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Interesting take on the Southern Strategy.

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Mugwump
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For many people, the so-called Southern strategy was the original sin that led directly to the many racial and political problems we face today. Richard Nixon, it is said, implemented this nefarious strategy by appealing to Southern racists with coded phrases like “law and order” to gain the White House in 1968. In truth, the seeds of the Southern strategy were sown in the West 100 years earlier, as detailed in a new book by Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War.

While there is no question that Nixon coveted the votes of conservative Southerners, he was hardly the first Republican to do so. The eventual migration of Southern Democrats into the GOP had more to do with deep economic, demographic, and political forces that had been in operation for decades.

To belabor the obvious, the Republican Party has always been our more conservative political party, and the South has always been our most conservative region. But Southern conservatives were alienated from the GOP because of slavery and the Civil War. However much affinity they might have for Republicans on issues such as national defense or taxes, they were never going to formally join the party of Abraham Lincoln.

 
The deep South voted for Wallace in 1968 not Nixon
 
The migration of racist southerners to the Democratic Party, thus kicking everybody else out, has been amazing to watch during my lifetime.

And since everybody else has pretty much been kicked out it's left nothing but the extremists and a few others who won't speak up.
 
What is also interesting is looking at what states voted for Thurmond in 1948, Goldwater in 1964, and Wallace in 1968.

1948- South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama

1964- South Carolina ,Mississippi, Louisiana,Alabama,and Georgia

1968- Louisiana, Mississippi,Alabama,Georgia and Arkansas.
 
The migration of racist southerners to the Democratic Party, thus kicking everybody else out, has been amazing to watch during my lifetime.

And since everybody else has pretty much been kicked out it's left nothing but the extremists and a few others who won't speak up.
Your post makes no sense and appears to be trolling.
 
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:

To my mind it is clear, that the settlement among us of an inferior race is to be discouraged, by every legitimate means. Asia, with her numberless millions, sends to our shores the dregs of her population.… There can be no doubt but that the presence of numbers among us of a degraded and distinct people must exercise a deleterious influence upon the superior race, and, to a certain extent, repel desirable immigration. It will afford me great pleasure to concur with the Legislature in any constitutional action, having for its object the repression of the immigration of the Asiatic races.
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.”
 
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.”

Lets hear from an Eastern republican on race,

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

Turns out that everyone was racist in 1860s, who knew? 🤷‍♂️
 
The deep South voted for Wallace in 1968 not Nixon


Yes, that is correct. Here is how the Republican Party then exploited the ignorance and hate of those Wallace voters to cut taxes for their plutocrat sponsors, on those voters’ backs (as explained by Lee Atwater, Reagan’s chief political advisor, in this 1981 interview):

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: 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."

The difference is that the strategy was using dog whistles until now- now Trump and his supporters don’t care anymore. They’re using freaking bullhorns.
 
For many people, the so-called Southern strategy was the original sin that led directly to the many racial and political problems we face today. Richard Nixon, it is said, implemented this nefarious strategy by appealing to Southern racists with coded phrases like “law and order” to gain the White House in 1968. In truth, the seeds of the Southern strategy were sown in the West 100 years earlier, as detailed in a new book by Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War.

While there is no question that Nixon coveted the votes of conservative Southerners, he was hardly the first Republican to do so. The eventual migration of Southern Democrats into the GOP had more to do with deep economic, demographic, and political forces that had been in operation for decades.


To belabor the obvious, the Republican Party has always been our more conservative political party, and the South has always been our most conservative region. But Southern conservatives were alienated from the GOP because of slavery and the Civil War. However much affinity they might have for Republicans on issues such as national defense or taxes, they were never going to formally join the party of Abraham Lincoln.

THe real winner was the "states rights" call and it seems it is in vogue again today for white supremacists
 
Yes, that is correct. Here is how the Republican Party then exploited the ignorance and hate of those Wallace voters to cut taxes for their plutocrat sponsors, on those voters’ backs (as explained by Lee Atwater, Reagan’s chief political advisor, in this 1981 interview):

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: 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."

The difference is that the strategy was using dog whistles until now- now Trump and his supporters don’t care anymore. They’re using freaking bullhorns.

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.
 
The deep South voted for Wallace in 1968 not Nixon
The southern strategy was in 1972. Lee Atwater's strategy was to appeal to southern racism to reflect Nixon in 1972. The GOP managed to flip the southern from racist Dixiecrats who felt that they were left out of the DNC because of their support of equal rights for blacks, to bright Republican red in a little over 20 years.

As civil rights grew more accepted throughout the nation, basing a general election strategy on appeals to "states' rights", which some would have believed opposed civil rights laws, would have resulted in a national backlash. The concept of "states' rights" was considered by some to be subsumed within a broader meaning than simply a reference to civil rights laws.[2][3] States rights became seen as encompassing a type of New Federalism that would return local control of race relations.[58] Republican strategist Lee Atwater discussed the Southern Strategy in a 1981 interview later published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis.[59][60][61][62]


Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...
 
There is no doubt the southern strategy happened. For each denier i will name names.
 
Anyone disagree with the authors opinion?
 
As usual you left the most important part of his speech out...

e, race was was not a dominant issue.

Haha…not a dominant issue? Hilarious. The only difference was that it had to be done more as a dog whistle now…you know, like if all the places Reagan could have campaigned, to pick the Neshoba Country fair… to talk about “”states’ rights’- you know- the exact same dog whistle which had worked so well for Wallace and Nixon. LOL if you think that was a coincidence.

Don’t take my word for it. This dog whistle strategy continued until the early 2000s, by which point they were even getting ready to apologize for it.


“ Republican candidates often have prospered by ignoring black voters and even by exploiting racial tensions [...] by the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”
-Ken Mehlman, chair of RNC, 2005

Too little too late though. By 2016 they realized just putting aside the dog whistle and pulling out the bullhorn again was a more effective approach. They proved right, obviously.
 
The strategy was actually one of winning the support of the Sun Belt rather than the Deep South.
 
The difference is that the strategy was using dog whistles until now- now Trump and his supporters don’t care anymore. They’re using freaking bullhorns.
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.
 
The Southern strategy is a Democrat conspiracy theory that alleges Nixon carried Southern states in the 1968 presidential election in the wake of the bi-partisan 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fact, the South was carried by Democrat George Wallace.

Nixon had an excellent record on civil rights. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was an avid champion of the desegregation of public schools. The progressive columnist Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times, “There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.”

Upon Nixon taking office in 1969, he put into effect America’s first affirmative action program Dubbed the Philadelphia Plan, it imposed racial goals and timetables on the building trade unions, first in Philadelphia and then elsewhere. Now, would a man seeking to build an electoral base of Deep South white supremacists actually promote the first program to legally discriminate in favor of blacks?

Nixon barely campaigned in the Deep South. His strategy, as outlined by Kevin Phillips in his classic work, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” was to target the Sunbelt, the vast swath of territory stretching from Florida to Nixon’s native California. This included what Phillips terms the Outer or Peripheral South.

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

And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none. Among the racist Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was the sole senator to defect to the Republicans — and he did this long before Nixon’s time. Only one Dixiecrat congressman, Albert Watson of South Carolina, switched to the GOP. The rest, more than 200 Dixiecrat senators, congressmen, governors and high elected officials, all stayed in the Democrat Party.

The progressive notion of a Dixiecrat switch is a myth. Yet it is myth that continues to be promoted, using dubious case examples. Though the late Sens. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and John Tower of Texas and former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott all switched from the Democrat Party to the GOP, none of these men was a Dixiecrat.

The South, as a whole, became Republican during the 1980s and 1990s. This had nothing to do with Nixon; it was because of Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” The conservative appeal to patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, pro-life and Christianity had far more to do with the South’s movement into the GOP camp than anything related to race.

Yet the myth of Nixon’s Southern Strategy endures — not because it’s true, but because it conveniently serves to exculpate the crimes of the Democrat Party. Somehow the party that promoted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and racial terrorism gets to wipe its slate clean by pretending that, with Nixon’s connivance, the Republicans stole all their racists. It’s time we recognize this excuse for what it is: one more Democrat big lie.
 
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