Powell was lambasted for betraying his friends and allies of decades. And his complaints do not match up with the reality of his rise to fame and power in the GOP.
He spoke truth to power ...for once
He was justifying his betrayal.
I posted a link to the New York Times article on the study I was referring to about the Myth of the SOuthern Strategy.
DId you miss it? If so go back, read it and reply.
did you miss Ken Mehlmanm acknowledgement of GOP racism...he is a white man
" But in the 50s and 60s,
Democrats embraced the civil rights movement, costing them the white Southern vote. Meanwhile, the
Republican Party successfully wooed disaffected white racists with a “Southern strategy” that championed “states’ rights.”
It’s an easy story to believe, but this year two political scientists called it into question. In their book “The End of Southern Exceptionalism,” Richard Johnston of the
University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the
University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.)
The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn’t."
