What Shocking New Polls on Republican Attitudes Toward Slavery, Interracial Marriage Say About the Modern GOP

Once more the Republican Party showed us who they are and have always been. It would seem that "the past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

Yesterday, the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, CNN released a poll that showed that 25 percent of the general public and some 40 percent of Southerners sympathize more with the rebellious Confederacy than with the Union. And in a particularly revealing inversion of the historical record--more than half of the Republicans surveyed believe that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War.

Not content to merely support an insurrection against the duly elected government of the United States, 80 percent of the Republicans surveyed by CNN also expressed admiration for the leaders of the South--a cabal whose allegiance to white supremacy was most tellingly summed up by the Vice President of the Confederacy's sentiment that its, "...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.”

Echoing the Tea Party GOP's neo-Confederate longings, last week an equally troubling bit of polling data was released which highlighted how the Right-wing yearns for a return to “tradition” and the “good old days” in the Age of Obama.

Public Policy Polling surveyed self-identified Republican voters in Mississippi. They were asked a series of questions regarding issue positions and their likelihood of voting for a given Republican presidential candidate in the 2012 race. Among their findings: apparently, race still matters to the good Tea Party GOP voters of Mississippi, with 46 percent of the respondents indicating that interracial marriage should be illegal. And in good news for Sarah Palin, those who supported her were significantly more likely to oppose marriage across the colorline.

For students of race and public opinion these findings should not be surprising. While there has certainly been a clear and demonstrable shift in white Americans' racial attitudes, racial animus and old fashioned bigotry have moved from the "frontstage" (enshrined in law, seen as virtues and not sins) to the "backstage" (in private, shared only with other like minded folks, or when a person believes that no one is listening).

Racism and white supremacy certainly exist as social forces in 21st-century American life--where they are now more structural than interpersonal--yet the paradox remains that the expression of racist values and thoughts will result in one being thrown out of the public square.

Beyond some superficial and feigned shock and awe at the fact that a significant percentage of self-identified, die-hard Republican voters do not believe that interracial marriage should be legal, these findings are made truly significant when placed into a broader context. The election of Barack Obama and shifts in America's racial demographics have caused no small amount of cognitive upset, racial paranoia, and bizarre behavior that goes well beyond mere partisanship and enters the realm of crazy talk on the part of the Tea Party GOP.

Since the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land, America has been a collective witness to the theater of the absurd. The standing bargains and consensus politics that came out of the Civil War (and which cost the lives of 2 percent of the U.S. population, some 600,000 people) are now fodder for Republican candidates to play political football with. It is no longer the exclusive province of the fringe militia and late-night talk radio crowd to speak about secession, states' rights, nullification, the revoking of birthright citizenship, and armed rebellion as necessary and real solutions to our political dilemmas. No, these are positions that are casually offered by leading Republican figures such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and others.