Stephen Miller and the History of Dog Whistle Politics- Revisted

I originally published this article in November 2019. The continued influence of Stephen Miller in the illegal spending freeze, the mass deportation debacle, aspects of which are also illegal, the unconstitutional executive order on birthright citizenship, which I am certain he drafted, caused me to go looking for it.

I think we need to be reminded that this is nothing new and has its roots long before Miller and Trump. We also need to be reminded that no matter what the controversy surrounding Trump and his acolytes, whether it be something like a senior staffer’s white nationalism that seeps into significant policy, or something as existential as January 6th, the capacity of the American people to forget it all is limitless.

November 2019:

Recent revelations of emails between Stephen Miller, a senior and one of the now longest serving Trump advisors, and a former Breitbart editor confirmed what many people had no doubt about, that Miller is an unabashed supporter and advocate of white nationalism. He was using the communications to shape the Breitbart content and influence their readership to sympathize with a white nationalist perspective.

An analysis of the emails by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows “Miller’s single-minded focus on nonwhite immigration and his immersion in an online ecosystem of virulent, unapologetic racism. The Miller of these emails isn’t just an immigration restrictionist, he’s an ideological white nationalist.”[1]

At this writing and in the wake of those revelations, 76 members of Congress have called for Miller to resign, but not one of them is a Republican. I have read many commentaries expressing, if not surprise, regret that the Republicans have been silent. I have seen speculation that they are pre-occupied with impeachment. I think that is being overly kind.

I am not sure why anyone would think the leadership of the Republican Party would take any affirmative action to respond to this news about Miller. First, it is entirely not surprising, we have all known this about him since he worked for Jeff Sessions, even if before the disclosure of these emails we lacked such concrete evidence of it.

But a greater indictment in my mind is the reality that the Republican Party has been the party of “dog whistle” racial politics which most observers track from at least Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, but in reality, started with Barry Goldwater.

“We’re not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.” Barry Goldwater.[2] It continued with Nixon’s southern strategy, with Ronald Reagan, the most notorious example of which was his “states rights” speech at the Neshoba County Fair, just a few miles from where the Mississippi Burning murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner took place, and George H.W. Bush giving Lee Atwater carte blanche to run the “Willie Horton” campaign.

 There was hope with Atwater’s death bed contrition and prominent Republicans such as the chairman at the time of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, acknowledging that “for the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South”, following the lead of one of his predecessors at the RNC, Ken Mehlman, that this shameful period in Republican politics had come to an end.

“By the seventies and into the eighties and nineties, Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way, or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.” Mehlman in 2005 at an NAACP meeting.[3]

Unfortunately, this transformation was either superficial or short lived. Or perhaps both. Trump and Miller resurrected and brought a bullhorn to the same message in his 2016 campaign. I don’t think I need to give chapter and verse to the litany of attacks that Mr. Trump has peppered upon racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, both as a candidate and as POTUS.

I am sensitive to this and feel I bear some responsibility because I was a Republican during much of the period that Mr. Mehlman referenced. On fiscal issues such as the need to balance budgets when the economy is strong, on trade, on international relations, on what I perceive a true conservative should think about social issues (separation of church and state, keeping the government out of the pulpit, bedroom and the doctor’s office), my thinking then ( and still does) aligned much closer to a traditional Republican orthodoxy that is now gone with the wind than it does to the philosophies of the Democratic Party. I started to recognize this dog whistle approach, although I did not initially put it in those terms.

I saw what I viewed as an intellectual dishonesty in the party, and I knew I had to leave.

I felt I was compelled to join the Democrats if I wanted to continue to have a role in the electoral process in this country, but I still wish and hope for a party that is both conservative as I define it and does not feel it necessary to exploit the racial divisions in this country in order to be successful.

I always assumed that most average Republicans, the average “Joe,” the rank and file, did not understand or recognize the dog whistle (as I didn’t when I first joined the party). The party was good at keeping it below the surface, deploying it primarily in those geographic regions where it would have the most impact.

But it is now out in the open and ignorance is not a legitimate defense. There can be no misunderstanding with the bullhorn of racial and ethnic division that is Donald Trump, memorialized in the writings of one of his longest serving and most loyal advisors, that the Republican Party remains committed to the same politics of racial division that animated their strategies throughout the last forty years of the last century.

What disappoints me is that the rank and file remain committed to the party and its current standard bearer. They can no longer be forgiven for ignorance of a strategy that was stealth by design. It is no longer stealth.

I think if the rank and file of the Republican Party continue to align behind and support this President, if they do not join the calls for Mr. Miller’s resignation or dismissal, then they have to own that.

They have to look into their heart and say, if I support these guys, then it is who I am as well.

 ©️ 2019 John C. Hart, All Rights Reserved

[1] Jamelle Bowie, “Stephen Miller’s Sinister Syllabus,” New York Times, November 15, 2019

[2] Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics (2014) at 18, citing Jack Bass & Walter Devries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequences Since 1945, at 27 (1976).

[3] Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics (2014) at 1.