You Mean Back When Bill Buckley Was Subtler About It?

Charlie Sykes is Quite Concerned that conservatism has connected itself with "raw racism" as opposed to the golden days in which its "history" with race was "mixed," because a few of them criticized David Duke.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 28, 2022

And Strom Thurmond kept his black girlfriend hidden from view, the better to assert his racist bona fides? Yes, we all remember how unconnected to racism Jesse Helms was; oh, and George H.Willie Horton Bush. Or Ronnie Reagan announcing his run just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, and railing against "welfare queens" and promoting "states' rights."

I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.

Which was always a euphemism for being against the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Brown v. Board; just to name three.  Here, let's hear what William Raspberry had to say about Reagan's announcement:

It was bitter symbolism for black Americans (though surely not just for black Americans). Countless observers have noted that Reagan took the Republican Party from virtual irrelevance to the ascendancy it now enjoys. The essence of that transformation, we shouldn't forget, is the party's successful wooing of the race-exploiting Southern Democrats formerly known as Dixiecrats. And Reagan's Philadelphia appearance was an important bouquet in that courtship.

 Yeah, it was all so much better before Trump came along.