The Southern Strategy: then....and now

[bluzman61]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

The Left treats Southerners like they are evil and inferior people.
It is seen throughout our Education, Entertainment and News.
And, the Left also repeatedly expresses their contempt for Heartland Americans and Suburbanites.
Southerners are just like any other group of people, they will not vote for people who hate them.
The Democrats are just unable to understand why the people who they hate will not vote for them.
It's amazing how the Left has no sense of self awareness.

You are CORRECT. Absolutely correct, thank you for your post.

 

[kaz]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

You are leaving out one of the most important keys to the rebirth of the Southern Strategy under Trump...

Roger Stone. Roger Stone as a campaign helped Trump adopt a strategy in courting voters similar to the same way he did with Nixon. It is real, and people need to quit lying to themselves and accept it.

I dont' see a coherent strategy with trump. Coyote's post DID NOT suggest racism was regional. Nixon's southern strategy was actually part of his silent maj strategy (that worked btw) in saying most people oppose chaos. Trump's strategy is failing because many of us noticed that the cops were their first in the anarchy line. And Trump was gassing people outside a church for a photo op.

Reagan's southern strategy was more about removing federal oversite from states making voting districts. He may or may not have been right. That's not a fight I choose to have. But what's not debateable is that Courts no longer are open to citizens who can clearly show states suppressing votes in places just not in the South. Trump's strategy is again failing because he's embracing suppressing votes. He's all in with Ga and Fla.

This is how your worshiper took your post, Coyote: "Trump's strategy is again failing because he's embracing suppressing votes. He's all in with Ga and Fla." Yeah, no race card played there. Suuurrrreeeeee it wasn't

 

[bluzman61]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

Democrats are the party of slavery, segregation, the KKK, Jim Crow, cross burnings, overlords capturing runaway blacks and you always have been.

Your leader Joe you ain't black Biden is flagrantly racist and even says that blacks are the same.

Try deflecting all you want, but the shit sticks to your side where it belongs

yayaya - thread after thread after thread - Dem's are the party of racism, Biden is a racist - it's a mad scramble with a desperate air to redefine you and yours.

I don't think either party is "the party of racism" - you are assuming the party is unchanged from 150 years ago. That's not just stupid, it's moronic. Neither party is the same as it was them OR as it was during segregation.

If ALL you have to base this on is old party history, then that is pretty pathetic don't you think?

I think it's easy to see that parties are about strategizing GET MORE VOTES first and foremost.

Coyote: How DARE you keep responding to Democrats bringing up racism over and over and over, kaz!!!!!!

Yeah. Rejected as the bull crap that it is.

There is nothing more destructive to this country than Democrats and your well worn race card, which is all your OP is. Race relations were BETTER in the naughts. Since then, Democrats have done nothing but exploit it. It's tearing the country apart. It's so destructive to the black community. But on and on you go. You're a racist, you're a racist, you're a racist.

All's fair in love, war and the Democrat's quest for free government cheese.

And yet you write yet another tired "you're a racist" OP and whine you get a RESPONSE? Pa-lease

Clearly you didn't bother to read it did you? Just a knee jerk response. Care to show how the history of the Southern Strategy is wrong?

I have news for you Coyote, 90% of the responses to your OP have been knee jerk responses.

She couched it in a lot of BS and pretended that it's not just Republicans, but in the end, the Southern Strategy is targeting whites by saying the black boogie man is out to get you. It was a weak attempt to play the race card while pretending to not play it.

I live here, and see no evidence the racists went to the Republicans. Southern racists want the old ways back and the old ways were Democrats. The racists I see were born a Democrat, their daddy was born a Democrat, their grand pappy. And they'll die a Democrat. They aren't flipping sides over fiscal policy, they just aren't.

Bringing up the southern strategy in the middle of yet another election where the Democrats are flinging the race card everywhere and pretending it's just a non-partisan analysis of it is completely shallow

You hit the nail on the head, kaz. Nice call.

 

[rightwinger]

Any way you look at it
The once “Solid South” for Democrats turned Republican after the passing of the Civil Rights Act

 

[bluzman61]

Look at the news today coyote you have people trying to burn cops alive in a police station..

Disgusting, they are beyond evil.

^^^^ Lakota gave a Disagree to my above comment,

Lakota SUPPORTS the filth who are trying to burn police alive in a police station. Disgusting.

Well, Lakhota IS a mentally challenged moron.

 

[bluzman61]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

The Democrat Party from the beginning was the party of Racism, it was the party who FANATICALLY supported the continuation of Slavery in America, it was the party of lynching, it was the party of the KKK, it was the party that invented the Jim Crow laws and it was the party who FANATICALLY fought to KEEP the Jim Crow laws.

IF The Democrat Party had ANY decency and ANY shame it would ABOLISH ITSELF, The Democrat Party should be subjected to Cancel Culture that this is NOT happening again illustrates what hypocrites they are.

Re. The Democrat Party is NOT the party of George Wallace and yet George Wallace's FINAL vote before he died was for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and they ACCEPTED him and THIS is from the SAME Democrat Party that in 2020 has it's Troll Bots on Twitter and Facebook etc searching back 20 years, 30 years and 40 years to find ONE comment or ONE thing that ANY Republican supporter said or did so they can be subjected to Cancel Culture.

Wallace explicitly renounced his racism. His story was that inorder to be taken seriously in GA as a populist he had to "hoe" the racist line. (-:

Leftists in 2020 do not accept that, they do not accept renouncement or even apology, they are FANATICS who INSIST that LIVES have to be DESTROYED because of something someone said DECADES ago, careers ENDED and LIVES destroyed.

They are literal filth, like Lakota for example who AGREES with the feral mob attempting to burn police officers alive in the police station IF Lakota did NOT support them then WHY did they Disagree with my comment when I said they were beyond evil?

Without a DOUBT, Lucy. Wonderful observation.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

Regional Eugenics is hate

 

[lennypartiv]

Coyote why are you on this message board when you could be taking down more of our countries historical statues?

Amazingly you libs see nothing wrong with erasing our history.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

Thank you for your fine post. I hope you're doing well, I'm doing VERY well, myself. After a little over 5 months since I developed diabetes, my body seems to have finally adjusted to it. I'm feeling a lot less pain now, pain that is commonly associated with diabetes. This, of course, has made me even more happy with my life. Again, thanks for your very fine post, Coyote.

Type 2 or 1?
I never had any pain when I was diagnosed with type 2. Just a slight feeling of malaise.
When they first diagnosed it my level was 650 and they asked if I was feeling alright with a shocked look on their face.
Never had any pain associated with it. Now that it's under control I do feel better no doubt but I think it creeped up on me so slowly I never really noticed it,kinda like needing glasses.

 

[Lakhota]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

This is a great thread. Thank you. However, it will be lost on Trump supporters. They still think today's Democrats founded the KKK.

Southern Strategy

 

[9thIDdoc]

In my opinion the "Civil Rights/desegregation conflict was more about control than race and continues through the present. The big old issue is Federal vs local control and always has been. It caused the "Civil War". It was the basic issue on who could demand who could go to what school or get what employment or housing or marry whom. Who decides, State local or federal government? IMO Desegregation was a good thing. Forced busing and forcing kids to attend schools that neither they nor their parents wanted them to was not. Also IMO equal rights under the laws is right and necessary. "Affirmative action" is overtly racist and defeats the alleged purpose and has proven to be a disaster. An attitude of entitlement is the result and is a base cause of current conflict and rioting.

 

[2aguy]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

The parties never changed sides.....the core groups of the democrat party are all openly and proudly racist.....barak obama and bill clinton both had good friends and allies who were openly and proudly racist.....

As to the Southern Strategy, you guys will never stop lying about it......

Nixon’s Southern Strategy: The Democrat-Lie Keeping Their Control Over the Black Community | Black Quill and Ink


Ken Raymond
Jun 2011

Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, which the democrats say is the reason black people had to support them during the 1960′s–is a lie.

And it’s probably the biggest lie that’s been told to the blacks since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government after getting the NAACP to support him.
After talking with black voters across the country about why they overwhelmingly supports democrats, the common answer that’s emerges is the Southern Strategy.

I’ve heard of the Southern Strategy too. But since it doesn’t make a difference in how I decide to vote, I never bothered to research it. But apparently it still influences how many African Americans vote today. That makes it worth investigating.

For those that might be unfamiliar with the Southern Strategy, I’ll briefly review the story. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most blacks registered as democrats and it’s been that way ever since.

And that doesn’t make any sense when you consider the fact that it was the democrats that established, and fought for, Jim Crow laws and segregation in the first place. And the republicans have a very noble history of fighting for the civil rights of blacks.

The reason black people moved to the democrats, given by media pundits and educational institutions for the decades, is that when republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he employed a racist plan that’s now infamously called the Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy basically means Nixon allegedly used hidden code words that appealed to the racists within the Democrat party and throughout the south. This secret language caused a seismic shift in the electoral landscape that moved the evil racist democrats into the republican camp and the noble-hearted republicans into the democrat camp.

And here’s what I found, Nixon did not use a plan to appeal to racist white voters.

First, let’s look at the presidential candidates of 1968. Richard Nixon was the republican candidate; Hubert Humphrey was the democrat nominee; and George Wallace was a third party candidate.

Remember George Wallace? Wallace was the democrat governor of Alabama from 1963 until 1967. And it was Wallace that ordered the Eugene “Bull” Connor, and the police department, to attack Dr. Martin Luther King

Jr. and 2,500 protesters in Montgomery , Alabama in 1965. And it was Governor Wallace that ordered a blockade at the admissions office at the University of Alabama to prevent blacks from enrolling in 1963.

Governor Wallace was a true racist and a determined segregationist. And he ran as the nominee from the American Independent Party, which was he founded.

Richard Nixon wrote about the 1968 campaign in his book RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon originally published in 1978.

In his book, Nixon wrote this about campaigning in the south, “The deep south had to be virtually conceded to George Wallace. I could not match him there without compromising on civil rights, which I would not do.”

The media coverage of the 1968 presidential race also showed that Nixon was in favor of the Civil Rights and would not compromise on that issue. For example, in an article published in theWashington Post on September 15, 1968 headlined “Nixon Sped Integration, Wallace says” Wallace declared that Nixon agreed with Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and played a role in ”the destruction of public school system.” Wallace pledged to restore the school system, in the same article, by giving it back to the states ”lock, stock, and barrel.”

This story, as well as Nixon’s memoirs and other news stories during that campaign, shows that Nixon was very clear about his position on civil rights. And if Nixon was used code words only racists could hear, evidently George Wallace couldn’t hear it.

Among the southern states, George Wallace won Arkansas , Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia and Louisiana . Nixon won North Carolina , South Carolina , Florida , Virginia , and Tennessee . Winning those states were part of Nixon’s plan.

“I would not concede the Carolina ‘s, Florida , or Virginia or the states around the rim of the south,”Nixon wrote. ”These states were a part of my plan.”

At that time, the entire southern region was the poorest in the country. The south consistently lagged behind the rest of the United States in income. And according to the

“U.S. Regional Growth and Convergence,” by Kris James Mitchener and Ian W. McLean, per capita income for southerners was almost half as much as it was for Americans in other regions.

Nixon won those states strictly on economic issues. He focused on increasing tariffs on foreign imports to protect the manufacturing and agriculture industries of those states. Some southern elected officials agreed to support him for the sake of their economies, including South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.

“I had been consulting privately with Thurmond for several months and I was convinced that he’d join my campaign if he were satisfied on the two issues of paramount concern to him: national defense and tariffs against textile imports to protect South Carolina ‘s position in the industry.”Nixon wrote in his memoirs.

In fact, Nixon made it clear to the southern elected officials that he would not compromise on the civil rights issue.

“On civil rights, Thurmond knew my position was very different from his,” Nixon wrote. “I was for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and he was against it. Although he disagreed with me, he respected my sincerity and candor.”

The same scenario played out among elected officials and voters in other southern states won by Nixon. They laid their feelings aside and supported him because of his economic platform’”not because Nixon sent messages on a frequency only racists can hear.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

This is a great thread. Thank you. However, it will be lost on Trump supporters. They still think today's Democrats founded the KKK.

Southern Strategy

Actually Trump supporters think blindly following any party line is idiotic.

 

[WillPower]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

I guess this is part of the Admin's effort to raise the tenor of what we talk about here and it's well compiled but silly in it's assumptions and bias. The old "southern strategy" was 50 years ago and irrelevant. The new one is the left's 30 year effort to infiltrate the government schools in the south much like the Viet Cong did in Vietnam. Get the kids brainwashed and create warriors inside the enemy walls. So leftist bubbleheads headed into Dixie, despite hating the culture, to turn the little rednecks into obedient cadre. Anything for the party. Did it work? A little early to tell but there is certainly an awakening in southern homes to the garbage their children are bringing home from school. Curriculums won't be so easy to manipulate now that Trump is talking openly to the subversion of America's yoots. If I were betting I'd say when he gets another 4 years in office, the "southern strategy" will be exposed and the ponytailed commies cleaned out.

 

[2aguy]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

The lie of the "Southern Strategy," was started in the New York times....here is the actual story.....

Here is the actual story from the New York Times.......see page 4 bottom of the first column...

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf

And the explanation of how the lie began....

Nixon’s Southern Strategy: The Democrat-Lie Keeping Their Control Over the Black Community | Black Quill and Ink

Believe it or not, the entire myth was created by an unknown editor at the New York Times who didn’t 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 “Nixon’s Southern Strategy: It’s All in the Charts.”

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 would’ve seen that Phillip’s and his theory was completely rejected!

Boyd wrote in his article, “Though Phillips’s 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.” (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 Nixon’s campaign success–to a plan he rejected.

In fact, Phillips isn’t even mentioned in Nixon’s 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 it’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

 

[2aguy]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

Thank you for the link it was a great read. The Southern Strategy was not a myth but was the first in the line of political campaign decisions that would take a divide and conquer approach to winning elections. That pandora's box was opened by Nixon and the way campaigns are run have not been the same since. The story is right in that the politics of division can be traced from Nixon to Reagan to W. to Trump.

I will add that the Southern Strategy was perhaps inevitable. Change was coming to the Democratic party. I recall Will Rogers observation in the 30s: 'I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat". The party was made of too many disparate elements to stay together. Urban ethnics, catholics, blacks, southerners, unionists, etc. It is therefore no surprise when Strom Thurmond broke with the party to form the Dixiecrats.

When the 50s and 60s came these Southern segregationists found themselves without a home. The Democrats were more concerned with the urban voters and becoming more liberal and the Republicans were still moderate in disposition carrying the legacy of Lincoln, TR and Eisenhower.

With the end of the 60s, these southerner segregationists needed a home and the Republicans needed new voters. These Segregationists began leaving the party in droves with the Republicans welcoming them with open arms. The only exception being the election of Jimmy Carter who was the first southerner to win the WH since the Civil War. He proved too liberal for the Segregationists.

The demographics of the South is changing. There may be a new southern strategy that plays into this coming paradigm shift. This new strategy will see the convergence of urban liberalism with the growing southern urban demographic.

This shift may not be crucial in 2020, but we may see its signs in big way this November.

It wasn't a myth, it was an outright lie.....


Nixon’s Southern Strategy: The Democrat-Lie Keeping Their Control Over the Black Community | Black Quill and Ink


Ken Raymond
Jun 2011

Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, which the democrats say is the reason black people had to support them during the 1960′s–is a lie.

And it’s probably the biggest lie that’s been told to the blacks since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government after getting the NAACP to support him.
After talking with black voters across the country about why they overwhelmingly supports democrats, the common answer that’s emerges is the Southern Strategy.

I’ve heard of the Southern Strategy too. But since it doesn’t make a difference in how I decide to vote, I never bothered to research it. But apparently it still influences how many African Americans vote today. That makes it worth investigating.

For those that might be unfamiliar with the Southern Strategy, I’ll briefly review the story. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most blacks registered as democrats and it’s been that way ever since.

And that doesn’t make any sense when you consider the fact that it was the democrats that established, and fought for, Jim Crow laws and segregation in the first place. And the republicans have a very noble history of fighting for the civil rights of blacks.

The reason black people moved to the democrats, given by media pundits and educational institutions for the decades, is that when republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he employed a racist plan that’s now infamously called the Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy basically means Nixon allegedly used hidden code words that appealed to the racists within the Democrat party and throughout the south. This secret language caused a seismic shift in the electoral landscape that moved the evil racist democrats into the republican camp and the noble-hearted republicans into the democrat camp.

And here’s what I found, Nixon did not use a plan to appeal to racist white voters.

First, let’s look at the presidential candidates of 1968. Richard Nixon was the republican candidate; Hubert Humphrey was the democrat nominee; and George Wallace was a third party candidate.

Remember George Wallace? Wallace was the democrat governor of Alabama from 1963 until 1967. And it was Wallace that ordered the Eugene “Bull” Connor, and the police department, to attack Dr. Martin Luther King

Jr. and 2,500 protesters in Montgomery , Alabama in 1965. And it was Governor Wallace that ordered a blockade at the admissions office at the University of Alabama to prevent blacks from enrolling in 1963.

Governor Wallace was a true racist and a determined segregationist. And he ran as the nominee from the American Independent Party, which was he founded.

Richard Nixon wrote about the 1968 campaign in his book RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon originally published in 1978.

In his book, Nixon wrote this about campaigning in the south, “The deep south had to be virtually conceded to George Wallace. I could not match him there without compromising on civil rights, which I would not do.”

The media coverage of the 1968 presidential race also showed that Nixon was in favor of the Civil Rights and would not compromise on that issue.

For example, in an article published in theWashington Post on September 15, 1968 headlined “Nixon Sped Integration, Wallace says” Wallace declared that Nixon agreed with Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and played a role in ”the destruction of public school system.” Wallace pledged to restore the school system, in the same article, by giving it back to the states ”lock, stock, and barrel.”

This story, as well as Nixon’s memoirs and other news stories during that campaign, shows that Nixon was very clear about his position on civil rights. And if Nixon was used code words only racists could hear, evidently George Wallace couldn’t hear it.

Among the southern states, George Wallace won Arkansas , Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia and Louisiana . Nixon won North Carolina , South Carolina , Florida , Virginia , and Tennessee . Winning those states were part of Nixon’s plan.

“I would not concede the Carolina ‘s, Florida , or Virginia or the states around the rim of the south,”Nixon wrote. ”These states were a part of my plan.”

At that time, the entire southern region was the poorest in the country. The south consistently lagged behind the rest of the United States in income. And according to the

“U.S. Regional Growth and Convergence,” by Kris James Mitchener and Ian W. McLean, per capita income for southerners was almost half as much as it was for Americans in other regions.

Nixon won those states strictly on economic issues. He focused on increasing tariffs on foreign imports to protect the manufacturing and agriculture industries of those states. Some southern elected officials agreed to support him for the sake of their economies, including South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.

“I had been consulting privately with Thurmond for several months and I was convinced that he’d join my campaign if he were satisfied on the two issues of paramount concern to him: national defense and tariffs against textile imports to protect South Carolina ‘s position in the industry.”Nixon wrote in his memoirs.

In fact, Nixon made it clear to the southern elected officials that he would not compromise on the civil rights issue.

“On civil rights, Thurmond knew my position was very different from his,” Nixon wrote. “I was for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and he was against it. Although he disagreed with me, he respected my sincerity and candor.”

The same scenario played out among elected officials and voters in other southern states won by Nixon. They laid their feelings aside and supported him because of his economic platform’”not because Nixon sent messages on a frequency only racists can hear.

 

[2aguy]

Political and historical revisionists have been busy lately, what with blatantly stupid or insensitive racial remarks from today's two presidential contenders, racial unrest over policing, the abuse of the "race card" by the left, or the empowerment of white supremacy by the right.

There has been a frantic, almost obsessive effort to portray each party as "the party of racism". There has even been a completely retarded bit of political theatre aimed at "banning" the Democrat Party (seriously - we pay these jokers for this?).

Historically, neither party is the party of the past. Today's Republicans do not in any way resemble the Party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats do not in any way resemble the party of George Wallace. Parties are not ideologies. Parties change their ideologies - not completely, but sufficiently in order to achieve their main aim: winning votes.

That is where the Southern Strategy comes in. The south represented and still represents a substantial largely conservative voting block and one that DIVIDED the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party long held it, reversing the gains made after emancipation and supporting southern landowners in maintaining their racial caste system through a host of new laws that robbed black people of their newly realized rights.

That changed though, with the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1950 and 1968, the government passed 4 bills that were collectively known as the Civil Rights Acts. Both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to pass them. In those votes, the Republicans were more unified than the Democrats. It's a mistake to assume the Democrats were a "united party", they were far less united then than now. The Democrats were divided, with southern Democrats holding the south, the remainder spread throughout the US and the voting for these pieces of legislation reflected that division. This is important to remember because broad brushing either party as "the party of racism" is both dishonest and unhelpful.

So what about the Southern Strategy? What is or was it? It was a political strategy, initially formed by Nixon, to turn the Democrat stronghold in the south to Republican. Was it racist? Yes...in that it played on racial divides. Does that mean Nixon was racist? No...this isn't necessarily about personal feelings about race. Early on, Nixon was a strong proponent for desegregation, then he pivoted, drawing back from it and altering his policies when he developed the Southern Strategy.

Ironically - this is where the latest bit of historical revisionism comes in, with Talking Heads opining:

Candace Owen: "The Southern Strategy is a myth that never happened"...a claim rated as totally false by Politifact.

It's really about the POLITICS of PARTY CONTROL. What would it take (and is it even possible) to gain control of this substantial region?

Southern Strategy

On August 14, 1970, Richard Nixon treated New Orleans, a city keen on parades, to a campaign-style motorcade. With Nixon standing and waving through the sunroof, his limousine moved slowly down wide…

www.southerncultures.org

​

In his 1991 book, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream,New York Times columnist Tom Wicker captures the political two-step that Nixon danced as he sought to govern and to carry out a strategy to turn the South into a Republican-dominated region as it had been a “solid Democratic South’’ for much of the twentieth century. Wicker gave Nixon credit for “a spectacular advance in desegregation’’ in 1970. “Perhaps the most significant achievement of his administration’s domestic actions,” Wicker wrote, came as “the Nixon administration had appeared in retreat from desegregation, while actively courting the white vote.”​

​

Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees...​

​

In their book, The Southern Strategy, published shortly after the 1970 mid-term elections, Atlanta journalists Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver wrote a detailed—and critical—account of the strategy in practice. “It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters,’’ Murphy and Gulliver wrote, “yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.”​

​

White voters got the message. Along the New Orleans motorcade route, a Nixon supporter held up a hand-lettered sign that read, “I am for Nixon . . . Less Federal Control. Equal Treatment for the South.”​

So, while the Democrats were pandering to the newly enfranchised black voters, the Republicans were pandering to the southern white voters unhappy with desegregation and other Civil Rights legislation that they felt "disempowered" them.

That's the history, in part. No one has clean hands in regards to race.

But what about now? Well...the Southern Strategy is still going on. The Democrats are playing to the regions black population and it's more liberal urban white population. The Republicans are pivoting harder towards a more substantial rural and suburban white population, conflating the Confederacy, its monuments and it's flag, with honor and patriotism and an attack on our culture, while making an appeal to authoritarian law and order in the wake of racial unrest and social upheaval. Today's Southern Strategy still capitalizes on the same fears of disenfranchisement but adds some new (and, newly revived old) enemies: immigrants, Mexicans, communists, Marxists.

It has little to do with racism...and a lot to do with party control.

And yes...the Republican Party is still at it. As are the Democrats.

Thank you for the link it was a great read. The Southern Strategy was not a myth but was the first in the line of political campaign decisions that would take a divide and conquer approach to winning elections. That pandora's box was opened by Nixon and the way campaigns are run have not been the same since. The story is right in that the politics of division can be traced from Nixon to Reagan to W. to Trump.

I will add that the Southern Strategy was perhaps inevitable. Change was coming to the Democratic party. I recall Will Rogers observation in the 30s: 'I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat". The party was made of too many disparate elements to stay together. Urban ethnics, catholics, blacks, southerners, unionists, etc. It is therefore no surprise when Strom Thurmond broke with the party to form the Dixiecrats.

When the 50s and 60s came these Southern segregationists found themselves without a home. The Democrats were more concerned with the urban voters and becoming more liberal and the Republicans were still moderate in disposition carrying the legacy of Lincoln, TR and Eisenhower.

With the end of the 60s, these southerner segregationists needed a home and the Republicans needed new voters. These Segregationists began leaving the party in droves with the Republicans welcoming them with open arms. The only exception being the election of Jimmy Carter who was the first southerner to win the WH since the Civil War. He proved too liberal for the Segregationists.

The demographics of the South is changing. There may be a new southern strategy that plays into this coming paradigm shift. This new strategy will see the convergence of urban liberalism with the growing southern urban demographic.

This shift may not be crucial in 2020, but we may see its signs in big way this November.

You guys can't lie about this anymore....

Here is the actual story from the New York Times.......see page 4 bottom of the first column...

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf

And the explanation of how the lie began....

Nixon’s Southern Strategy: The Democrat-Lie Keeping Their Control Over the Black Community | Black Quill and Ink

Believe it or not, the entire myth was created by an unknown editor at the New York Times who didn’t 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 “Nixon’s Southern Strategy: It’s All in the Charts.”

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 would’ve seen that Phillip’s and his theory was completely rejected!

Boyd wrote in his article, “Though Phillips’s 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.” (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 Nixon’s campaign success–to a plan he rejected.

In fact, Phillips isn’t even mentioned in Nixon’s 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 it’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

 

[2aguy]

I'm not naïve enough to ignore efforts by whites, in places like Ga, TX and Fla, to overtly keep polling places closed to black. However, it's not unique to the South. Kansas did a superb job. The current Ohio governor seems a nice guy, but the gop suppressed voting in Clev and esp Akron.

However, it's not irrational to oppose minority set aside districts. Nixon (and esp Reagan) tapped into that as well as simple bigotry

Voter suppression, through strict id requirements, closing poling places, reducing hours in certain areas, restricting voter registration efforts, disenfranchising college students who tend to vote Dem, from voting in their area of residence and reducing early voting is the Republican's current "Southern Strategy".

And in the other thread everything you just posted was shown to be a lie....

They closed polling places because they changed the rules so you could vote at any polling place...making it easier to vote...you shithead....

Voter I.D. keeps democrats from voting more than once.

Voter registration efforts were changed to keep people from getting paid for names...which increased the number of fake names on the lists....you doofus...

College students were voting at school and at home....you doofus.....so they stopped that....

 

[CrusaderFrank]

When did the "Parties switch sides"?

 

[2aguy]

When did the "Parties switch sides"?

When the democrats realized that they couldn't keep blacks from voting by murdering them....so LBJ told them they had to lie about the history of the democrat party...