Sigh.
Okay, you and I both know this is what you deeply wish to believe and that you won't read so much as one of the links I am about to provide. None the less as someone who ardently followed politics starting in 1965, volunteered for Nixon in 1968, and who went to the Republican conventions in 1972 and 1976 this theory wasn't even noticed in the 60s and early 70s. And for good reason, it's a ex post rationalization by the Democratic liberal/left to explain why they lost the working class (which was at the time 90 percent white) to Nixon and Reagan.
"It was a plot, a nefarious strategy"...or so you all would like to believe.
But that is NOT how social movements and demographic shifts, nor generational values, change politics. These shifts didn't happen due to machinations of some Republican leaders, they happened organically - they evolved as a consequence of changing values and economics, and class loyalties. The most concise explanation is simple: the Democratic coalition of southern segregationists, blacks, and the working class came apart. The rise of the New Left, Counter culture, black militancy, riots, and the working class becoming middleclass under one roof fractured...a fracture that began in the new south border states and spread to the deep south.
And once segregation was buried and race became much less of an issue in the South, the traditional values of the white working class and "common man" started voting Republican. George Wallace's attempt at a third party failed, and that was that. If you didn't identify with the New Left, SF hippies, anti-war America military haters, drugs, welfare, or free sex the Democratic party liberalism wasn't going to cater to Baptists, bible belt, and other traditional lifestyles.
The term "SF Democrat" and "Liberal" wrote off the Southern as a bunch of racist boobs ... and naturally they went elsewhere. In short, the GOP didn't need to change their conservative and small federal government views, they only had to wait for the South to quit a party that didn't want them.
Although I could give you several links, I start with the first one and see if you surprise me and read it.
The conservative appeal to patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, pro-life and Christianity had more to do with the South becoming Republican than anything related to race.
thehill.com