The Southern Strategy: then....and now

[Wyatt earp]

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 fucking liar only three Dixiecrats left the Democrat party, Carter won the south

 

[Correll]

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.

Right out of the gate you start with an asinine statement. In order for someone to be a "historical revisionist" they probably ought to be discussing something more "historical" than Biden's most recent gaffe, or something Trump said that has bed wetting liberal glue sniffers in a snit. At least you acknowledge the abuse of the tattered race card by moonbats, but implying "white supremacy" is being "empowered" by anyone is intellectually dishonest. No one that has any political power or following is promoting "white supremacy". That is a liberal lie and even you know it.

I'll address this part - rather than go off on too many tangents, because it addresses a part of today's "southern strategy".

No. It's not dishonest at all. Look at what's been happening since Trump was elected. White supremacists previously marginalized are suddenly coming out of the woodwork. They are holding rallies...like "Unite the Right". They speak up in support of Trump. They have become visible and are integrating their vision of America into the mainstream.

So. Why? Clearly there is something in the Republican Party now that speaks to angry white males, who feel racially and economically disenfranchised, and while the economic part is often true...the race part is usually a way of blaming the other for all the bad crap going on. They have a platform and the Republican Party is giving them that without pushback.

1. that a small group of fringe ws was able to co-opt another issue and get a good sized rally together, does not mean anything about trump.

2. ws are not integrating their vision of american into the mainstream. that was empty rhetoric, and nothing but race baiting flaming.


3. there are a lot of "angry white males" who feel "racially and economically disenfranchised" because they are. very few of them are ws. that you conflate any white male who is pissed off at being pissed on by people like you, as ws, is you rubbing salt in the wounds of your enemies. it is a problem about you, not them/us.

4. all you are doing, is calling people names.

 

[Rocko]

The southern strategy has always been a myth and is a myth today

 

[Lakhota]

White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says

Racist theology is deeply embedded in the DNA of white Christian churches, influencing even their theology on salvation, PRRI founder Robert Jones argues in a new book.

Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, comes from a line of white American Christians that stretches back before the Revolutionary War. His ancestors weren’t large plantation owners or Confederate generals, or ― as far as he knows ― active members of the Ku Klux Klan. For much of his life, Jones believed the “unremarkable” nature of his family’s background meant that white supremacy wasn’t a part of their history.

But he’s recently started to tell a different kind of story ― one that acknowledges that white privilege shaped his family’s sojourn on American soil.

Just as his own family history would be incomplete without acknowledging the influences of white supremacy, Jones said it’s impossible to talk about American Christianity without recognizing that racism helped shape the church.

White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says

Racist theology is deeply embedded in the DNA of white Christian churches, influencing even their theology on salvation, PRRI founder Robert Jones argues in a new book.

www.huffpost.com

I agree! The roots of racism run deep throughout American history - in culture, religion and politics.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

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

Which has nothing to do with political parties and is another matter entirely.

Yes as a matter of fact it does have to do with politics, the Democrats in those cities are ACTIVELY supporting the riots by calling off the police and allowing the riots to destroy property hell we have had police chiefs FORCED by their city Government to official announce they were ordered NOT to protect property. The democrats support and fund antifa. The democrats support and defend the blm riots murder and mayhem. You can claim otherwise but that would be YOU lying.

 

[Correll]

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 fucking liar only three Dixiecrats left the Democrat party, Carter won the south

time and time again, some dem says, "nixon's racist pandering flipped the south, because the south is sooo racist and that is why the south has remained solide red since then"


and then i post this.

and they never admit, "well, that shoots a big hole in my theory"


because it is a matter of faith to them, that america is terribly racist and actual data is irrelevant to that.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

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

LOL until the 1990's the dems controlled the South. But Ya Nixon and desegregation switched them, By the way dumb ass Nixon ENFORCED ENCOURAGED and sped up desegregation.

 

[JLW]

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.

Where the hell do you come up with this lunacy.

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 fucking liar only three Dixiecrats left the Democrat party, Carter won the south

What Is your reading comprehension? Did you graduate the 6th grade? I wrote that Carter won the south and the south abandoned Carter in 1980 with the notable exception of his home state of Georgia.

 

[Correll]

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.

Where the hell do you come up with this luna

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 fucking liar only three Dixiecrats left the Democrat party, Carter won the south

What Is your reading comprehension? Did you graduate the 6th grade? I wrote that Carter won the south and the south abandoned Carter in 1980 with the notable exception of his home state of Georgia.

according to the southern strategy conspiracy theory, the southern dems, were sooo wacist that they were enraged by the dems flipping on the civil rights issue


and so, when nixon pandered to them, with "Wacist stuff", the enraged wacist southern whites became solid republicans for them forward.


the fact that 4 years later, the south went dem, proves that that was not the case.


if the story of hte south, or even america is one of wacism, then jimmy carter, running as a dem, would not have won the south, like he did.


his victory, disproves the southern theory.

 

[Pete7469]

I'll address this part - rather than go off on too many tangents, because it addresses a part of today's "southern strategy".

No. It's not dishonest at all. Look at what's been happening since Trump was elected. White supremacists previously marginalized are suddenly coming out of the woodwork. They are holding rallies...like "Unite the Right". They speak up in support of Trump. They have become visible and are integrating their vision of America into the mainstream.

So. Why? Clearly there is something in the Republican Party now that speaks to angry white males, who feel racially and economically disenfranchised, and while the economic part is often true...the race part is usually a way of blaming the other for all the bad crap going on. They have a platform and the Republican Party is giving them that without pushback.

What "white supremacists"?

Seriously.... What "woodwork" were they hiding behind while your meat puppet messiah was destroying the country? Shouldn't they have come out then? The "Unite the Right" Rally was NOT a "white supremacy" movement, I don't care what the SPLC says. Now I don't personally give a shit about the Confederate flag issue, when I waved it, I was expressing rebellion to anti-second amendment statists, not expressing a desire to own a slave.

There are no "white supremacists" gaining any traction in the political realm than there are any NFAC members taking weapons safety courses.

.

 

[jasonnfree]

Let's see which party the Blacks vote overwhelmingly for. It'll be the democrats. Blacks don't trust republicans and republicans don't like them or poor working class whites for that matter although they seem to bamboozle us poor whites quite a bit. Republicans are on life support due to the ancient electoral college. Otherwise, they could be flushed down the toilet which is where they belong.

 

[j-mac]

An excellent review, and should be a must read especially by the OP before they try and further the lie that the Republican party is the party of racists....

The Myth of the Racist Republicans - Claremont Review of Books

claremontreviewofbooks.com

 

[Correll]

Let's see which party the Blacks vote overwhelmingly for. It'll be the democrats. Blacks don't trust republicans and republicans don't like them or poor working class whites for that matter although they seem to bamboozle us poor whites quite a bit. Republicans are on life support due to the ancient electoral college. Otherwise, they could be flushed down the toilet which is where they belong.

so, your argument is that the republicans are wacist, because the blacks vote dem?


that is an excellent argument you have there.


if you accept the implied premise that black skin makes you smarter or at least an expert on the republican party.


mmm, one race is inherently superior to another because of inherent advantages that come with being part of that race.


where have i heard that one before?

 

[2aguy]

Politifact: No, the Democratic Party didn’t create the Ku Klux Klan

President Donald Trump has faced criticism for normalizing white nationalists but some conservative bloggers are trying to flip the script, shooing the Ku Klux Klan out of the "Big Tent" and into liberal territory.

"I hate when people aren’t smart enough to realize that the KKK was formed by the Democratic Party," reads a Facebook post from Oct. 11, 2017. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Though the post is a year old, it continues to circulate online, generating nearly 27,000 shares and 840 comments, many as recently as a day ago.

"Just so you know," the post goes on, "the Ku Klux Klan’s original purpose was to oppose the Republican Party’s policies intended to establish economic and political equality for blacks (sic) folks after the Civil War."

Facebook isn’t the only place this idea has spread.

It was a more of a grassroots creation, Martinez said. Plus, the Democratic Party of the past is not the Democratic Party of today. From the 1930s onward, "you think of the Democratic Party being considered the party of the disenfranchised," he said.

Carole Emberton, an associated professor at the University of Buffalo, agreed.

"Although the names stayed the same, the platforms of the two parties reversed each other in the mid-20th century, due in large part to the white ‘Dixiecrats’ flight out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," she said.

No, the Democratic Party didn’t create the Ku Klux Klan

President Donald Trump has faced criticism for normalizing white nationalists but some conservative bloggers are trying

www.politifact.com

Old conspiracy theories die hard - especially among the lesser educated and open-minded among us. A reasonable person can clearly see that today's Democratic Party is not the same party of yesteryear. As stated above - "The Democratic Party of the past is not the Democratic Party of today." "The platforms of the two parties reversed each other in the mid-20th century."

Southern Strategy

Moron........they lie...

The democrat party was created by former Confederate Army officers.......they were democrats....the Republicans fought against the Confederacy and the democrats who supported the Confederacy.....

The democrat party used the kkk as their terrorist arm the same way the democrat party of today is using joe biden voters in antifa and black lives matter as their modern terrorist arms....

The platforms of the two parties did not reverse....that is a lie created by the democrats to hide their past, and current racism...

 

[Coyote]

An excellent review, and should be a must read especially by the OP before they try and further the lie that the Republican party is the party of racists....

The Myth of the Racist Republicans - Claremont Review of Books

claremontreviewofbooks.com

...is that like the lie you promote that Democrats founded the KKK?

 

[Coyote]

Politifact: No, the Democratic Party didn’t create the Ku Klux Klan

President Donald Trump has faced criticism for normalizing white nationalists but some conservative bloggers are trying to flip the script, shooing the Ku Klux Klan out of the "Big Tent" and into liberal territory.

"I hate when people aren’t smart enough to realize that the KKK was formed by the Democratic Party," reads a Facebook post from Oct. 11, 2017. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Though the post is a year old, it continues to circulate online, generating nearly 27,000 shares and 840 comments, many as recently as a day ago.

"Just so you know," the post goes on, "the Ku Klux Klan’s original purpose was to oppose the Republican Party’s policies intended to establish economic and political equality for blacks (sic) folks after the Civil War."

Facebook isn’t the only place this idea has spread.

It was a more of a grassroots creation, Martinez said. Plus, the Democratic Party of the past is not the Democratic Party of today. From the 1930s onward, "you think of the Democratic Party being considered the party of the disenfranchised," he said.

Carole Emberton, an associated professor at the University of Buffalo, agreed.

"Although the names stayed the same, the platforms of the two parties reversed each other in the mid-20th century, due in large part to the white ‘Dixiecrats’ flight out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," she said.

No, the Democratic Party didn’t create the Ku Klux Klan

President Donald Trump has faced criticism for normalizing white nationalists but some conservative bloggers are trying

www.politifact.com

Old conspiracy theories die hard - especially among the lesser educated and open-minded among us. A reasonable person can clearly see that today's Democratic Party is not the same party of yesteryear. As stated above - "The Democratic Party of the past is not the Democratic Party of today." "The platforms of the two parties reversed each other in the mid-20th century."

Southern Strategy

Moron........they lie...

The democrat party was created by former Confederate Army officers.......they were democrats....the Republicans fought against the Confederacy and the democrats who supported the Confederacy.....

The democrat party used the kkk as their terrorist arm the same way the democrat party of today is using joe biden voters in antifa and black lives matter as their modern terrorist arms....

The platforms of the two parties did not reverse....that is a lie created by the democrats to hide their past, and current racism...

That shows an ignorance of history.

And of present.

I’ve read the party platform. What current racism?

 

[LAUGHatLEFTISTS]

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.

Please name the politicians that changed party and the dates they changed. You can't so bvb you won't. The dems are the party of racism no matter what the spin they pulled off.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

An excellent review, and should be a must read especially by the OP before they try and further the lie that the Republican party is the party of racists....

The Myth of the Racist Republicans - Claremont Review of Books

claremontreviewofbooks.com

...is that like the lie you promote that Democrats founded the KKK?

They did, it is you LYING. Or do you deny that the lynchings the murders and mob attacks on blacks republicans and Catholics was not done by members of the democratic party?

 

[Coyote]

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.

Right out of the gate you start with an asinine statement. In order for someone to be a "historical revisionist" they probably ought to be discussing something more "historical" than Biden's most recent gaffe, or something Trump said that has bed wetting liberal glue sniffers in a snit. At least you acknowledge the abuse of the tattered race card by moonbats, but implying "white supremacy" is being "empowered" by anyone is intellectually dishonest. No one that has any political power or following is promoting "white supremacy". That is a liberal lie and even you know it.

I'll address this part - rather than go off on too many tangents, because it addresses a part of today's "southern strategy".

No. It's not dishonest at all. Look at what's been happening since Trump was elected. White supremacists previously marginalized are suddenly coming out of the woodwork. They are holding rallies...like "Unite the Right". They speak up in support of Trump. They have become visible and are integrating their vision of America into the mainstream.

So. Why? Clearly there is something in the Republican Party now that speaks to angry white males, who feel racially and economically disenfranchised, and while the economic part is often true...the race part is usually a way of blaming the other for all the bad crap going on. They have a platform and the Republican Party is giving them that without pushback.

1. that a small group of fringe ws was able to co-opt another issue and get a good sized rally together, does not mean anything about trump.

2. ws are not integrating their vision of american into the mainstream. that was empty rhetoric, and nothing but race baiting flaming.


3. there are a lot of "angry white males" who feel "racially and economically disenfranchised" because they are. very few of them are ws. that you conflate any white male who is pissed off at being pissed on by people like you, as ws, is you rubbing salt in the wounds of your enemies. it is a problem about you, not them/us.

4. all you are doing, is calling people names.

Correll, I don’t think it is me calling people names. Have ever taken an honest look at your own statements? I have tried to avoid name calling.

1. My first thought is this. Would you apply that same standard to the violent faction of protesters that your side claims represents the Democrats?

My second is more along the line of mainstreaming the far right, as in the white nationalist movement. First...They ARE attempting to rebrand..gone is the skinhead tattooed with swastikas..enter the suit and tie.

Gone is white “supremacy” replaced with the word “nationalism”.

How fringe are they? Not so fringe that well known rightwing pundit Michelle Malkin doesn’t embrace them.

2. Integrating their vision of America.....

White supremacists in both the U.S. and Europe believe that they are under siege, and that changing demographics and increased immigration are destroying white European culture. They assert that whites will soon be minorities in traditionally white nations and immediate action is needed to stop these ethnic and cultural changes. And these anxieties are expressed and amplified by mainstream politicians and pundits who also believe that Europe and the U.S. are being overrun by immigrants, particularly Latinos and Muslims, who refuse to assimilate into “Western” culture and are “destroying” the culture and cohesiveness of the countries.​

Sound familiar?


3. People like me? Who is name calling? No, I am not saying all those people are white supremacists. But most of their grievances, I suspect, have little to do with the targets they focus their anger on. REAL grievances...like job loss, globalization, automation, being left out of the economic recovery...those don’t have a face attached. The language of white Supremacy speaks to that anger and sense of injustice.

4. What names have I called you?

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Well I guess

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.

if you believe in fairytales Conspiracy theories and the Schiff Sham you'll also believe the myth of the Southern Strategy