Highlight reel catch, Tim Noah.

The fact is that Reagan did open his 1980 campaign in "Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier." Brooks objectively mentions "16 years" to make an event very much alive in American consciousness today sound like old news in 1980.

Whether Brooks suffers white blindness to race relations or just believes that his audience does, I don't know. "States' rights" is well-known code for segregation and Reagan brought it up in reference to schools!

Visiting Vernon Jordan in the hospital and speaking to the Urban league did not negate what Reagan did in Philadelphia, however much a white conservative wants to believe that it did. (Brooks' “Some of Reagan's best friends were black” absolution). Question: Did Reagan tout States' rights to the Urban League?

Brooks would like to distort the reality of the immense success of the Republican Southern Strategy by claiming that “The truth is more complicated.”

Yes- Reagan's total electoral strategy was more complicated than one speech, but this in no way lessens the impact of Krugman's point: Reagan made a calculated appeal to Southern, white racist voters.