Word: duke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...That Duke got as far as he did is perhaps the most important message of all. This, after all, is a man who has never held a regular job. He has made his living by selling hate materials and trolling for contributions for various racist organizations. He wore a swastika in college, founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People, advocated dividing America into separate ethnic nations, denied that the Holocaust happened. His reason for studying German in college was to be able to read Hitler's Mein Kampf in the original...
...Duke's campaign was not farfetched. He won a place in the runoff by defeating incumbent Republican Buddy Roemer, a Harvard-educated reformer whose imperious manner doomed him to a single term. Duke won blue-collar voters, largely rural, young and male. But he also made inroads into the middle class, capturing conservatives from both parties. If the election had been held just after the primary, Duke would have...
...days passed, the tide slowly began to turn. First, Roemer grudgingly endorsed Edwards and urged his sullen supporters not to sit out the election. Then, in a televised debate, Duke was confounded by an emotional question about bigotry. "I am scared, sir," began black TV reporter Norman Robinson. "I've heard you say that Jews deserve to be in the ash bin of history. I've heard you say that horses contributed more to the building of America than blacks did." Robinson went on to ask why any minorities should entrust their lives to Duke -- and the moral opposition...
...Then Duke hit another stumbling block. Having claimed to be born again, he was asked where he worshiped and named a church no one had seen him attend. A top campaign aide, who doubted Duke's Christianity and called him "a racist, coward, draft dodger and bald-faced liar," deserted him a few days before the election...
...anti-Duke coalition was one of the most bizarre in modern American politics. Churches, environmentalists and liberal activists joined with the Establishment to fight Duke. Former Republican Governor David Treen endorsed Edwards, who once joked that Treen was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes. Even President Bush made an 11th-hour endorsement, fearful of what a Duke victory would mean for his party's efforts to woo black voters...