Believe it or not, the entire myth was created by an unknown editor at the New York Times who didnât do his job and read a story he was given to edit.
On May 17, 1970, the New York Times published an article written by James Boyd. The headline, written by our unknown editor, was âNixonâs Southern Strategy: Itâs All in the Charts.â
The article was about a very controversial political analyst named Kevin Phillips. Phillips believed that everyone voted according to their ethnic background, not according to their individual beliefs. And all a candidate had to do is frame their message according to whatever moves a particular ethnic group.
Phillips offered his services to the Nixon campaign. But if our unknown editor had bothered to read the story completely, he wouldâve seen that Phillipâs and his theory was completely rejected!
Boyd wrote in his article, âThough Phillipsâs ideas for an aggressive anti-liberal campaign strategy that would hasten defection of the working-class democrats to the republicans did not prevail in the 1968 campaign, he won the respect John Mitchell.â (Mitchell was a well-known Washington insider at the time).
A lazy, negligent editor partially read the story. And wrote a headline for it that attributed Nixonâs campaign successâto a plan he rejected.
In fact, Phillips isnât even mentioned in Nixonâs memoirs.
Is all of this the result of a negligent copy editor at the New York Times? Or did they purposely work with the Democrat Party to create this myth? That has crossed my mind and itâs certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.