The Myth of the Southern Strategy

I don't recall using the term "overnight". The south went from solid blue to dead red in less than one generation. You can claim that the reasons for that had absolutely nothing to do with race, and I will politely beg to differ

it'd be pretty interesting to see how many blacks voted for democrats during those years, wouldn't you think?

 

so Mehlman was apologizing for the lies that leftists told about his party? Is that what you want us to believe?

 

Already dealt with early in the thread and totally rebutted. Phillips, a party switcher's PURE OPINION versus Pat Buchanan, a MORE important advisor to Nixon and his campaign and the FACTS.

I rebutted your Supreme Court appointments claim thoroughly in another thread. 1. The partisan process of Borking SCOTUS nominees is not indicative of either persistent racism in a nominee, nor of some Southern Strategy. 2. Those men were not household names in the segregationist movement by any stretch, weren't vocal segregationists at all, and any objectionable facts in their background came out only after the most nitpicking scrutiny. Those failed nominations are a testament to how partisan the SCOTUS nomination process gets, nothing more. 3. Both OP and I have introduced numerous incontestible facts about the Nixon campaigns and record on Civil Rights that prove there was no intent in the GOP to court racists via any plan or policy. QUITE THE OPPOSITE, as Nixon's campaign opening newspaper article demonstrates:

"Richard Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column on the South (by this writer) that declared we would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the “party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.”

"The charge that we built our Republican coalition on race is a lie. Nixon routed the left because it had shown itself incompetent to win or end a war into which it had plunged the United States and too befuddled or cowardly to denounce the rioters burning our cities or the brats rampaging on our campuses."

Buchanan substantiated three of the UNREFUTED REAL FACTORS I have posted two or three times now explaining the switch that took place over 40 years, disenchantment with Democrats because of the VN war and disrespect to veterans, disenchantment with the libertine hippie/Youth movement and Democrat campus radicals, disenchantment with the Democrat coddling of rioters, soft on law and order. Those are REAL, not fartwhistle BS.

And once again, OP asks for specific evidence of a Southern Strategy, memos, plans, notes on a napkin, policies, steps taken in forwarding those policies. And as windigo adds, exit polls, survey data, "I voted for X because I don't want desegregation and X made it very clear in his Y speech that he didn't want it either. If a real, pervasive strategy, SOME of this evidence MUST EXIST. After all, we didn't live in the PC times of today. If there was ever a GOP Southern Strategy to court racists, there would be some documentary evidence of some sort that isn't based on conjecture, opinion, coincidence and fartwhistles. NONE OF THAT HAS BEEN PROVIDED IN 13 PAGES. NADA.

 

Yep, they want to ask "well why did blacks start voting democrat then?" and the plain historical answer to that is LOTS of people of ALL colors started voting Democrat because they were pro socialist during the heyday of progressive socialism and communism in this country, nothing at all to do with race. As in all these bogus SS arguments from the left, they cherrypick, cherrypick, out of context half-assed arguments that STILL don't manage to include any legitimate evidence, just strained correlations, raw conjecture, opinion, coincidence and fartwhistle reasoning.

 

You have a severely flawed reasoning capacity. What on EARTH does "black solidarity" have to do with a supposed pervasive strategy to attract WHITE RACISTS into the GOP? Nothing, nothing at all.

 

Um...you able to think today? If white racists don't like blacks, and blacks are overwhelmingly voting for democrats and have democrats running for office....where the hell do you think they will go?

Those damn straws sure do make people start grasping.

 

I don't recall using the term "overnight" either, you did, not me. It took 40 years or more, is that one generation? Now you are just simply backpedaling. Do you not understand how demographics change overtime? People move in, people move out. People are born, people die. People are raised in segregated schools, then their kids are raised in desgregated schools after Nixon desegregated them. Then they grow up not being prejudice like their parents because the grew up with black friends.

They voted for republicans, I don't know if there are any stats on that kind of thing back then, until the "progressive" (codeword for socialist) movement.

 

More fartwhistle, 0 facts, 0 substance, 0 Southern Strategy. You've been given a list of REAL factors that caused the switch over 40 years. Keep spouting ignorant, empty bigotry, though, like a broken-bigot record, as I'm sure you will.

 

You've been given the real reasons for the switch. This thread is an OP asking for evidence of the Southern Strategy, plans, documents, policies, steps in proceeding with those policies. None has been provided. Your transparently feeble and fallacious attempt to try to make the other side prove a negative is noted for all to see though.

 

You are beating a dead horse. You've been proved wrong over and over already.

 

riiiiight.

 

Lott was endorsed by William Colmer for his first House run....Colmer was a Dixiecrat, even though Lott ran as a Nixon Republican.

"After the war, he pursued his twin interests of journalism and Democratic Party politics. Helms became the city news editor of The Raleigh Times. Later he became a radio and television newscaster and commentator with a large statewide audience."----Jesse Helms biography, wikipedia

All the George Wallace voters didn't die off between 1968 and 1972...nor many died by 1980. Yet they saw the Republican Party as their new home....not the post-60s pro-civil rights Democratic Party. And the South became "Solid" for Republicans to today.

Trent Lott knew that Reagan could win over racist Dixiecrat voters in Mississippi to the GOP...even elsewhere in the South...especially WHERE the speech was dellievered...giving a clear signal by The Gipper. "I'll go to where civil rights workers were murdered...and talk like George Wallace."

"77 Republicans who voted no (about 40 percent of the Republican members) were: both Cranes (Phil and Dan, of Illinois), Jim Jeffords, Delbert Latta, Trent Lott, John McCain, and Ron Paul." on the Martin Luther King holiday bill.

Jesse Helms threatened to filibuster the bill in the Senate.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/19/mis..._republicans_fought_against_the_king_holiday/

 

They talk out of the hind side and can't be bothered to use Google to check their facts.

 

The fact is they did not. I will only talk of Georgia because that is my home state. In the 70's and 80' s we Georgians continued to elected Democrats to Washington and statewide. Presidential wise we went for Carter twice, then Reagan once, Bush once and then in 1992 Clinton.

We didn't elect our first Republican senator, Mattingly until 1980 and he was immediately defeated in 1986. In fact as late as 2004 we had two Democratic Senators, Cleland and Miller.

And as late as 2003 we had sent 7 Democratic Representatives vs. 6 Republicans to Washington. It wasn't until the election of 2004 that the Republican Party finally sent more representatives to Washington than the Democrats had.

We only elected our first Republican Governor in 2002 since the civil war, 2002 was also the year the Republicans took control of our state legislature for the first time since the civil war.

I can assure you by the time Georgia finally became a red state as the result of the 2002 election, all the die hard southern dixiecrats had either retired or died. They remained true to the Democratic Party and were known as yeller dog Democrats. They would vote for a old yeller dog before they would ever vote Republican.

 

Dealt with Helms, who switched before entering national politics, earlier in the thread. Same for Lott. The list of Congressmen who switched from Dem to GOP over segregation has ONE name on it, Strom Thurmond. The real gorilla in the room question is, if there was some Southern Strategy to switch racist whites into the GOP, WHY DIDN'T MORE THAN ONE SEGREGATIONIST DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN SWITCH PARTIES? MANY Democrat Congressmen voted against the CRAs... WHY DID ONLY ONE SWITCH IF RACE WAS THE KEYSTONE ISSUE?

A. Have posted the REAL reasons over and over. Only one has even been addressed. Here they are again:

1. The South was DIRT POOR after the CW, and remained so for nearly a century. As the South gained more wealth in the latter half of the 20th century, they gravitated towards the party of lower taxes. This is likely the primary factor for the shift, more middle and upper middle class voters/taxpayers in the South.
2. The South is more fundamentally religious, and perceives the Democrats as the party of abortion. As Hoosier's article points out, the South also resents the constant barrage of anti religious bigotry from the left, perceives the Democratic Party as the party of atheists.
3. The South is the cradle of our military, has been since the country's founding. As such, the South resented certain aspects of the AntiWar movement, perceived the Democrats as getting us into and keeping us in the VN war, and also perceived the Democrats as disrespectful to veterans.
4. The South has been anti central government since the founding, and that relates only tangentially to slavery. The South perceives the Democrats as the party of big, overreaching, expensive government post Kennedy, and votes accordingly.
5. The South perceives the Democrats as the party of reactionary socialists and immoral, drug-addled libertines, Hollywood and MSM excess, this began with the Youth Movement and continues today. Abbie Hoffman and Tim Leary didn't do the Democrats any favors in retaining the Southern vote long term.
6. The South perceives the Democrats as soft on law and order, allowing and even creating the Watts, Detroit, Chicago and Ferguson riots, coddling OWS lawlessness, race-baiting and wealth-baiting across the country for decades that leads to unnecessary social damage and violence.
7. As mentioned previously in the thread, the South, pro Second Amendment, perceives the Democrats as the party of threatened gun seizures and unnecessary restrictions on gun rights.
8. The South is tired of being subject to LW and Democrat bigotry, being called uneducated, flyover country, backward hillbillies, tired of being the only allowable butt of bigotry by the supposedly PC and tolerant left. Why would any Southerner vote for a party full of people constantly and irrationally derogating the South as OP and the liestudy do?

B. As posted previously in the thread, in the Nixon/Humphrey/Wallace election, all the Wallace votes switched to HUMPHREY, not Nixon, by election time.

"When the ’68 campaign began, Nixon was at 42 percent, Humphrey at 29 percent, Wallace at 22 percent. When it ended, Nixon and Humphrey were tied at 43 percent, with Wallace at 13 percent. The 9 percent of the national vote that had been peeled off from Wallace had gone to Humphrey."

Dealt with already in the thread, by ringotuna and myself both. Unanswered.

Ronald Reagan held his originating campaign speech, coincidentally, at the Neshoba State Fair within several miles of a particular Civil Rights lynching site. He said "states rights" once in a medium length speech on the economy and inflation... and hilariously when CONDONING WELFARE not racism. Jimmy Carter started his campaign, coincidentally, at the national HQ of the KKK at the time. No one has attributed any racist motivation to Carter... ever. Any venue in the country is within ten miles of a heinous crime, it doesn't mean that people who choose to speak there are supporting that crime.

Do you know how expensive a paid federal holiday is? MLK Day was a sop to unions. Do you know how many individually named Federal Holidays there are? TWO (three if you count Jesus). I respect MLK and his legacy, but is he on par with George Washington and Jesus? No, objectively he is not. There are some big reasons that have nothing to do with race for opposing more federal holidays, especially for a president like Reagan trying to cut government costs. But all that is irrelevant. FACT: After seeing overwhelming Congressional support, Reagan readily signed MLK day into law. The end.

Arguendo, are any of the above evidence of a Southern Strategy to court racists? No. Did you read the thread before posting? No. Do you and all the other lefties keep posting the same fartwhistle garbage from wiki over and over without bothering to deal with reasonsed rebuttal? Yes.

 

Yes. Because that's EXACTLY what his vague statement was meant to address, else he would have offered specifics instead of a nebulous sop.

 

The above is like a 4th grader's puerile attempt at a syllogism:

Racist Whites vote opposite to blacks.
Blacks vote for Democrats, therefore
Racist Whites vote for Republicans

If the above hilarity were true, o King of Logic, you just DISPROVED any GOP Southern Strategy to court racists. Why have some "strategy" if black votes were going to chase white racist votes into the GOP ANYWAY?

1. "Let's CHASE OFF these votes over here, so we CAN GET these votes over here." My, what a winning campaign strategy that!
2. Where is any STRATEGY in that, any plans, memos, policy, steps in process? NOWHERE, because it's IDIOTIC ON ITS FACE.
3. But maybe there was some secret squirrel plan by Nixon to chase off those black votes, maybe there was a fartwhistle after all:

Richard Nixon: "Hmm, let's see, I want all the racists to vote for me, so I must get the blacks to vote for Democrats. Hmm, how can I accomplish that? I KNOW, here's what I will do to chase off the black vote."

"Between 1969 and 1974, Nixon – who believed that blacks had gotten a raw deal in America and wanted to extend a helping hand:
* raised the civil rights enforcement budget 800 percent;
* doubled the budget for black colleges;
* appointed more blacks to federal posts and high positions than any president, including LBJ;
* adopted the Philadelphia Plan mandating quotas for blacks in unions, and for black scholars in colleges and universities;
* invented “Black Capitalism” (the Office of Minority Business Enterprise), raised U.S. purchases from black businesses from $9 million to $153 million, increased small business
loans to minorities 1,000 percent, increased U.S. deposits in minority-owned banks 4,000 percent;
* raised the share of Southern schools that were desegregated from 10 percent to 70 percent. Wrote the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1975, “It has only been
since 1968 that substantial reduction of racial segregation has taken place in the South.”

"and I'll do this too (with some overlap)"

"Among the significant actions taken by President Nixon to benefit minorities was increasing the budget for civil rights programs. From 1969 – 1972 the funds were increased from 75 million to more than 600 million.
President Nixon initiated the Emergency School Act with 1,500,000 to help end school segregation and pay for promotion of interracial experiences among children where racial isolation existed.
The Department of Defense initiated actions to overcome off-base discrimination against black military personnel.
President Nixon issued an Executive Order calling on Federal agencies to apply Equal Opportunity (EO) policies to every aspect of personnel policies and practices.
President Nixon allocated 12 million dollars for Sickle Cell research. This disease afflicts one out of every 500 black children.
From 1969 to 1971, the government’s Federal purchases from black businesses increased to 142,000,000 from 13,000,000.
In 1969 President Nixon issued an Executive order creating an Office of Minority Business Enterprise in the Department of Commerce.
The Nixon Administration requested legislation to extend the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) authority to the state and local level. Most importantly, President Nixon mandated that federal contractors must comply with equal employment opportunity laws."

"THAT'LL SURELY CHASE OFF those pesky black voters and impress all the white racists at the same time! GENIUS! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

0 facts, 0 substance, 0 Southern Strategy to court racists in the GOP.

 

So Lott was a dixiecrat by osmosis? Let me make this CLEAR to you once more. The DIXIECRATS WERE IN 1948. Truman was president. I guess that makes Truman a dixiecrat using your logic.

Oh my God, Helms was a democrat! Such a stain on his reputation!

And I'm sure that one day you will find the proof. Keep looking and let me know when you do.

UGH! THERE WERE NO DIXIECRATS IN 1980!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOP WITH THE SECRET CODEWORD BS. YOU HAVE NO PROOF SO YOU PRETEND STATES RIGHTS MEANS WHITE SUPREMACY. IT MEANS STATES RIGHTS, AS IN THE 10TH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which once again proves my point that the republican party was for it, voted for it, and Reagan signed it. You can count Jim Jeffords as a democrat since he switched parties.

So what do I care? Jesse Helms was an (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*). I don't have to defend every republican, and every republican doesn't speak for me. That's just stupid.

 

why would anyone "apologize" for the fact that someone ELSE supposedly told lies about them? That's just silly.

- - - Updated - - -

none of the quotes you attribute to me were written by me. Please fix that.

 

Well maybe it is silly... that a politician would ever tailor a speech to preconceived, erroneous attitudes for decades in an audience, who would do that? What politician would ever exaggerate or mea culpa or say anything at all in an attempt to get votes? Why on earth would they do that? I guess it's just the riddle of the ages for folks like you to ponder.

Quotation marks in a post aren't solely quoting you.

 

Because, "ol wise one of empty thoughts", it was much easier to pander to the conservative whites who felt disenfranchised by the passage of the CRA (which by reading posts on this forum, there are still people who complain about it being passed) by saying, "hey vote for us, we will make sure the white vote is secure and you will never have to worry about losing your place at the top of the list".

Dude, seriously, I could care less if you get this or not. It's not because it's confusing or some hypothetical scenario, it's because you identify as conservative and cannot bring your mind to accept that it happened. There are facts and people still alive that experienced it. Try again in 30 - 40 years to whitewash history when those folks are no longer around. FFS.

 

I did.

 

So you got owned and now you're back to, "conservatives are racist!" Let me tell you, liberals are racist!

 

OP asked a specific question in the OP, a simple, direct question. FIFTEEN pages of thread later, not one single answer has been provided.

Time to put up or shut up lefties. Fifteen pages of warmup and nothing, "but...but... Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, MLK day, Kevin Phillips, Neshoba, Fart whistles, blacks vote for Democrats, 1:40 Lee Atwater cherrypick out of context, SCOTUS appointments, wiki, wiki, wiki." ALL being thoroughly dealt with and answered over and over multiple times in multiple ways. Mountains of factual evidence directly contradicting any pervasive strategy in the GOP to court the racist vote, almost all ignored, certainly unrefuted. REAL reasons posted for the switch of the South to GOP over 40 years, almost all ignored, certainly unrefuted.

0 plans, 0 policies, 0 steps implementing, 0 documentary evidence, 0 exit polls, 0 facts, 0 substance, 100% BULL.

Southern Strategy>>> historical fabrication towards deflection of the real, violent racist Democrat history onto Republicans, preaching a bigoted lie for 50 years in hopes of fooling the unaware... that worked marvelously. UNTIL... INTERNET.

With the downfall of the Southern Strategy as some real thing that ever happened, guess what? The whole leftist lie narrative against the GOP on race flies out the window. No more comfortable propaganda cushion between voters and the truth of the rabble rousing, violent, manipulative, ugly Democrat history on race in the US. "If we can't keep them in chains, let's chain their minds!" You gots some splaining to do!

Lefties, get used to all your many lie narratives on race, gender, wealth, resentment, resentment, resentment, being similarly deconstructed in the near and mid term by the light of reason, historical fact, and blessed technology that cracks the dialogue well open.

 

Actually it did not. The south was not solid in 80, 92, & 96. Nor was it in 08 and 12. The idea of a solid south comes from just a few elections which were more the product of bad democratic candidates.