JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
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No, the South destroyed actual racism with integration, not voting GOP.
The Southern Strategy: then....and now
- Thread starter Coyote
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #142
First of all, I want to clarify something. I am an independent who caucuses with Dems when it comes to USMB. You are a libertarian who caucuses with the Pubs, when it comes to USMB. If you are going to refer the Dems as “my people” then I will refer to the Pubs as “your people”. Fair enough?
The other is that in broadbrushing the parties you ignore the divisions that existed. The Dems were divided on Civil Rights, but Southern Block was so powerful, FDR and his Democrats were unable to make any inroads in regards to segregation, Jim Crowe, or lynchings. The Republican Party was divided on the Southern Strategy. BOTH parties were a lot more diverse ideologically THEN than they are now.
When it comes to the Republicans taking on racism to gain the South...yes. They did. It wasn’t fast process. It took a long time. Two examples exist today that show exactly how Republicans are willing to tolerate, even fight for racist policies or heritage in order to maintain political power.
The first is in the issue of felons voting rights. The second is the issue of confederate memorials.
The history of removing voting rights from felons is one of racism.
—————-
The United States stands alone among modern democracies in stripping voting rights from millions of citizens on the basis of criminal convictions.1 Across the country, states impose varying felony disenfranchisement policies, preventing an estimated 6.1 million Americans from casting ballots.2 To give a sense of scope — this population is larger than the voting-eligible population of New Jersey.3 And of this total, nearly 4.7 million are people living in our communities — working, paying taxes, and raising families, all while barred from joining their neighbors at the polls.4
While the origins of disenfranchisement can be traced back to early colonial law in North America, and even farther back to ancient Greece, the punishment was typically applied only in individual cases for particularly serious or elections-related crimes.
It wasn’t until the end of the Civil War and the expansion of suffrage to black men that felony disenfranchisement became a significant barrier to U.S. ballot boxes.10 At that point, two interconnected trends combined to make disenfranchisement a major obstacle for newly enfranchised black voters. First, lawmakers — especially in the South — implemented a slew of criminal laws designed to target black citizens. And nearly simultaneously, many states enacted broad disenfranchisement laws that revoked voting rights from anyone convicted of any felony. These two trends laid the foundation for the form of mass disenfranchisement seen in this country today.
————-
This was by NO MEANS limited to the South. States held Constitutional Conventions to alter their constitutions prohibiting felons from voting, they passed laws making crimes a felony that they figured black men could easily be convicted of such as bigamy, perjury, petty theft.
Fast forward to today. Who has been advocating for and changing these racist laws and constitutional amendments? Who has been fighting to hold on to them?
The history of Confederate Memorials is equally murky. And no, I am not talking about some woman who gives money the Daughters of the Confederacy and all that. That is disengenius. Maybe we NEED an honest reckoning on exactly what those memorials mean, how they came about, and how our history, of a war to preserve slavery was rewritten as a “noble lost cause”.
When were those monuments erected?
The majority were erected between the 1890’s and 1950’s, with the biggest surge between 1900 and 1920 (coinciding with the passage of Jim Crowe Laws). 1950’s? Long after the war.
We aren’t talking about monuments in battlefields or at historic sites, those are perfectly appropriate. We are talking about mass produced “memorials” spread through out the US.
Where were those monuments erected?
There are over 1,700 Confederate monuments, memorials and symbols (far more than the Union side) spread over 31 states, far in excess of the 13 states of the Confederacy. In contrast to earlier monuments commemorating the dead, these glorified Confederate leaders: Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee. Earlier monuments were also typically placed in cemeteries and memorial sites, these were placed in city squares, in front of public buildings like courthouses.
The states include California, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Montana, which weren’t even states at the time of the war much less part of the Confederacy. Kind destroys the whole cultural heritage argument don’t you think?
Their purpose, in line with the periods of erection, was to remind black people of who was in charge. While some “confederate” in California is celebrating his “non-heritage”...what do you suppose that black in California see’s when he gazes on these bizarrely located memorials?
So given that, which Party is fighting tooth and to keep them, alongside the white nationalists? Which party is fighting to remove them?
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Indeependent
Diamond Member
- Nov 19, 2013
- 73,633
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I voted for the Platform.
I know that annoys you.
JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,829
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1) The civil war was not ab out racism, so your claim that that is an example of Republican racism is horse manure.
2) Voting rights and being a valid member of the force manpool eligable to serve in the draft have long been tied together. Since a Felon cannot own a gun, they were not considered eligible to vote. Again, not linked to racism.
- Thread starter
- #145
You kind of miss the point Jim.
The Civil War absolutely was about the preservation of slavery...which was a racist institution. Hell, it was abundantly clear in the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which mandated that for every new free state admitted to the union there had to be a slave state, so yes it was about slavery. But that is not what I am using as an example of Republicans.....so I am not sure where you derived that.
As far as denying ex felons the right to vote, you missed the point I was making. Various states have long had laws disenfranchising those who have committed certain crimes (usually heinous) from voting. Following the Civil War however, that changed, and a host of new laws were passed pinpointing minor crimes, that they figured a black man could easily be convicted of, and changing them to felonies under the state code.
So it’s now petty theft or perjury, for example, is felony alongside murder and armed robbery.
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ok, you have finally made an actual attempt to support your conclusion. good work.
1. felon voting loss. potentially a significant issue, though i've don't think i have ever heard it discussed in a campaign. so, can you demonstrate any evidence that it was a politically significant force in the goldwater or nixon campaigns in the south?
2. confederate memorials were not an issue until very recently. the southern strategy, if it has any weight to it, would have been a long done deal by the time it became an issue.
and seriously. i am glad that you have finally tried to make a supporting argument. but, it seems plain that the more you try, the more you will realize why you did not do so before.
the normal thing for a human to do at that point, is to double down on their beliefs and become more radicalized and even a troll.
i've done that to rightwinger and to mac1958. i hope you bounce better. though the science says you will not.
Mac1958
Diamond Member
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.orgIn 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.
.... and it's such an ugly and cynical game, particularly with our history.
the new rules make it harder for libs to derail the debates and hide the fact that they cannot defend their positions.
i'm really liking it!!
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.orgIn 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.
.... and it's such an ugly and cynical game, particularly with our history.
coyote has been trying and utterly failing to support her position.
she cannot give any historical evidnece of the southern strategy other than, "coded language" and "symbols".
Jitss617
Diamond Member
- Jan 2, 2019
- 39,095
- 9,398
- 1,340
- Banned
- #151
I noticed that to, democrats think saying it’s true with no evidence means it’s true. Lol it’s quite remarkable have gotten away with this for so many yearsPolitical 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.orgIn 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.
.... and it's such an ugly and cynical game, particularly with our history.
coyote has been trying and utterly failing to support her position.
she cannot give any historical evidnece of the southern strategy other than, "coded language" and "symbols".
Likkmee
Gold Member
I've lived in the south my entire life,,well up until 20 years ago until I went SOUTH south. Southerners are far less racist than yankees or westerners. We schooled with blacks, played sports with blacks, partied with blacks, went to Pink Floyd concerts with blacks,hunted with them, boyscouted with them, bluegrass festivals had plenty, racetracks even had their share."Dating"---not so much. The old black parents and us whiteys had the same ideas on that one.We'd go to weddings together as friends but the bride and groom were always the same blood..........and DIFFERENT sexes ! I can't recall hardly any of the "wrong side of the tracks" other than after midnight and the cops rightfully knew some assholes of any color out at that hour were out looking for trouble of some sort.They'd whoop us long haired white boys just as quick as a bro.
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.orgIn 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.
.... and it's such an ugly and cynical game, particularly with our history.
coyote has been trying and utterly failing to support her position.
she cannot give any historical evidnece of the southern strategy other than, "coded language" and "symbols".
tom paine 1949, if you disagree, you are welcome to offer what "evidence" you can, of the infamous Southern Strategy Conspiracy Theory.
Tom Paine 1949
Diamond Member
- Mar 15, 2020
- 5,407
- 4,513
- 1,938
That you call it an “infamous Conspiracy Theory” already shows how useless it would be for me to try having a serious discussion with you. The fact is Republican efforts to fundamentally transform voter preferences and “win” the white South was hugely successful.
Do you call it a freak accident? Whatever you call it — a fully conscious strategy, the result of “social evolution” with roots in the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, an act of “intelligent design” by Republicans and/or Democrats — it happened. You remind me of PoliticalChic when she talks ridiculously about “Enlightenment Conspiracy“ or “Evolution Conspiracy Theory.” I am as uninterested in debating with her as I am with you, because I have learned neither of you are interested in a serious discussion.
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- Thread starter
- #157
I think it depends on where you live and who you are. I can only speak from the perspective of a white person, would curious to hear from a black person growing up in the south as well. Racist attitudes are by no means limited to the South (and if you look at the sudden surge in racially targeted felony disenfranchise laws post Civil War, they cover a variety of states across the US, including northern states like NY.) But the Southern Strategy targeted southern states, as a coherent, culturally unified voting block. That was over 60 years ago...and a lot of things have changed in the meantime.
- Thread starter
- #158
When you post in this manner, I have no desire to engage. Try again If you really want to discuss the points you brought up.
When the Southern Strategy included as it’s focus a newly conceived post-segregation emphasis “states rights”...what do you suppose that was a code word for?
2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 112,559
- 52,806
- 2,290
I noticed that to, democrats think saying it’s true with no evidence means it’s true. Lol it’s quite remarkable have gotten away with this for so many yearsPolitical 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.orgIn 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.
.... and it's such an ugly and cynical game, particularly with our history.
coyote has been trying and utterly failing to support her position.
she cannot give any historical evidnece of the southern strategy other than, "coded language" and "symbols".
See....in the old days, they could say "Southern Strategy," and then the democrat party members in the press would repeat that over and over again, and since there were only 3 channels plus left wing PBS, you couldn't respond to it. You would have to go to the library, dig through Micr Fiche news papers or try to find books, and that was your only response.......
Today, we have the internet, and their lies can be responded to immediately like in this thread.....we can link and post to actual documents showing that they are lying, showing the truth, the facts and the reality........
So their next step is to control the internet...
2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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The Federal Constitution you moron.......the 10th Amendment in particular....we have a federal system.....that means the states have power equal to the federal government.....when the states were in the hands of the democrat party they misused that power to enact jim crow...when the republicans took power back we had equal rights for all Americans....
But we have a federal system to disperse the accumulation of too much power in too few hands....checks against the federal government and checks against the states....
You moron.
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