The Myth of the Southern Strategy

I wish I could once and for all bury the myth of the "Southern Strategy" the left has perpetrated against President Richard Nixon, and by association, the entire GOP in perpetuity, but I'm afraid the myth will live on as long as there are leftist willing to propagate the lie in order to abuse and suppress black voters for political gain.

I have challenged many to present proof of this strategy by presenting evidence that it even existed. All have failed to produce the any aspect of a plan, it's policies, how it was implemented, or whether or not it succeeded and how. I renew the challenge once again and dare anyone to prove that Nixon pandered to racist democrats in the South (which by the way insinuates racism only existed in the South) and that ever since, the GOP has instituted any racist policies or actions to appease racists by targeting blacks or other minorities.

Here is one such allegation which lacks supporting evidence as do they all:

To believe the idea that the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, which for over 100 years had introduced civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, anti-KKK legislation and anti-lynching legislation, suddenly flipped and became a racist party, flies in the face of the facts. Nixon, as the story goes, started it by implementing the Southern Strategy. So let's have a look at the facts.

Here is my evidence to the contrary which is undeniable:

Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon was a supporter of civil rights his entire life. The left has long maligned him with the accusation that he had a diabolical "Southern Strategy" to steal the racist Southern democrat voting block away from the democrat party. Let's have a look at the real truth:

Weakened by whom?

By Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson:

It was weakened by JFK and LBJ!!!

Richard Milhous Nixon's real record as President:

Nixon took office in January of 1969 and immediately began implementing measures to enforce the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision which had been almost entirely ignored by the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations for the previous eight years.

Nixon appointed 2 black men to be Chairman of the EEOC. Here's a portion of an article by one of them:

So what did Nixon do to attract white Southern racist democrats? What was his strategy? Desegregation? Nobody has yet told me what he did to alienate blacks or to appeal to Southern racists. Nobody has described how the plan was implemented or what policies were enacted by Nixon to achieve the alleged ends. Nobody has pointed to any statements made by Nixon in any speech or writings nor any directives or communications, directing to his staff to engage in actions to implement the "Southern Strategy". The very name "Southern Strategy" is not present in any of Nixon's documents that I have seen.

In future posts, I will post more proof regarding:
1) The 1968 election
2) George Wallace
3) The democrat party's racist policies before 1964
4) The democrat party's racist policies since 1964
5) The democrat party's racist policies in use today
6) And the democrat party's policy of black voter suppression
7) The myth of the great party switch
"Conservatives are racist, Liberals are not" myth
9) The myth that racism is only in the South
10) Segregation, black codes and CCR's in democrat cities and counties in the Non-Southern states

Also check these two posts I have regarding the party's record on race:
http://www.politicalforum.com/race-relations/379320-gops-record-race.html
http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...75-democratic-partys-record-race-part-ii.html

 

It's like you walked into a Baptist Church and said that Jesus is a myth.

Good luck with your thread.

 

Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy Video
The forty-two-minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context

http://www.thenation.com/article/17...ers-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy

 

Eh, not going to do this again. Will simply deal with ALL the leftist arguments for the Southern Strategy in no particular order off the spurious wiki page and will be my last post to the thread:

1. Lee Atwater said the N word in a 1min 40 second interview in 1981 with a race-baiting hackademic. Atwater was speaking hypothetically and in persona, not to any real, specific GOP strategy. He debunked and refuted the Southern Strategy thoroughly, entirely, and irrefutably, during the other 38 minutes of the interview despite being CONSTANTLY baited by the hackademic who only used the cherrypick, never the entire interview until both he and Atwater were dead. The Nation posted the entire interview, probably because omitting it when slandering Atwater with the 1:40 cherry pick could have resulted in libel charges. Go find it if you want to hear the truth and listen to ALL of it. It completely disproves the Southern Strategy.

EDIT: cool, someone linked it right above (she will regret that LOL... think before running off and blindly googling to cutpaste here in the future). That interview alone proves 1. There was and is no pervasive Southern Strategy in the GOP, 2. race wasn't a radar issue in the South post 1970, 3. Just how dishonest and corrupt leftist hackademics are. Atwater was being played when he thought he was being honestly interviewed. To repeat, the whole interview wasn't published ANYWHERE until 2012, whereas the 1:40 cherrypick was referenced over and over by political operatives and the hackademic in question for decades. I guess the hackademic's wife had pangs of conscience once the hackademic and Atwater were dead. Notice how the Nation tries to play it like the whole interview (that they most certainly don't want you to listen to) is covered in the article. It's not, only the cherrypick.

2. 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.

3. There is a -single- cherrypicked quote of MLK's out of all the many things he said over time, denouncing racism in the GOP. It is taken entirely out of context, and leftists repeat it over and over as if that single quote proves the Southern Strategy. It doesn't. King also wrote a letter to Nixon thanking him for his support of one of the civil rights acts.

4. Two or three commentators, including a Nixon aide who switched parties, state their OPINION that there was a Southern Strategy. None of these OPINIONS are backed with any factual content whatsoever... nada.

5. Recently, a RNC chairman purportedly "apologized" to the black community for racism in the GOP. He did not. Dig up the actual video o youtube and watch it for yourself. It as a political speech with a very vague tossoff phrase obviously directed at the PERCEPTION of racism in the GOP propagandized by the left for decades, not any actuality. Once again, there are no specifics or facts in that speech whatsoever.

6. There is a law professor by the name of Lopez who makes a living race-baiting. His works are transparently dishonest and flawed to any reasonable reader. His premise of GOP racism involves pretending that George Wallace was a Republican (he was not), that because he was a racist means later Republicans were too. No kidding, his work is THAT vapid.

7. Strom Thurmond switched parties. That's IT. Unlike Robert Byrd, who did not switch parties, he was not a klansman. Almost all the racists in Congress remained Democrats their entire career, did not switch, the South remained Democrat in statehouse and Congress until 93.

That's about it. That's as close as you will get the left to proving the Southern Strategy. NOTHING in writing, no policy papers, notes. NOTHING on tape (other than Atwater's clear refutation of it). NO factual content, testimony, documentary evidence whatsoever. NO real evidence at all for a conspiracy theory that supposedly was so pervasive that it caused millions of voters to switch parties due to no other reason than racism.

I have listed the many real, obvious reasons for the shift in voting patterns to GOP in the South in a recent thread, won't repeat them here because no leftists EVER deal with any of the real factors directly, preferring to ignorantly forward their invisible ghost of a moronic "dog whistle" theory over plain history and reality.

 

Nixon’s Southern Strategy Was Not A Racist Appeal

In the arsenal of the Democrats is a condemnation of Republican President Richard Nixon for his so-called “Southern Strategy.” These same Democrats expressed no concern when the racially segregated South voted solidly for Democrats for over 100 years, yet unfairly deride Republicans because of the thirty-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party that began in the 1970's. Nixon's "Southern Strategy” was an effort on his part to get fair-minded people in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were discriminating against blacks. Georgia did not switch until 2004, and Louisiana was controlled by Democrats until the election of Republican Governor Bobby Jindal in 2007.

As the co-architect of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, Pat Buchanan provided a first-hand account of the origin and intent of that strategy in a 2002 article that can be found on the Internet at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30233

In that article, Buchanan wrote that when Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column about the South (written by Buchanan), Nixon declared that the Republican Party would be built 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 ounce of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice”.

During the 1966 campaign, Nixon was personally thanked by Dr. King for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Nixon also endorsed all Republicans, except the members of the John Birch Society.

Notably, the enforcement of affirmative action began with Richard Nixon‘s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher who became known as “the father of affirmative action enforcement”) that set the nation‘s first goals and timetables. Nixon was also responsible for the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1970’s, including the Equal Employment Act of 1972.

Fletcher, as president of the United Negro College Fund, coined the phrase “the mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Fletcher was also one of the original nine plaintiffs in the famous “Brown v. Topeka Board of Education” decision. Fletcher briefly pursued a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1995.

Nixon began his merit-based affirmative action program to overcome the harm caused by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson who, after he was elected in 1912, kicked blacks out of federal government jobs and prevented blacks from obtaining federal contracts. Also, while Wilson was president and Congress was controlled by the Democrats, more discriminatory bills were introduced in Congress than ever before in our nation’s history. Today, Democrats have turned affirmative action into an unfair quota system that even most blacks do not support.

http://www.nbra.info/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#Nixon_s_Southern_Strategy_Was_Not_A_Racist_Appeal

 

Left wing 'context' as expected and this is all anyone on the left has about the Southern Strategy and what they base their race obsessed viewpoint from.

 

Democrats who became Republicans 1950s=1970s
1952 – Henry Hyde, later became U.S. Representative from Illinois (1975–2007)
1956 – Cora Brown, State Senator, left Democratic Party because she believed it was too heavily influenced by the Congress of Industrial Organizations
1958 – Odell Pollard, later became Arkansas State Republican Chairman (1966–1970)
1959 – Francis Grevemberg, former Louisiana State Police superintendent, before running for Governor of Louisiana in 1960
1959 – Dud Lastrapes of Louisiana, as a television anchorman long before he was elected mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana in 1980
1960s[edit]
1960s – Arthur Ravenel, Jr., before running for the South Carolina Senate, later U.S. Representative from South Carolina (1987–1995)
1960s – James F. Byrnes, the former 104th Governor of South Carolina (1951–1955) and 49th United States Secretary of State (1945–1947)
1960 – Claude R. Kirk, Jr., later 36th Governor of Florida (1967–1971)
1960 – Charlton Lyons
1962 – Dave Treen, later U.S. Representative from Louisiana's 3rd congressional district (1973–1980) and 51st governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction (1980–1984)
1962 – Jack M. Cox, to run for Governor of Texas; losing to later Republican convert John B. Connally, Jr.
1962 – James D. Martin, to run for the U.S. Senate against Lister Hill; later a U.S. Representative from Alabama (1965–1967)
1962 – Ronald Reagan of California, while an actor and former Screen Actors Guild president.[4] Later 40th President of the United States (1981–1989)
1962 – Floyd Spence, while a South Carolina state Representative; later a U.S. Representative from South Carolina (1971–2001)
1963 – Rubel Phillips, former Mississippi Public Service Commissioner, to run for governor of Mississippi
1963 – Stanford Morse, member of the Mississippi State Senate from Gulfport, to run for lieutenant governor on the Rubel Phillips ticket
1963 – James H. Boyce
1964 – Alfred Goldthwaite, Alabama state representative
1964 – Clarke Reed
1964 – Howard Callaway, prior to becoming the first Republican U.S. representative from Georgia since Reconstruction (1965–1967) and later 11th United States Secretary of the Army (1973-1975)
1964 - Iris Faircloth Blitch, former Georgia U.S. Representative (1955-1963)
1964 – Charles W. Pickering, later Mississippi state senator and Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi (2004)
1964 – Strom Thurmond, while U.S. senator from South Carolina (1954–2003) switched to the Republican party on September 16, 1964.[5]
1965 – Albert W. Watson, while U.S. Representative from South Carolina (1963–1971) (resigned before switching parties and regained his seat in a special election)
1965 – Arlen Specter, while running for District Attorney of Philadelphia (1966–1974), later U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania (1981–2011); in 2009, he switched back to the Democratic Party but later criticized Democratic party leadership and lost the 2010 Democratic primary in his state.[6]
1965 – Roderick Miller, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives
1966 – Marshall Parker, to run for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina; twice defeated by Fritz Hollings
1966 – Joseph O. Rogers, Jr.
1966 – Thomas A. Wofford, former U.S. Senator from South Carolina (1956), before write-in campaign for State Senator from South Carolina
1966 – Len E. Blaylock, to support Winthrop Rockefeller for Governor of Arkansas, later U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Arkansas (1975–197
1966 – Jerry Thomasson, state Representative
1966 – Henry Grover of Texas, state Representative
1967 – William E. Dannemeyer, later U.S. Representative from California (1979–1992)
1967 – Allison Kolb, former Louisiana State Auditor (1952–1956), while seeking a political comeback running unsuccessfully for state Treasurer, lost 1956 Democratic primary for state auditor
1968 – William Reynolds Archer, Jr., while a member of the Texas House of Representatives, later U.S. Representative from Texas (1971–2001)
1968 – Will Wilson, former Attorney General of Texas (1957–1963) switched to support Richard M. Nixon in the 1968 presidential election
1968 – James L. Bentley, Comptroller General of Georgia (1963–1971)
1970s[edit]
1970 – Jesse Helms, two years before running for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina (1973–2003)
1970 – A. C. Clemons, while serving in the Louisiana Senate
1970 – William Oswald Mills, later became U.S. Representative from Maryland (1971–1973)
1970 – Bob Barr, who later became U.S. Representative from Georgia (1995–2003); later left the GOP to run as a Libertarian for U.S. president in 2008
1971 – Tillie K. Fowler, who later became U.S. Representative from Florida (1993–2001)
1972 – Ed Karst, while serving as the mayor of Alexandria, Louisiana; later returned to the Democrats and then became "No Party"
1972 – Robert R. Neall, before serving in the Maryland House of Delegates. He switched back to the Democratic Party in 1999
1972 – Trent Lott, prior to running to become U.S. Representative from Mississippi (1973–1989) and later U.S. Senator from Mississippi (1989–2007) . He was administrative assistant to Rules Committee chairman William Colmer, who endorsed Lott as his successor despite Lott's party switch.
1973 – Mills E. Godwin Jr., 60th Governor of Virginia from 1966 to 1970 and Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (1962–1966). Later 62nd Governor (1974–197
1973 – Samuel I. Hayakawa, later U.S. Senate from California (1977–1983)
1973 – John Connally, former 61st United States Secretary of the Treasury (1971–1972) and former 39th Governor of Texas (1963–1969)
1975 – Elizabeth Dole, while employed by the Federal Trade Commission. Later 8th United States Secretary of Transportation (1983–1987), 20th United States Secretary of Labor (1989–1990) and U.S. Senator from North Carolina (2003–2009)
1975 – John Jarman, while U.S. Representative from Oklahoma (1951–1977). He had served for 24 years in the House and said he was fed up with the Democratic Party, which had been "taken over by liberals".
1976 – Rob Couhig, New Orleans businessman, to manage the campaign of Republican Bob Livingston for Louisiana's 1st congressional district
1977 – A. J. McNamara, while serving in the Louisiana House
1977 – Lane Carson, while serving in the Louisiana House
1978 – Robert G. Jones, after leaving the Louisiana Senate
1978 – Chris Smith, managed the unsuccessful 1976 New Jersey Senate primary campaign of Democrat Steve Foley. Later became the U.S. Representative from New Jersey (1981–present).[7]
late 1970s – Thomas Bliley, after being Mayor of Richmond, Virginia, and later U.S. Representative from Virginia (1981–2001)
late 1970s – Michael F. "Mike" Thompson, while serving in the Louisiana House
1979 – Charles Grisbaum, Jr., member of the Louisiana House from Jefferson Parish
1979 – Ed Scogin, member of the Louisiana House from St. Tammany Parish

Notice a trend? hmmmmmmm someone tried to say this wasn't real and posted a list of Dixiecrats and of course many of those switched parties too.

 

Couldn't edit and changed my mind. Decided to paste the real reasons for the switch:

As far as Southern Strategy, the South switched parties over 40 years for very simple reasons, not bogus ghostly "dog whistles" and Southern Strategies:

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?

These are -some of- the real reasons the South votes GOP today. They aren't hidden conspiracies, but well-documented trends that need no substantiation. OTOH, the Southern Strategy is a hoax, a vapor trail of nebulous, conspiratorial "dog whistles," cherry-picked quotes out of context, raw opinion, hackademic bilge such as the OP study, and 0 facts backing. So readers are free to choose what to believe here, the well-known numbered items above, or that the South just "switched over" 100% due to racism in the GOP.


Notice the long list of purported Demo-GOP switch a partisan posted, it's laughable, most not national politicians. Don't let them feed you manure in lieu of the whole picture, dishonest cherrypickers all of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_switching_in_the_United_States

and besides, who's to say NONRACIST Dems didn't switch to the GOP in SUPPORT of Civil Rights and disgust with their racist, anti Civil Rights Democrat brethren during the 50s-70s?

Here's a final, very good link for those interested in the truth:

http://blackrepublican.blogspot.com/2012/06/republicans-and-democrats-did-not.html

 

Right wing context as expected...utter and complete denial.

Lee Atwater was a left winger? Or are you claiming that these are not his words?

 

Are you accusing them of changing parties because they were racists? No one said people have never changed parties. Where is your proof that they were motivated by race? Many of those on your list are not even from the South.

Of the literally tens of thousands of democrat politicians from the 1950's to the 1970's, a list of less than 60 names is only proof that the party's did not in fact switch. Party switching was way down of my list of things to cover, but thank you to you for taking that argument off the table for me.

 

The irony is that the success of the "Southern Strategy" is most apparent in the vehemence of those who now deny it.

Nixon's brilliant political strategist, Kevin Phillips, explained it in 1970:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.​

 

All White? Goodness, what an inexplicable coincidence. The odds that race wasn't the dominant factor must be astronomical!

 

Please explain why the democrats continued to dominate the Southern states in federal, statewide, local offices as well as maintain control over the state houses well into the 90's?

 

LOL, everything is filtered through the race obsessed lens of left wing ideology as usual. Why not look at the history instead of grabbing at whatever you can to project your race obsession?

 

Well did you expect her to list black democrats that switched to the GOP?

[video=youtube;n_YQ8560E1w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_YQ8560E1w#t=62[/video]​

 

No but a lot were the former Dixiecrats.

Actually someone said there weren't many.

Again I didn't say that. What I showed was that many former Democrats were from the south as the Democratic party became more the party of civil rights. So there is a pattern. Some were. We know that.

Most are

>>>MOD EDIT Off Topic Removed<<<

 

Already dealt with. Phillips switched parties and became anti GOP. He was most certainly not Nixon's only political strategist, nor particularly "brilliant." His opinion above (and yours) are accompanied by 0 facts, 0 documentary evidence, pure conjecture. Nixon's other strategist, Pat Buchanan rebukes the Southern Strategy, and does so FACTUALLY and convincingly:

http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-neocons-and-nixons-southern-strategy-512

"Now, as a co-architect of the Nixon strategy that gave the GOP a lock on the White House for a quarter century, let me say that Kristol&#8217;s opportunism is matched only by his ignorance. 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 &#8220;party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.&#8221;

CHECK OUT THE DOG WHISTLE THERE... "RACISTS, WE DON'T WANT YOU!" ROFLMAO. Great "Southern Strategy" that!

"When the &#8217;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."

The racists sure switched all right... from Wallace to Humphrey. Guess those racists can read the newspaper where Nixon said STAY AWAY! More flawless Southern Strategy there, LOL.

"Between 1969 and 1974, Nixon &#8211; 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 &#8220;Black Capitalism&#8221; (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, &#8220;It has only been
since 1968 that substantial reduction of racial segregation has taken place in the South.&#8221;

WAY TO COURT THOSE RACISTS TRICKY DICK Way to get them switching in droves. Erm... wait. Maybe there were other reasons the South began to switch. Maybe I already listed them.

If anyone would admit to a Southern Strategy to court racists to switch, it would be Buchanan. He's no stranger to controversy and impolitic statements or admissions, and would simply say "sure we did it, that's politics." But he does not.

"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."

 

I did better...I listened to it. I have no obsessions so speak for yourself.

Funny how the GOP is the party that guys such as Cliven Bundy types support though. Ever wonder which party a member of the KKK would support at election time? I don't wonder at all. I am not claiming that everyone that votes Republican is a racist, but if someone has racist tendencies, there is little doubt which party they are leaning towards.

 

I did, because there weren't. List the Southern members of CONGRESS who switched as a direct result of Civil Rights, not just for any old reason. IIRC, that list has ONE name on it, Strom Thurmond.

 

There may have been more blacks to switch or hold office to begin with if Democrats weren't HANGING THEM FROM TREES for doing so or getting too uppity.

 

Who?

Less than 60 isn't many.

Which doesn't make sense either. Why switch from the republican party which has always supported civil rights in their party platform, to the democrats who only recently decided the republicans were right on civil rights?

Less than 75%. A couple switched back to democrat which again proves nothing.

No, it's small "d" democrat.

You proving my point is not the definition of backpedaling.

 

Both Nixon and Reagan shamelessly played the southern strategy to turn disgruntled racist dixiecrats into repubs.
You can spout all of the nonsense you want, but it doesn't change that historical reality.
The fact that they later threw them under the bus once they got elected is irrelevant. They were politicians and their supporters were fools who swallowed their polarizing rhetoric.

 

Interesting to note that what Atwater is saying is that you could not win in the south unless you used played on the same playing field as democrats which became redundant in the 80's. So basically the democrat strategy was to run on race and party and the republicans used the democrats strategy subtly to win the south (how else will you be able to change things unless you win), which Nixon failed at as the South still voted democrat. After all, it was Nixon that instituted the most forceful affirmative action program to reverse the damage that democrats has wrung for centuries.

Not much has changed, democrats still run on race and party.

 

Bundy is not a racist according to his black friends and employees.

You can have the 5,000 votes of the KKK, they probably still vote democrat like their daddy did. And the 50,000 racists in the NOI, and the few thousand in the New Black Panther Party leftist racist group.

 

You can duplicate post this all you want, but parsing history won't change it.

The GOP's Southern Strategy is so well known that it isn't debated anywhere outside of right wing talk radio and blogs.