Reap What You Sow: GOP’s Duke Problem : Bush should rise above partisanship, endorse Democrat

Having ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke as the Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana has been called the GOP’s worst nightmare. Indeed it is--but it is a nightmare that at least in part is of the party’s own making.

It began with Richard M. Nixon’s “Southern strategy” in 1968 that sought votes among Southern whites unhappy with the Democratic Party’s support for civil rights. President Bush unfortunately has played into a similar divisiveness with, for instance, his erroneous insistence that proposed anti-discrimination legislation automatically equals “quotas.” Now a chronically depressed economy in Louisiana has added to the power of a campaign based on the explosive politics of resentment that Duke embodies.

The White House, through Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, has made a feeble attempt to disavow Duke as “not supported by the party.” That’s hardly the strong condemnation deserved by a onetime Nazi sympathizer and racist who made his career denigrating Americans who don’t fit into his bigoted ideal of America.

Duke, whose dark business suit has replaced his klan robes, is a shrewd politician who exploits and manipulates the deepest economic and racial fears of many white working-class and middle-class Americans. Like the plastic surgery that has somewhat altered his facial appearance, Duke has altered his catch-phrases to coincide with 1991 sensibilities. His embrace of Nazism and his days as head of the klan were just part of his “rascal” past, he has said. Doesn’t everyone have some “youthful indiscretions”? he asks innocently. Perhaps--but in his twisted and revisionist history Duke would have us believe that heading up a white supremacist group in one’s youth is comparable to getting too many speeding tickets.

After he left the klan he founded the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People. A newsletter from that group once suggested dividing the United States into different countries for citizens of certain ethnic groups; the newsletter also advertised a videotape entitled “Truth About the Holocaust” featuring Duke discussing “Did Six Million Really Die?”

Duke also once led a klan “border watch” in rural San Diego, after he apparently concluded that illegal immigrants from Mexico had joined blacks, Jews and the other assorted klan bogymen as the ultimate threats to whites who would call themselves Christian.

But in his campaigning, Duke never uses slurs; he has become the master of codes. He rails against “the massive rising welfare class.” When he talked about that welfare class during his nearly successful campaign for the U.S. Senate last year, the Washington Post reported that Duke then slipped into his version of black slang as he mimicked a black patient talking to a doctor about welfare: “ . . . We gets a bigger welfare check, and Johnny, he gets more money for his card game.” The crowd loved it.

David Duke is not only dangerous for Louisiana and the GOP, he is dangerous for America. Bush should make the strongest possible statement against the poison that Duke peddles by endorsing his Democratic opponent in the Nov. 16 election.