The GOP's Way With Words

In the last several decades, Republicans have given the phrase "war of words" a darker, more literal meaning.

Republican Political Consultant Lee Atwater had a thing for words. Atwater was a proponent of the Southern Strategy – the Republican party’s scheme to attract voters in Southern states who, in the years following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, were no longer able to freely express their racism within the ranks of the Democratic party. Here’s how Atwater characterized the Southern Strategy in his own words:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N…...r, n…...r, n..….r.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n…...r’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N…...r, n…...r.’ So, any way you look at it, race is coming…