Forrest Palmer: George Wallace 1968 Presidential Campaign: 'Precursor To Donald Trump'

Source: Forrest Palmer-

Source:The New Democrat

When I watched and listened to Donald Trump's 2016 GOP Convention nomination speech, I thought about George C. Wallace and his 1968 presidential campaign. The theme that it's other people's fault for why certain Americans mainly blue-collar Caucasian-Americans and men especially are struggling in America. Donald Trump's point was mostly about immigration and to a certain extent Islam's fault for why his Caucasian blue-collar male base was struggling.

In the 1960s there was this sense among Southern Caucasians especially English-Protestants and blue-collar workers in this community there and in even in rural parts of the Midwest, that they were losing their America. Because of multiculturalism, ethnic and racial minorities now staking their claim in America and not just defending their constitutional rights but using their to express themselves and be able to obtain their American dream without being denied their rights simply because of their race, ethnicity, or gender. Governor George Wallace spoke to this community in Alabama in the 1960s and then later the broader South when he ran for President in 1968. Speaking out against integration and other issues.

George Wallace became the spokesperson for the segregationists and Neo-Confederates in Alabama and the broader South in the 1960s. The Dixiecrats in the Democratic Party that basically ran that party in Congress and the broader Democratic Party in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Wallace became the Strom Thurmond of the 1960s and became the candidate for blue-collar English-Protestants in America who believed their America was disappearing with all sorts not just non-European-Americans, but non-Anglo-Saxons becoming prominent in America. Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Irish-Catholics, Latinos, and other Americans. Along with African-Americans of course who gave us the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

I don't believe Donald Trump personally designed his presidential campaign around George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign. Just because The Donald is not even a student of history let alone an amateur historian. He seems to have no interest in history whatsoever. But George Wallace was still alive and functioning in 2016 and he would've been 97 at that point, I believe he would've been proud of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. And then say that he was the first to run a campaign like this and perhaps claim that Big Don learned from him. The two presidential campaigns are more than strikingly similar.
Forrest Palmer: George Wallace 1968 Presidential Campaign- A Precursor To Donald Trump

NBC News: 'Alabama Governor George Wallace- On Meet The Press: June 30th, 1968'

Source:NBC News- interviewing Governor George C. Wallace (Independent, Alabama) on Meet The Press, in 1968.

Source:The New Democrat

"Alabama Gov. George Wallace discusses domestic issues as the presidential candidate of the American Independent Party on this June 30, 1968 edition of "Meet The Press"

From The Art of Alabama Politics

Was Governor George Wallace a racist? Well, the same question can unfortunately be asked about our President of the United States Donald Trump. 

Or was George Wallace a racial opportunist and demagogue? Someone who used racial issues in Alabama to gain popularity with the actual racists there and members of the KKK and other racist European-American, especially Anglo-Saxon groups in Alabama and in South in general.

The actual definition of a racist is: "A person who shows or feels discrimination against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race it superior to another." ( According to Wikipedia ) You could expand that to people who simply dislike or even hate, show violence to someone of another race, or other races simply because that person or people are from another race. 

I don't believe we know that George Wallace believed that European-Americans were superior to African-Americans and other racial groups in America. We also don't know that George Wallace hated of races of people.

George Wallace wasn't a career politician, he was an addicted politician. Someone who could only be happy if they held a public office and dealt with public policy on a daily basis as an elected official. He was also power hungry and was always seeking the most power for himself politically that he could politically could. Which is why he ran for President of the United States four times. 

George Wallace was also from Alabama which obviously had a lot of racists in his state and knew for him to be successful politically it was going to have to be in Alabama. Which leads into me believing that George Wallace was a racial demagogue and opportunist.

Governor Wallace was a man who used racial divisions and the hatred of racists in Alabama towards African-Americans as a way to further his own political career. I don't think we know if Governor Wallace was an actual segregationist in the sense he believed the Caucasians and African-Americans, should be forced to live separately. 

What we do know is Alabama back then, at least, was a deeply poor, underdeveloped, undereducated, ignorant state even and that Governor Wallace wasn't going to be popular in Alabama because people there loved the economy so much and felt so great about their own lives. 

But Wallace knew that if he could communicate with the racists there that he was with them and that it was them against African-Americans and the Federal Government, he could get elected on that alone and be popular there.

George Wallace was a very complicated man who similar to Richard Nixon had a lot of flaws and even some pluses. Not as many pluses as Richard Nixon and Wallace was also an intelligent man especially politically and a good lawyer. 

To simply flat-out  call George Wallace a racist because he spoke in favor of segregation I believe is too simple. To call him a demagogue who used racial issues to scare people and who over blew them to gain political popularity I believe would be accurate. 

I believe George Wallace was a bad guy and a bad politician in the sense that he had a hard time telling the truth and even lied a lot to gain political popularity. But I think labeling him a racist would be going too far.

David Hoffman: Governor George Wallace Defends Segregation on TV in 1968

Source: David Hoffman-

Source: This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat

The video is not about segregation but poverty in Alabama instead. Why David Hoffman who put the video together called titled the video about segregation instead, you would have to ask him.

The man who questions Governor George Wallace in this video asked his about poverty including starvation in Alabama, with Governor Wallace essentially saying, "what about New Jersey and states up North that also have poverty in them? How come you aren't asking about them." Trying to change the subject and do a what about. "Things might be horrible here, but what about these other places where things are bad?"

Alabama is different today and no longer a big state geographically with poverty everywhere. Alabama has become a lot more urban and more educated. While still dealing with high levels of rural and even urban poverty, but back in the 1960s and before that Alabama was a big West Virginia or Arkansas. Deeply rural and undeveloped with a lot of ignorant people at least in the sense of people who simply didn't finish school and perhaps never even made it to high school. A lot of that having to do with their families needing them to work early so they could have food and a place to live.

Governor Wallace who had already served two terms as Governor of Alabama by the time 1968 came around, obviously knew all of this. But instead tried to distract and deny the obvious about high levels of poverty in Alabama.
David Hoffman: Governor George Wallace Defends Segregation on TV in 1968