At MRC, we’ve documented MSNBC’s long history of editing video to smear conservatives and protect Obama. Well, they’re at it again. This time dragging out James Carter IV to use tape of Republican strategist Lee Atwater allegedly claiming Republicans used racial code words as part of its Southern Strategy. Only one problem, segments of the Atwater tape that MSNBC didn’t air show that he wasn’t saying Republicans used racial code words to win. Instead that Reagan won because he sold economic conservatism and the South had changed so that an anti-segregationist like Reagan could win votes in the South.
Here’s the transcript of the key part of the Atwater tape via Breitbart:
A: It [the South] wasn't ours to win, it was Carter's to lose. All Carter had to do is run in place. But he didn't do that...what he did was default...Not on anything to do with racism, or the race question, but on economics and on national defense...The fact of the matter is, the South is Reagan's to lose now. And as long as--if Reagan goes and denounces his own economic policy, or doesn't balance the budget, or, you know--he could lose the South. But if not, he's going to win the South.
Q: But he's not going to lose the South if he goes along with what the blacks want and the voters want.
A: That's--I mean, that should be a thrust of this. In 1968, the whole Southern strategy that [unintelligible] put together the Voting Rights Act [of 1965] would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now they don't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservative, balancing the budget, cutting taxes...
By the way, do you think anyone asked Carter about his namesake’s history of supporting segregation?