Rally for Michael Brown, Minneapolis, MN
Two months ago, we heard from Democratic framing and messaging guru George Lakoff, who reminded us about his “Strict Father” model for conservatives. This Strict Father mindset, which idolizes authoritarian figures who criticize poor people and advocate the use of force, is playing out in conservative and Republican reactions to police violence against blacks, and the resulting protests currently taking place in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, Berkeley, California and elsewhere. In short, the conservative Strict Father mindset, which encompasses a “Scary Brown People” sub-theme, is a key reason why many conservatives side with cops and others who kill unarmed black men.
Here are some of those conservative and Republican reactions to the recent shootings by police against black men:
–Congressman Peter King of New York, regarding the Eric Garner shooting in New York City:
I feel strongly the police officer should not have been indicted…. You had a 350-lb. person who was resisting arrest, the police were trying to bring him down as quickly as possible. If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this…. If you can’t breathe, you can’t talk.
–Former New York City Mayor (and Republican Presidential candidate) Rudolph Giuliani, also on the police killing of Eric Garner:
I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We’re talking about the exception here…. I’d like to see the attention paid to that, that you are paying to this, and the solutions to that…. It’s hardly a false equivalency…. It is the reason for the heavy police presence in the black community…. It’s because of the high level of crime …. What about the poor black child that is killed by another black child? What aren’t you protesting that? Why don’t you cut it down so so many white police officers don’t have to be in black areas?
—Samuel Wurzelbacher a/k/a Joe the Plumber writing on his Facebook page in August, after the initial protests after Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson took place:
The best way to end the rioting and looting in Ferguson … Job Fair. They’ll scatter like cockroaches when the lights come on!
Wurzelbacher then followed up his original Facebook post with this one:
It’s interesting that one of the items NOT being looted in Ferguson is work boots?
Wurzelbacher failed to note that nearby St. Louis, a working/commuting destination for Ferguson residents, had just held a job fair two months earlier, at which thousands of residents showed up to find work, or that North St. Louis held another job fair in August after another shooting by police took place. Those facts would merely get in the way of the Republican narrative, where “looting” is often highlighted to distract from the initial events and conditions that caused people to protest in the first place.
Indeed, these types of Strict Father statements fit squarely within Republican Party positions and personalities. Think of who Republicans nominate as Presidential candidates: Barry Goldwater. Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan. Gerald Ford (the incumbent President and GOP nominee in 1976). George H.W. Bush. Robert Dole. John McCain. Willard Mitt Romney. Since 1964, all of the Republican Presidential candidates except for maybe George W. Bush were older white men who fit this Strict Father model. All were at least 55 years old (W. Bush was 54 and arguably fit the model as well), and some were much older than that. Nixon in 1968 ran on a “Law and Order” platform that was largely a reaction to the civil rights protests of the preceding years, as well as the “Southern Strategy,” a racist appeal to Southern whites. Two years earlier, Ronald Reagan previewed those strategies in his successful run for California Governor, promising to get tough on “beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates” who were protesting at locations such as the University of California at Berkeley that is in the news again today.
Notice also how McCain has tried to fill Ronald Reagan’s shoes as the current Strict Father Republican role model. For example, in 2010, facing a U.S. Senate primary challenge from the right by former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, McCain aired a television ad where, walking with an Arizona sheriff along the U.S.-Mexican border and talking about “drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder” caused by “illegals,” McCain tells the sheriff that America needs to “complete the danged fence.” As if McCain’s white identity politics weren’t clear enough, the white sheriff then tells McCain, “Senator, you’re one of us.” McCain won his primary and won re-election to the Senate. Other well-known Republicans such as Chris Christie, who many say is interested in running for the Republican Presidential nomination and who is often called a “bully,” fit the Strict Father model as well.
Pundits, and even some Republicans, have been saying for a while that the Republican Party faces a “demographic death spiral” due to the growing population of voting-age Latino Americans who are offended by the Republican Party’s hostile policies toward Latinos and Hispanics. It may be that this Republican death spiral will occur in the 2016 elections. For now, however, conservative/Republican Strict Father politics, including overt racist appeals and support for police officers who kill unarmed black men, has worked pretty well, and there are few signs that the Strict Father model is going away any time soon.
Photo by Fibonacci Blue, used under Creative Commons license. http://is.gd/vxorKd
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