The Republican Party and the Auto Industry—Planned Obsolescence

by Raynard Jackson

There is a strange irony between the Republican Party and the auto industry. Both are bankrupt through terrible leadership who made bad decisions. Now, those decisions that were made years ago are coming back to bite both groups.

The Republican’s adoption of the “Southern Strategy,” which basically ceded the Black vote in order to get the white vote, is the starting point for the party’s demise. In the short term, the strategy was a great success (it gave Republicans 4 presidents—Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush). But, the long term effects of this strategy is proving to be devastating to the Republican Party. It’s like someone who was a heavy drug user throughout their 20’s. Then they cleaned up their lives in their 30’s, but in their 40’s they began to have all kinds of medical issues. The doctor tells them that the medical conditions are a result of the decisions that were made in their 20’s (the “Southern Strategy’).

Don’t believe me? Look at what former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips said in a 1970 New York Times interview. According to Phillips, “From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

Still don’t believe me? Look at what former head of the Republican Party, Lee Atwater had to say when interviewed in 1981 by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. According to 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 bussing, 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.”

Still not quite convinced? Remember how Republicans did one of their own after the 2004 elections? This person basically went to the party and said you need help with this addiction (the Southern Strategy). The party activists went apoplectic. This person was Bush’s campaign manager and former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman. Here’s what he said in 2005 about the Southern Strategy when addressing a Black group, “Republican candidates often have prospered by ignoring black voters and even by exploiting racial tensions and by the ‘70s and into the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the Africa-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.” People like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity castigated Mehlman for his remarks.

What the Southern Strategy didn’t prepare the Republican Party for is the tectonic shifts in the political landscape. The environment that allowed the Southern Strategy to flourish is no longer around. These Republican strategists that devised and continued this perverted strategy have now been marginalized by the shifting demographics of our changing society.

You have about a third of the Republican base controlling an entire party. They have a very narrow view of the shifting demographics of this country and are not capable of appealing to anyone who disagrees with them. Their view is very similar to the auto industry of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Their attitude was, “we will build the cars we think people want and then spend billions trying to convince them to buy something they don’t want.”

Then came the Japanese auto makers. Their approach was, “tell us what you want and we will build it.” Thus, American auto makers are in financial ruins not because of the economy, but because they made bad decisions in the ‘80s that are now coming back to haunt them today.

Rightly or wrongly, Americans don’t trust Republicans and they blame them for the financial collapse we are going through. People have tuned the Republicans out. They can set up a million new groups with all kinds of fancy names, but you can’t continue to trot out the same, tired people who put the party in this situation and expect people to respond. Like an addict in denial, Republicans don’t see a problem with their message. They think they have a communication problem. The American people have told the Republican Party in no uncertain terms that they do not like to message coming from them. But, just like an addict tunes out his doctor because he is in denial, Republicans continue to think the problem is communication, not message.

So, it goes with the auto industry. Because of the decisions they made in the ‘80s, they nor their industry will never be what it once was. The Republican Party would do well to heed the lesson.



Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a D.C.-based political consulting/government affairs firm.