CNN is reporting that among Nixon administration documents released today by the National Archives is a research report on a strategy to divide the Democrats "by fueling a push for a black candidate for the White House ahead of the 1972 elections."
According to the CNN story, the report lays out a number of tactics for exploiting perceived problems among Democrats in order to improve GOP candidates' prospects for getting elected.
This particular paper was among about 280,000 pages of materials released today.
One thing I find interesting, and totally unsurprising, is that the research paper is believed by archivists who've been studying the Nixon papers to have been written by none other than our good ol' buddy Patrick Buchanan.
Among the tactics the document called for is the distribution of bumper stickers that "should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country" calling for "black presidential and especially vice presidential candidates."
As part of trying to undercut the Democratic challenge to Nixon's re-election, the paper said, "we should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two at least at the Democratic National Convention."
The paper, dated October 5, 1971, was found among Haldeman's files.
Why would such a tactic be recommended? Why, as a way to pursue the Southern Strategy, of course. As the linked article notes:
Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to former Richard Nixon strategist turned liberal political commentator Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,[1] but merely popularized it.[2] In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
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.[3]
Today we have the Republicans falling all over themselves to express their outrage, outrage I tell you! over the dreadful racism of Harry Reid's unfortunate phrasing of observations about the electorate's ability to accept an African-American candidate for the White House. Yet from Nixon's era to the present day, they've played upon and preyed upon the worst of white America's prejudices against blacks.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.