Steve Erickson Quotes
I think for the foreseeable future we have to disabuse ourselves of any ideas of unifying, or coming together, or all getting along. I don't think we're going to reconcile the America that elected the first African American president with the America that just elected a president avidly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan - I'm not sure I even want to reconcile the two.
Erickson, Steve. Interview. Los Angeles Review of Books, 2017.
The press and the public quickly adopted the “Solid South” phrase as an appropriate description of the Southern monolithic approach to Presidential elections.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, this is one of the most negative attacks on an opponent in a Presidential election in all of American History—to call the opponent ‘dangerous’ to the nation. Second, it is a classic example of two close political friends and allies, after a falling out. Roosevelt had in effect made Taft President in 1908, but Roosevelt was extremely disappointed as Taft was controllable by the Republican Party bosses, who hated Roosevelt. TR then challenged the then sitting President for the Republican Presidential nomination. At that time there were 12 states that had primary elections and Roosevelt won 9 of them. La Follette won 2 and Taft only 1. The majority of the states did not then have primaries allowing the party bosses to make the decision of which candidate to support. Party leaders generally did not like Roosevelt who was a major reformer, so they voted for Taft at the convention pushing him over the top when he clearly was the less popular of all 3 candidates. Roosevelt, outraged by the party bosses overriding the will of the people, then walked out of the convention and organized his own convention and TR ran as the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party). In the general election Roosevelt got more votes than Taft, but the two of them had split the majority Republican vote and the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was the winner.
Trump, in the 2016, Presidential Campaign viciously attacked not only his Republican opponents for the Republican Nomination, but almost every other Republican leader, the Republican National Committee members and the “Establishment Republicans.” He not only called them names, and ridiculed them and their families, but he lied extensively about each of his opponents and the Republican National Committee. Trump also alienated women, Hispanics, Muslims across the country. The Republican party was fractured and there were great resentments. Many blamed Tump for the Party cleavage. However, what is interesting about this quotation is that Roy admits that there were huge cleavages within the party as the Result of the Tea Party Republicans intransigence before Trump entered the campaign. He just took advantage of it and used it to his advantage. Roy at this time saw the Republican splits and resentments as too deep to be able to bring the party together shortly. The split persevered.
In the 2016 Presidential Elections, there were a few close states. However, in most states one of the candidates won by a signficiant margin proucung some states that supported Trump and some who opposed Trump--hence "Divided States of America".
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist. The recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is the only Southern California novelist to win the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award.
