The racial divisiveness was further accelerated in the 1976 presidential campaign, when Ronald Reagan continually invoked the specter of a lecherous welfare-abusing woman from Chicago — the “Welfare Queen,” the media dubbed her — who, he said:

“Has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”

The object of the anecdote was reported to be a woman named Linda Taylor.

Only, as a Washington Star article printed in The Times pointed out in February of 1976, “The problem is that the story does not quite check out.”

As the article explained:

“After a series of indictments each one of which was replaced by another indictment, winnowing down the number of charges, Miss Taylor is now charged with using not 80 aliases but four. The amount the state is charging that she received from her alleged fraud is not $150,000 but $8,000.”

The article concluded, “The ‘welfare queen’ item in Mr. Reagan’s repertoire is one of several that seem to be at odds with the facts.”

The racial divisiveness continued in 1988, when George Bush’s supporters used the Willie Horton attack ad against Michael Dukakis.

It continues as Republicans trade racial terms for culture-centric euphemisms. Newt Gingrich, in 2011: “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” although most poor people of working age work. Paul Ryan, earlier this year: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” And Bill O’Reilly said recently in a discussion about legalizing marijuana that the left’s position was that marijuana was harmless and “It’s blacks, you know, you get, you’re trapping the blacks because in certain ghetto neighborhoods it’s part of the culture.”

Add the Obama birthers, voter suppression laws, congressional obstruction and Republicans in the House voting to sue the president, and it becomes clear: Democrats didn’t drive a wedge between Republicans and blacks; Republicans drove blacks away. Blacks have voted more than 80 percent Democratic in every election since at least 1972 and that percentage was over 90 percent in both of Obama’s elections.