Rudy: The Candidate of White Racism

A Sign of Beltwayness: Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Washington University, publishes a blog entitled Marginal Revolution: Small Steps Toward a Much Better World. One way that you tell that Cowen is a beltway guy is that he writes on art funding and ethnic cuisine. These kinds of posting topics are quite different from the frequent writing on religion and racism in a red-blooded, red-state blog like RSI.

The Foreign Policy Tide: Cowen writes that the continuing attention on the Iraq War helps the Republicans because a focus on foreign policy is always a help for the GOP. In light of this consideration, Cowen predicts that Rudy Giuliani will be the next president. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Iraq is a stone around the neck of the Republican Party and will be a special burden to the Republican presidential nominee. The last polls I saw indicated that disapproval of Bush's Iraq policy stands at 67% while support for Democratic bring home the troops plans sometimes runs in the 70's. If the Republicans win in 2008, it will be despite their foreign policy not because of it.

Rudy's Long Shot. I have to admit that I have a hard time taking Rudy Giuliani seriously as a presidential candidate. Given that Giuliani has surged at least 15 points ahead of John McCain without really doing much of anything, that's obviously mistaken. Tyler Cowen predicts that Giuliani will become president. However, Giuliani's shot at the presidency depends on domestic policy and his reputation as a mayor who adapted a policy of aggressive policing of black communities, defended New York city cops when they pumped 41 bullets into the entirely innocent Amadou Dialo, and showed nothing but contempt for black civic and political leaders when they protested against these kinds of things. The implicit promise of a Giuliani presidency for right-wing columnists (here's Rich Tucker at Townhall.com) is that Rudy will be just as aggressive towards Arabs, illegal immigrants, and other non-white populations as he was toward African-Americans in New York. In other words, Rudy's hope to win the presidency is that he is the man who can successfully apply the racial archetypes of white people to the America's conduct of the war on terror.

The RSI prognosis: To the contrary, I believe that the Bush administration's failure in Iraq has served to lessen the power of the Dirty Harry racial ideal of the hyper-aggressive white cop imposing order on a criminalized black population. The loosening grip of that kind of racial archetype on the white population and the mainstream media is one of the reasons why a black guy like Barack Obama can be seriously considered as a presidential candidate. Consequently, I don't think that Giuliani will be able to ride traditional white racial symbols into the White House even if he is able to sneak away with the Republican nomination.