The 2008 Republican Convention in the Twin Cities was awash in white.  A raft of articles, most significantly this major piece from the Washington Post, have noted that only 36 of the 2,380 delegates were African America, the poorest Black representation since statistics were first recorded 40 years ago.

Michael S. Steele, a Black Republican who was once lieutenant governor of Maryland, surveyed the monochrome crowd and shook his head in disgust.

“I am not going through another election cycle where we fail to energize and engage minority communities,” he said. “Have you ever heard that saying — about how the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, what we’ve done with minorities has become a form of political insanity.”

Has it ever occurred to Mr. Steele that his fellow Republicans are wearing their whiteness as a badge of honor?

Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was based on a safe political hunch.  In a country in which eighty-six percent of the electorate is white and in which southern whites bristle at the mere mention of “civil rights”, you can win elections by telling people of color to go to hell.

You don’t want to be gross about it, of course.  In fact, the pitch loses its appeal if it becomes too obvious.  You want a few Black folks around to throw the media hounds of the scent.  Much better to spread the message with a wink the copious use of code language.

Words and phrases like “thug,” “drug dealer,” “welfare dependancy,” “unwed mother,” “baby momma,” “crime”, and “inner city” become synonyms for “Black”.    African Americans are welcome in the political process as long as they know their place.  The great “liberal” sin is giving a damn about poor people, especially poor Blacks and Mexicans.  More code language.

Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican, recently referred to Barack Obama as “uppitty”.  Reminded that the term was racially charged, Westmoreland refused to back down.  Few southern Republicans are this forthright, but the numbers in St. Paul (and in Jena) don’t lie.

In Minnesota, the elephant in the room was all-white all the time.

Which brings me to Sarah Palin’s frequent allusions to small town America.  Who lives in these small towns Ms. Palin venerates?  Any Black folks or Mexican immigrants? 

Not a chance.  In Republican code language, “inner city” stands for minority, small town stands for white.  It’s more complicated than that, of course.  Small towns also stand for religion, common sense and basic decency; cities stand for godlessness, book-learning and moral degeneracy.  Simply by evoking her small town roots, Republicans like Sarah Palin send a powerful message to their target audience. 

Democrats use the same rhetorical tricks, but they’re playing catch-up and everybody knows it.  Republicans know that scenes from the ethnically diverse Democratic Convention in Denver rankle many white voters (even if they’re not sure why).

The big give-away was the nasty derision Republican speakers repeatedly heaped on Barack Obama’s impressive career as a community organizer.  Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wasn’t impressed:

When Rudy Giuliani referred to Barack Obama’s past as a “community organizer” Wednesday, the crowd broke into ugly, patronizing laughter. These, presumably, are people who never needed a neighborhood advocate. Imagine if Democrats ever reacted that way to someone who worked as an entrepreneur or a church leader.

A recent New York Times study revealed that Barack Obama is viewed favorably by only 30% of white voters.  And that’s a national poll–sample white southerners in isolation and God only knows how low the number might go. 

Among Latino voters, on the other hand, Barack Obama has opened a commanding lead.

Conversely, a whirlwind tour of the Black media suggests that Sarah Palin’s popularity is almost entirely confined to white America.  In Black America, Sarah Palin’s Minnesota accent (where’d she get that, anyway?) was like finger nails on the chalk board. 

The same effect occurs in reverse when Barack Obama when the vast majority of white southerners hear Mr. Obama work his magic before an ethnically diverse crowd.

After opening up a seven-point lead following the Denver convention, Barack Obama has dropped back into a statistical dead heat with his Republican rival.  All it took was a few snide remarks from Palin and her less charismatic Republican brothers and the swing voters swung.  We have moved beyond superficial convention bounces and into the home stretch.

John McCain didn’t want to depend on the old Reagan coalition of religious conservatives, disaffected southern whites, big business and traditional conservatives that propelled the Republicans to prominence in the 1980s.  That was George W’s way to win an election; the Maverick had other plans.

Then reality set in.  Although McCain was holding his own a few steps back of his Democratic opponent, the swing voters in the Midwest were leaning toward Obama.  So John McCain fired up the base by chosing Sarah Palin as a running mate and hiring Rovian spinmeisters to revamp his campaign.  After the spunky Alaskan tossed red moose meat to an adoring convention crowd on Wednesday night, McCain returned to inclusive, non-partisan themes more in keeping with his temperament.

The crowd didn’t want to hear it.  Only when their nominee reminded the audience of his war hero credentials did they stir from their slumbers.  McCain didn’t get a real roar of approval until he told the faithful to stand up and fight.

The Reagan coalition transcends Nixon’s southern strategy–but without a crude appeal to white racial resentment the Republicans couldn’t survive as a major American political party.

Unless, of course, they stunned the world by returning to their lost heritage as the Party of Lincoln.

John McCain is the only Republican who could run this close to Barack Obama in the wake of a disastrous Bush presidency.  By firing up the virtually all-white Republican base, Sarah Palin has John McCain back in the race.  Still, can you win an election by ignoring a quarter of the electorate?  If so, what does that tell us about the nation we live in?

And what does this election portend for the criminal justice system?  John McCain spent over five years in a squalid prison cell.  Later in life, he came within a hair’s breath of a federal indictment in the Keating 5 scandal.   Sarah Palin has a beef with the allegedly abusive state trooper who briefly married into her family.  Thanks to her overly-aggressive pursuit of justice, she finds herself the subject of an ethics inquiry.  Will these experiences make the Republicans more sympathetic with the victims of mass incarceration?

I wouldn’t bet the rent money.

Meanwhile, neither presidential candidate has much to say about the criminal justice system.  Standing up for criminals makes the Illinois Senator sound too Black.  Talking tough on crime might draw unwanted attention to the less savory aspects of McCain’s resume. 

More significantly, Sarah Palin mocked Mr. Obama for championing the due process rights of alleged terrorists: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”  

Would she be this cavalier in dismissing the civil liberties of poor defendants and undocumented immigrants?

So one assumes.  It’s all part of the strategy.