Over at The Atlantic, Michelle Cottle has penned a piece looking at some of the hand-wringing going on over Louisiana’s David Duke and his foray back into state politics. State Republican politicos were hoping they were rid of him, but Duke filed to run for the U.S. Senate one day after Donald Trump accepted the party’s nomination for president of the United States.
Desperate to distance themselves from Duke, state Republican leaders and candidates issued statements denouncing him immediately after he announced his candidacy on July 22. Party officials then scrambled to derail his candidacy. At first, they thought about taking the problem to court. “We looked at litigating to get him thrown off the ballot as a Republican,” said Jason Doré, executive director of the Louisiana GOP. But it quickly became apparent, said Doré, that this would require wide-reaching statutory changes that would throw “the entire election into chaos.”
Another problem: The state party has no bylaws controlling who can run as a Republican. This must change, said Doré. The party’s governing committee will meet later this month to consider adopting a rule barring any felon from using the Republican brand. (Starting in the spring of 2003, Duke spent a year in prison for tax evasion and mail fraud. Among other naughtiness, he had solicited donations from his followers under the pretense of financial troubles and then blown the money on gambling.)
The governing committee is also exploring ways to bar someone from appearing on the ballot as a Republican if members feel that the candidate, as Doré put it, “doesn’t represent our values.”
According to the article, Duke credits Trump with his return to politics, and credits himself with many of Trump’s policies:
For his part, Duke is desperate to link himself to Trump. He specifically credited Trump for his return to politics, claiming that he was the originator of many of the “America-first” policy ideas Trump is pushing. Duke’s campaign website features videos with titles like “Duke & Trump: The Supreme Court Does Matter” and “Never Trump & Never Duke Exposed as GOP Traitors.” And Duke’s Twitter feed is a scary mish-mash of ravings about anti-white bigotry and the decline of “Euro Americans,” broadsides against more mainstream Republicans, and lamentations about the mistreatments and misrepresentations Trump has allegedly suffered. […] In an August 5 interview on NPR, Duke claimed that his internal polling shows that he’ll carry 75 to 80 percent of Trump voters.
As state Republican leaders try to figure out ways to keep Duke off this year’s ballot and the years to come, it’s important for them to remember who they are and where they are in this mess. It was the Republican party’s idea to come up with a “southern strategy” to lure disaffected white males into the party in the first place, not this year during Trump’s run, but back before Richard Nixon was president, going back to Barry Goldwater’s presidential run. And let’s not forget the role that Lee Atwater played as Ronald Reagan was on deck, bringing the “southern strategy” into the “modern” era. No. Any hand-wringing and sweaty forehead wiping the Republicans are doing now, they can look into that Grand Old Party mirror of theirs to thank.
That is the source.