The Republican Party went high, but then went low

Michelle Obama’s renowned catchphrase, “When they go low, we go high” in not relevant merely as a response to negative rhetoric.  It also explains how the two American political parties have diverged over the past five decades in the basic process of elections.  The legislative history of the United States features a few landmark moments which dramatically changed the nation for the better. Among them are two related laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which clarified that people’s rights are universal, not based on race. Both laws were resisted by filibusters by southern Democrats in the Senate but eventually passed thanks to the vote wrangling skills of President Lyndon Johnson who pushed both parties for bipartisan support of the bills.  The votes by party are listed below.

Reviewing the percentages today, 55 years later, may bring mixed feelings of surprise, dismay, and perhaps bitter irony.  Republican support for both laws was stronger than Democratic support. The Democrats had large majorities of both houses when the laws were passed but, though a majority of Democrats voted for both laws, neither could have passed without Republican support.  Opposition in both houses of congress was concentrated mostly amongst members from southern states. 

Forty years later, suit was brought to the Supreme Court under the premise that some provisions of the Voting Rights Act were unnecessary and thus unconstitutional in Shelby County vs. Holder. The court ruled in a 5-4 ruling in which 5 Republican appointees voted against 4 Democratic appointees ruling that some provisions of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional. Within hours of the ruling, Republicans in several states were at work to enact restrictions on voting with the aim of reducing the number of voters who were poor and/or black.  Republican state governments, particularly those with trifectas of the governor's mansion and both houses of the legislature, continue to enact restrictions that, though not as onerous as the poll taxes and literacy tests of the past, are designed to make voting difficult for the poor who are often black.  Said governments resist simplifying voting even in the midst of a life-endangering pandemic.

What happened to the Republican Party in the decades since the landmark rights laws were passed with overwhelming Republican support? Michelle Obama summed it up. In their party’s votes for the two landmark laws, Republicans were overwhelmingly the party of progress on civil rights, compared to a divided Democratic Party.  Republicans went high, higher relatively than Democrats did. But, rather than capitalize on their stronger demonstrated support for civil and voting rights to attract voters of color (forty percent of the black vote in 1960 was for Richard Nixon), the Republican Party “went low” by taking on the mantel of racism while the Democratic Party “went high” by shedding the mantel of racism and championing the rights of all.  

For decades, the focus on winning today's election by any means, even such divisive racist strategies, blinded the Republican Party to the future impact of such appeals.  Sometimes subtly, sometimes covertly, sometimes blatantly, Republicans courted white voters to the exclusion of the voters of color, locally and at the national level. Stuart Stevens in his book, It Was All A Lie takes his party and himself to task for their settling on the temporarily successful yet ultimately self-destructive appeal to racism.

At the national level, Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan’s appeals to states’ rights and embrace of welfare queen tropes, George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton ads, George W. Bush’s push poll in the South Carolina primary, and Trump’s assorted racist appeals all prioritized courting white voters who constituted a significant yet gradually decreasing majority of the voting electorate. Consider the fate of Republican presidential candidates who disdained such strategies as a matter of principle: Gerald Ford, Robert Dole, John McCain.  They lost.

Demographically, such strategies worked for decades as a sizable majority of actual voters were white. Over time, growth in non-white populations as a percentage of the electorate as well as a gradual decline of white voters comfortable with such strategies as well as the party's shift to the right have led to a decline in the party's long term prospects, despite local successes as well as the structural biases of the Senate toward sparsely populated states.  Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once in the past eight presidential elections (2004, 50.7% to 48.3%).  Rather than revise their message and tactics to be more inclusive, the Republican Party continues to mirror the strategies of the Southern Democrats of the Jim Crow era to reduce black participation in elections.  Many people who considered themselves Republican have left the party in recent decades because of such racist electioneering among other reasons, frequently saying they did not abandon the party:  the party abandoned them.  Polls show strong support of Trump amongst Republicans because the results do not include Republicans who have left the party because it "went low."

One wonders if the national Republican Party will follow the fate of the Republican Party of California or if it will discard the mantel of racism. From 1964 to 2008, the only elected Presidents of either party who were not from the south were California Republicans.  In 1970, nearly half of the 38 Congressmen from California were Republicans.  Demographic changes and the Republican shift to the right combined to reduce Republican support in the state such that today 7 out of 52 Representatives in Congress are Republicans. 

After the 2020 election, Republicans contested procedures and results in states that showed Biden won narrow victories (interestingly, the supposed fraud was only at the presidential level--Republicans elected were all fraud-free).  Their major concerns were in majority black cities.  The intensity of the denial led to the Capitol being stormed for the first time in 200 years.  

Even after the rioters were cleared from the building, over half of the Republicans of Congress voted against certifying results, some out of outright fear of violence to their families by enraged Republican Trump supporters.  Voting out of fear of reprisal not merely by primary challenge but by violence is a true low.  State legislatures controlled by Republicans are working on means to restrict voting, continuing their strategy of the past two decades of abandoning their championing of voting rights in 1965.  For the sake of the health of American Democracy and providing viable choices for governing, I hope the Republican Party reaches high again someday.