderers, rapists, armed robbers and drug dealers.

When citizens began to protest, Dukakis and his aides defended the program relentlessly.  One commissioner stated that furloughs were a "management tool" to help the prisons.  Unless a convict had hope of parole, he argued, "we would have a very dangerous population in an already dangerous system."  But, critics wondered, if armed guards can't control dangerous killers inside locked cells, how are unarmed citizens supposed to deal with them?

It was through the efforts of a grassroots organization, Citizens Against Unsafe Society, that the issue was finally brought before the people.  With mounting pressure from his own aides to sign a bill ending the program - for fear that it would hurt his presidential campaign - Dukakis signed the ligislation in April of 1988.

This program, defended by Dukakis until the bitter end, who only signed the bill ending the program fearing it would hurt his presidential ambitions, was one of the many Dukakis policies showing he was woefully unfit to be President.

The Willie Horton ad was not race baiting at all.  It simply pointed out a policy that Dukakis held near and dear to his heart, coddling criminals.

 

It may have been race baiting, but it was the truth, and it was a valid issue.  Liberals love to hide behind race-baiting whenever somebody tries to point out the brainlessness of some of their policies.  The furlough policy was brainless, and Dukakis' defense of it was a perfect example of brainless knee-jerk liberalism.  The American people had a right to know this.