Interesting take on the Southern Strategy.

[Atreus21]

For those who only paint the Democratic Party with a racist brush should note the following:

Unlike Eastern Republicans, whose history was defined by opposition to slavery, Western Republicans had long held racial views toward Asians and Native Americans similar to those of Southern Democrats toward African Americans. For example, Republican Governor Leland Stanford of California had this to say in his 1862 Inaugural Address:


Discrimination against Asians culminated in enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 under Republican President Chester A. Arthur, which formed the basis for all subsequent efforts to restrict immigration based on race and ethnicity. The 1888 Republican platform, in fact, said this was just the first step: “We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor and of Chinese labor, alien to our civilization and constitution; and we demand the rigid enforcement of the existing laws against it, and favor such immediate legislation as will exclude such labor from our shores.”

Whereas democrats brought us slavery, jim crow, and the KKK.

 

[ataraxia]

The leftist progs still haven't proved their southern strategy conspiracy theory.

No evidence only a couple cherry picked out of context quotes.

How can you be convinced of anything if wvwn the unanimous consensus of every single scientific organization on the planet haven’t been able to convinced
you of climate change and all the doctors on the planet weren’t able to convince you of the latest pandemic recommendations? Your mind is an impregnable fortress, immune to any mountain of evidence.

But one word from Trump about how you won’t believe what his top people are finding on Obama’s secret birth certificate, or how Covid will go away by April 2020, or how the entire system of American elections is rigged every time it even looks like he is going to lose, and why it’s like a prophet of God has spoken.

 

[Blue Dog]

Whereas democrats brought us slavery, jim crow, and the KKK.

Which is why I opened with that first sentence.

 

[poweRob]

As usual you left the most important part of his speech out...


So what you have is two things happening that totally washed away the Southern strategy, the Harry Dent type Southern strategy, and that is, that whole strategy was based, although it was more sophisticated than a Bilbo or a George Wallace, it was nevertheless based on coded racism. The whole thing, busing, we want a Supreme Court judge that won’t have busing, anything you look at can be traced back to the issue [of race], in the old southern strategy. It was not done in a blatantly discriminatory way.

But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I’ll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.

Reagan kicked off his road campaigning in 1980 by going right down by Philidelphia, Mississippi where the three SNCC activists were murdered just 16 years prior and preached about states rights to drive that racial wedge. It doesn't get much more Southern Strategy than that.

 

[poweRob]

3...2....1..... Until the Republicans here show up and say there's no such thing as a 'Southern Strategy '...

Called in just post #2.

The leftist progs still haven't proved their southern strategy conspiracy theory.

No evidence only a couple cherry picked out of context quotes.

Worst gaslight failure yet. And despite already been proven and shown to you repeatedly, you will now switch trolling styles from gaslight to sea lion.

 

[j brown's body]

The South has become more Republican over the past decades.
And it has become less racist.
Its not clear what the problem is.

Republican staregist Lee Atwater on the Southern Strategy:

"Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.[16]"

Link

 

[poweRob]

And now we have trump whose throwing gas on the Southern Strategy to reignite it as much as possible.

​

 

[j brown's body]

I'm not sure that's fair. Is there anything Trump has said which would have been particularly shocking - or even particularly outside the mainstream - in the 70s or 80s? Pretty sure he's never publicly used the n-word, never said that black people are inferior or white people superior or that he opposes equality before the law, while he has voiced condemnation of white supremicists and white nationalism on multiple occasions. AFAIK the most shocking things he's publicly said - "murderers and rapists," "very fine people," "get that son of a bitch off the field" etc. - each in isolation have all been open to tortuous interpretation as more or less innocent comments, or at least objectionable on grounds other than race. They're obviously far less subtle dog whistles than cutting public services or arguably even states' rights, but they're still not open racism. Offhand I suspect that birtherism is the closest he's publicly come to open racism, but even there for his own part he went on to cover his bases with (in some cases even more) outrageous attacks on other political opponents.

I guess one of the benefits of being Trump, who is prone to saying shocking things is that after a while, they just don't seem so shocking anymore. Imagine any other national political leader talking like this.

Trump’s ‘good genes’ speech echoes racial eugenics

Eugenics became taboo when the world discovered that, in the name of racial purity, Hitler had murdered six million Jews and countless millions from other groups.

thehill.com

 

[j brown's body]

White supremacy is front and center in the GOP.

Ducey Says GOP Candidate With White Nationalist Ties Better Than a Democrat

Despite the controversy surrounding a far-right Arizona legislator, the state's governor says she's needed to advance his agenda.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Jay59]

Called in just post #2.

Worst gaslight failure yet. And despite already been proven and shown to you repeatedly, you will now switch trolling styles from gaslight to sea lion.

He has a point.

If you sort through enough comments you will find a few that look prophetic. There was no plan adopted, rather the way things shook out.

AS conspiracy theories go, it isn't as bad as claiming that ALEC runs the Republican party, but it's up there.

 

[Blue Dog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-grand-bargain-that-secured-the-south-for-the-gop/2019/08/16/64166948-976a-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html

 

[Atreus21]

Which is why I opened with that first sentence.

Which is kind of like opening with:

"For those who paint only the nazis with a fascist brush....."

 

[Blue Dog]

Which is kind of like opening with:

"For those who paint only the nazis with a fascist brush....."

Godwins law?

 

[Atreus21]

Godwins law?

Can we never mention nazis?

 

[Warcok]

Reagan kicked off his road campaigning in 1980 by going right down by Philidelphia, Mississippi where the three SNCC activists were murdered just 16 years prior and preached about states rights to drive that racial wedge. It doesn't get much more Southern Strategy than that.

That's your "evidence" of the southern strategy conspiracy theory? That republicans went down to Mississippi and spoke in a special secret language that only racist dimocrats understood?

And the racist dimocrats left the party of Jim Crow to join the pro civil rights GOP?

 

[RaleBulgarian]

And the racist dimocrats left the party of Jim Crow to join the pro civil rights GOP?

That the Dem and Republican parties swapped sides on issues of race is fact. That there was a “Siuthern Strategy” is also fact.

“The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party (newly enfranchised black Southerners voted and continue to vote Democratic). And even as Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters, former Alabama Governor George Wallace (who’d wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”) ran as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential primaries.

By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South. It’s an ironic outcome considering that a century ago, white Southerners would’ve never considered voting for the party of Lincoln.”

How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South | HISTORY

Democratic defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy."

www.history.com

 

[Warcok]

That the Dem and Republican parties swapped sides on issues of race is fact. That there was a “Siuthern Strategy” is also fact.

“The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party (newly enfranchised black Southerners voted and continue to vote Democratic). And even as Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters, former Alabama Governor George Wallace (who’d wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”) ran as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential primaries.

By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South. It’s an ironic outcome considering that a century ago, white Southerners would’ve never considered voting for the party of Lincoln.”

How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South | HISTORY

Democratic defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy."

www.history.com

The South voted Wallace, not Nixon







Nixon barely campaigned in the Deep South. His strategy was to target the Sunbelt stretching from Florida to Nixon’s native California. This included the Peripheral South.

Nixon recognized the South was changing. It was becoming more industrialized, with many northerners moving to the Sunbelt. Nixon’s focus was on the non-racist, upwardly-mobile, largely urban voters of the Peripheral South. Nixon won these voters, and he lost the Deep South, which went to Wallace.

 

[RaleBulgarian]

The South voted Wallace, not Nixon

Correct. Wallace, the hardcore racist/segregationist party of American Independent Party’s candidate, not Humphrey, the Dem Party nominee.

Nixon barely campaigned in the Deep South.

13 of 56 states Nixon personally visited between September 7th and October 31st, 1968 equals 23% of his time trying to win voters. That’s much more than “barely”.

His strategy was to target the Sunbelt stretching from Florida to Nixon’s native California. This included the Peripheral South.

Nixon recognized the South was changing. It was becoming more industrialized, with many northerners moving to the Sunbelt. Nixon’s focus was on the non-racist, upwardly-mobile, largely urban voters of the Peripheral South. Nixon won these voters, and he lost the Deep South, which went to Wallace.

Nixon tried to win the South with a “law and order” message that was drowned out by Wallace’s racist platform.

Factually, Nixon did invest time/effort in the South, but failed because he didn’t allow his true racist beliefs to come out publicly, much.

In fairness to Nixon though, Wallace was pretty damn hard to beat when it came to racism.

 

[Mithrae]

I guess one of the benefits of being Trump, who is prone to saying shocking things is that after a while, they just don't seem so shocking anymore. Imagine any other national political leader talking like this.

Trump’s ‘good genes’ speech echoes racial eugenics

Eugenics became taboo when the world discovered that, in the name of racial purity, Hitler had murdered six million Jews and countless millions from other groups.

thehill.com

Imagine a national political leader saying something like
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's storybook man."

As with Trump this was just one in a pattern of 'gaffes' - "poor kids are just as bright as white kids," "you ain't black," asking a black reporter if he was on cocaine, explicitly denying diversity of thought in the black community and so on - though this was perhaps the worst: Literally saying that being articulate and bright and 'clean' is a rare trait for African Americans, that (even bending over backwards for the most generous possible interpretation) other black major-party presidential candidates like Channing Philips, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes, Al Sharpton and Carol Braun were not bright and 'clean.' That's openly racist, an order of magnitude moreso than any of Trump's public comments... and this guy became the Democrat response to Trump!

The big difference of course is that Biden repeatedly says he's sorry for his repeated slip-ups, knowing that for him they are a political liability, whereas Trump's consistent rudeness and boorish behaviour in all areas is (somehow) part of his appeal to many of his supporters.

 

[Athanasius68]

That the Dem and Republican parties swapped sides on issues of race is fact. That there was a “Siuthern Strategy” is also fact.

“The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party (newly enfranchised black Southerners voted and continue to vote Democratic). And even as Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters, former Alabama Governor George Wallace (who’d wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”) ran as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential primaries.

By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South. It’s an ironic outcome considering that a century ago, white Southerners would’ve never considered voting for the party of Lincoln.”

How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South | HISTORY

Democratic defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy."

www.history.com

The south split their votes-- Republicans for president, but kept sending Democrats to Congress (Joe Biden's segregationist colleagues) to their state legislatures, to their state governors, for judges, sheriffs, town council etc etec etc.
That sort of stuff started changing in 80s and more so in the 90s.

The notion that that the parties simply flipped is false.

 

[RaleBulgarian]

The south split their votes-- Republicans for president, but kept sending Democrats to Congress (Joe Biden's segregationist colleagues) to their state legislatures, to their state governors, for judges, sheriffs, town council etc etec etc.
That sort of stuff started changing in 80s and more so in the 90s.

The notion that that the parties simply flipped is false.

Your notion is what’s wrong. Irrefutably.

 

[Athanasius68]

Your notion is what’s wrong. Irrefutably.

Its quite factually accurate that the south continued to send Democrats to Congress and to state legislatures into the 90s while otherwise voting for the GOP presidential nominee.
Its good part of the reason why the Democrats were essentially able to keep a lock on Congress for upwards of 60 years.
The old style segregationist Democrat basically remained in the party until they retired-- whereupon they were replaced by a another (non-segregationist) Democrat.
That fellow stayed until retirement or until defeated, years later, by a Republican.
The notion that the voters who had supported the old Democratic segregationist warhorses simply switched and started voting Republican is untrue.

Since the 90s and Democrats no longer being elected throughout the South, control of Congress has see-sawed between the GOP and Dems.

 

[j brown's body]

The south split their votes-- Republicans for president, but kept sending Democrats to Congress (Joe Biden's segregationist colleagues) to their state legislatures, to their state governors, for judges, sheriffs, town council etc etec etc.
That sort of stuff started changing in 80s and more so in the 90s.

The notion that that the parties simply flipped is false.

They simply flipped slowly.

 

[Blue Dog]

The political realignment of black voters that began at the close of Reconstruction gradually accelerated in the early 20th century, pushed by demographic shifts such as the Great Migration and by black discontent with the increasingly conservative racial policies of the Republican Party in the South. A decades-long process ensued in which African Americans either left the Republican fold or were effectively pushed out of the party because of its increasingly ambiguous stance on civil rights. By the end of this era, the hostility to black voters in both major parties in the South combined with a re-emergent activism among younger African Americans had laid the groundwork for a mass movement in the early and mid-1930s of black voters to the northern Democratic Party

The “Fulfillment of White’s Prophecy” | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

In his last speech on the House Floor, in 1901, George Henry White of North Carolina—the final Black lawmaker elected in the nineteenth century—had predicted the return of Black Members to Congress. Oscar De Priest arrived on Capitol Hill 28 years later. Six months before his election, the...

history.house.gov

Seems the issue is more complicated than the “Southern strategy“….

 

[j brown's body]

Imagine a national political leader saying something like
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's storybook man."

As with Trump this was just one in a pattern of 'gaffes' - "poor kids are just as bright as white kids," "you ain't black," asking a black reporter if he was on cocaine, explicitly denying diversity of thought in the black community and so on - though this was perhaps the worst: Literally saying that being articulate and bright and 'clean' is a rare trait for African Americans, that (even bending over backwards for the most generous possible interpretation) other black major-party presidential candidates like Channing Philips, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes, Al Sharpton and Carol Braun were not bright and 'clean.' That's openly racist, an order of magnitude moreso than any of Trump's public comments... and this guy became the Democrat response to Trump!

The big difference of course is that Biden repeatedly says he's sorry for his repeated slip-ups, knowing that for him they are a political liability, whereas Trump's consistent rudeness and boorish behaviour in all areas is (somehow) part of his appeal to many of his supporters.

Trump is a eugenicist. Biden is not. That's quite a distinction.