Will GOP "Law and Order" Stance Alienate Voters?

As part of the GOP's "Southern Strategy" launched under Richard Nixon, Republicans have routinely used "law and order" talking points to court racists and white supremacists.  Now, with whites headed toward minority status nationwide and minorities increasingly wise to the GOP's race baiting tactics, some in the GOP are waking up to the reality that close alliances with police organizations and support for horrific miscarriages of justice by a flawed criminal justice system could be a road map to extinction.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the disagreements within the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Since the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, generations of Republicans from Richard M. Nixon to the first George Bush deftly capitalized on the anxiety of white voters over crime and urban unrest, winning elections with appeals for law and order and unbending support of the police.

But in recent years, with crime plummeting and the party struggling among minority voters, some Republicans have turned away from the tough talk and embraced efforts to reduce the number of black men in prison and overhaul the criminal justice system.

Now the violence and protests after two grand juries declined to prosecute white police officers who killed black men, as well as the killings of two New York City police officers, have angered some of the party’s most ardent defenders of the police. Republicans find themselves debating how to maintain their traditional embrace of law enforcement while not alienating minority voters or ignoring systemic criminal justice issues.

The divisions have spilled out on television in recent days. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York declared on Fox News that the protests were leading to violence and that “all lead to a conclusion: The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.”

Representative Peter T. King of New York said his fellow Republicans cannot be timid about criticizing activists like the Rev. Al Sharpton, who Mr. King said used racially charged terms to portray the killings of African-Americans by the police in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island.
What makes this moment more complex for Republicans, however, is that Mr. Sharpton is not the only one who has criticized police mistreatment of minorities and the broader justice system: Leading Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, governors and Christian conservatives, have been rethinking issues ranging from the militarization of the police to sentencing guidelines.

The question now is whether the racially tinged unrest, occurring at the outset of a highly competitive presidential nominating contest, will resurrect old resentments and stymie Republican efforts to reach out to African-Americans and grapple with the justice system issues.

After years of instinctively siding with the police — with Ronald Reagan railing against “arson and murder in Watts” in his 1966 campaign for governor and Mr. Bush using Willie Horton’s furlough to defeat Michael S. Dukakis — Republicans are now more divided when it comes to crime and law enforcement. This is in part because of raw politics: The country is increasingly diverse, and the party can no longer win presidential elections without making inroads among minority voters.

 

But there are also deeper tensions between the Republicans’ traditional tough-on-crime approach and a rising skepticism about government power among conservatives and libertarians in the party.

Conservatives beyond Mr. Paul were disturbed by the military-style tactics and equipment of the Ferguson police during the protests in the weeks after Mr. Brown’s death.

There was also wide outrage on the right when the New York City officer depicted on videotape choking Eric Garner to death on Staten Island was not indicted. Some conservatives, believing that there are too many laws on the books, were particularly incensed that Mr. Garner was targeted as a criminal simply for selling individual cigarettes.

Strong support on the right for the police has continued even after the deaths in Ferguson and on Staten Island: A Gallup poll this month showed that 66 percent of Republicans rated the honesty and ethical standards of the police as “very high” or “high” while only 36 percent of Democrats said the same.

Read the rest of the piece.  The take away?  The GOP will have to decide whether it wants to continue to pander to a shrinking white supremacist/Christofascist base or expand the party's appeal to other voters.