Roberts and Race

John Roberts has a race problem, as John Judis argues on TNR online today in a perceptive article that also strikes at the heart of the Republican party's division over race. I've argued it before, but I will repeat it here: Republicans are not racists, and it is unfair when people taint the GOP with that label. That said, in modern American politics, the party most friendly to race baiters and bigots is the right wing of the GOP. While the Democrats have the worst legacy of either party on race -- as we are reminded every time doddering old Senator Byrd says something irredeemably stupid (imagine my joy when the web version of a History News Service op-ed piece I recently had picked up by a Charleston, West Virginia newspaper appeared underneath a banner supporting the good Senator) -- the Republicans are most likely to be the home for neo-Confederates, a trend that began with the Civil Rights Movement, picked up speed with the Goldwater and Nixon campaigns, and reached full flower in the 1970s and 1980s.

Judis makes a good case for why we should be wary of John Roberts. I have argued since the summer that the Democrats should not waste a lot of ammunition on Roberts, and it is clear that he is going to pass confirmation overwhelmingly. This does not mean Democrats (or Republicans) who care about civil rights should vote for him. It is one thing to say that in the 1980s Roberts was simply carrying the administration's water, and thus we cannot hold the things he did against him. It is quite another to point out that in internal memoes, Roberts often was doing far more than this, making his own case against civil rights independent of the administration's ultimate positions. Roberts is going to be confirmed. Democrats (and many Republicans) should keep an eye out to make sure that the next appointee does not have similar views on race. But if that nominee does, we will know what side of the GOP divide on civil rights this administration falls.