Economic prosperity and race drive politics in the U.S. Lopez sought to elaborate the link between the two and how the middle-class is coerced to advocating for policies that infringe minority groups. Dog whistle politics is a phrase used to mean the use of implied messages by politicians to say one thing to the general population and a different meaning to a sub-group within the community. It involves the use of wealth and political affiliation to implement policies that impact the middle-class adversely while benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals. This essay discusses dog whistle politics by evaluating Mitt Romney as one of the politicians who adopted dog whistle politics in their campaigns. The essay further evaluates 2016 campaigns for the presidential race and the various ways in which dog whistle politics was demonstrated.
Lopez mentions that the historical ties between Republicans and race are not unintentional and over the past 50 years Republicans have used racial detachment as an agenda to obtain votes from the whites. The use of coded messages has been a key feature of dog whistle politics. Coded messages have enabled the GOP to draw out racial allegiance from voters at a time when racism is publicly fought and discouraged. Lopez also mentions that sub-groups such as environmentalists and civil rights activists are the ones targeted by the coded messages. The messages are customized to appeal to the sub-groups while remaining politically correct to the general public.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Lopez identifies Mitt Romney as one of the politicians who has demonstrated dog whistle politics in their campaigns. One year after the Wall Street protests against income inequality, Romney was shown in a video addressing wealthy donors at an event. Romney considered himself a leader among the middle-class people. Lopez identifies this as one of the dog whistle politics strategies employed by Romney. This was at the time when Obama had been elected as president of the U.S and promised to assist Americans who were overwhelmed by their mortgage payments. Romney`s message implied that housing and health care were luxury commodities undeserving to the poor. The essence of his message was to allure the rich and corporate bodies while assuring the middle-class that he will alleviate the effects of the economic crisis. Romney advocated for reduced taxes, but this would have little effect on the middle-class. Reduced taxes would ease the pressure on the wealthy.
Romney was implicitly referring g to African-Americans who are commonly linked to mortgage payment defaults and lack medical insurance plans. This message coding was similar to the one adopted by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. In the first debate, she mentioned that Donald Trump`s political agenda was founded on the notion that the former U.S president, Obama, was not a U.S citizen. Clinton`s message was implicitly addressing the African-Americans and informing them that Trump had, in more than one occasion, discriminated against African-Americans. Trump adopted the same in his references to the ‘inner city.’ This is a phrase used to mean the crime-prone areas where minorities reside. While this message informs the wealthy that the minority groups are the major proprietors of crime, it does not directly mention race.
Lopez, in his explanation of dog whistle politics, pointed out that another feature of the dog whistle strategy is to advocate for policies that will be acceptable to the middle-class while in the real sense the policies are infringing the middle class. Romney pledged to cut taxes in his campaigns after the 2008 elections. A reduction in taxes would benefit the wealthy, but it would not benefit the middle-class. Trump used the same strategy in his 2016 campaigns. The pledge to cut taxes appeals to the middle-class because they believe the effect will be reduced tax burden. However, this will benefit only the wealthy. Such a policy is a representation of dog whistle politics because it only benefits the rich and corporate, but it is supported by the middle-class voters. Lopez created the similarity between Romney and Barry Goldwater as politicians who used dog whistle politics to advance their political agendas. Goldwater perused his political agenda by coding messages so as to not come out as an individual against integration. He was able to elicit white people as the victims of colorblindness rather than African-Americans.
Similarly, Romney was able to campaign against social welfare while making the middle-class believe that such a policy was inhibiting economic prosperity in the U.S. Romney ran an extensive campaign against welfare in the U.S. The anti-welfare campaigns were a representation of dog whistle politics in the modern world.
Dog whistle politics has been a present technique in politics over the past 50 years. Lopez suggests that politicians who use dog whistle politics rely on coded messages and policies that infringe the middle-class. Romney hugely employed dog whistle politics in his campaigns after Obama was elected to sway whites to vote for him. Romney has been publicly revolting white people against minority groups such as African-Americans. Also, Romney exploited the middle-class by advocating policies using coded messages that led them to identify as the victims of racism and to support policies that adversely impact them.
References
Haney-López, I. (2015). Dog whistle politics: How coded racial appeals have reinvented racism and wrecked the middle class . Oxford University Press.
