For that matter, Republicans have been playing the race card and waging culture wars ever since Richard Nixon realized that the votes of many Southern (and some Northern) whites were his for the taking by demonizing the same minority activists, antiwar protestors and intellectuals whom Alabama Gov. George Wallace, in his failed bids for the presidency, had flayed. But Nixon, Ronald Reagan and their Republican successors had to appeal to more moderate voters as well; their attacks came in dog whistles and more genteel prose. They didn’t divide us quite so starkly, or encourage Klansmen to take their hoods out of mothballs.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 25, 2019 19:18 UTC