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03/27/2004 Archived Entry: "Southern Strategy"

Posted by antle @ 01:35 AM EST [Link]

IN DEFENSE OF THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY: It is an oft-repeated indictment - the Republican Party, indeed the modern American conservative movement, is a product of racism. More specifically, the GOP gained power nationally by appealing to Southern white racists and the "Southern Strategy" pioneered by Kevin Phillips and used with great success by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan took advantage of a racist backlash against the civil rights movement. Conservatism thus is simply opposition to civil rights and an effort to employ racist code words to win lower-income white votes.

Gerard Alexander reviews several books making this assumption in the indispensable Claremont Review of Books. The result is a comprehensive, long overdue refutaton of this myth based on real demographic information about the South.

The only two things I would have added: (1) The poorest, weakest white voters who tended to be most supportive of George Wallace-style candidates remain the most Democratic white voters in the South, at least in statewide elections, to this day and (2) The rise of GOP voting strength below the Mason-Dixon line dovetailed nicely with the political mobilization of politiclaly conservative evangelicals.

An important article. Read on.