More St. Ronnie

Bob Herbert makes a useful contribution today [1] toward explaining why there shouldn't even be a "debate" over whether Ronald Reagan intentionally exploited white voters' racism as a key to his political rise. I pointed to a smoking gun [2] yesterday. In fact, I could come up with new smoking guns every day for a week if I had to. Should I? Let me know.

Anyway, here's another. A reporter as a top Reagan campaign aide in 1966 if he was worried about Democrats discrediting his candidate by pointing to his ties to members of the John Birch Society. The aide responded that Pat Brown would have a much harder time, considering his ties to civil rights activists: "The Bircher isn't identifiable, but the Negro is."

The reporter asked that, by the way, after the state Republican convention, which Reagan controlled, had just resolved to repeal the state's open housing law.