In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political operative, explained to an interviewer how his party had learned to exploit racial antagonism using dog whistles. You start out in 1954 by saying Nigger, nigger, nigger. But by the late 1960s, that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff, and youre getting so abstract. Now, youre talking about cutting taxes, and all these things youre talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Well, the dog whistle days are over. Republicans are pretty much back to saying Nigger, nigger, nigger.