Southern Strategy

Editors Note: As we are only a few days from election Ithought that it would be interesting to look at a piece of history called theSouthern Strategy. Since we live in the South it might surprise you how we gotto be this way. In light of all the talk about voting along racial lines let’ssee what President Nixon had in mind when he implemented this strategy.Information taken from RationalWiki. You may want to google southern strategyfor more information. The Southern strategy was RichardNixon’s campaign strategy to win the Southern United States for the RepublicanParty during the 1968 and 1972 elections. 1964- the inspiration In 1964, Barry Goldwateraccomplished a task that, until then, had been seen as physically impossible –he won five states in the Deep South for the Republican Party, which had beenseen for the past hundred years as the party of Abraham Lincolnand the defeat of theConfederacy. He was able to do this because ofhis voting record against civil rightslegislation, versus the incumbent, Lyndon Johnsonwho was in favor of civil rights. The South had, until that point, been asolidly Democratic voting bloc, often called the “Solid South.”Nixon, taking note of this, campaigned on subtle race and states rightsthemes in 1968 and 1972 in an attempt to keep the Deep South in the Republicancolumn.  {{more}} That white southerners could bepersuaded to vote Republican in presidential races by the 1960s is attributableto the greater power of race than class by that time. For the first half of the20th century, white protestant southern voters were more liberal on every issuethan white protestant northern voters, with one exception: race. Class was moreimportant than race for decades because of poverty. With growing affluence inthe 1960s, however, race began to be more important than class. The Civil RightsMovement that began in the 1950s and gained momentum in the 1960s put race insharper perspective. 1968- failure and success In 1968, this strategy failed to winover the South, although Nixon did win the election. The reason was Alabama’sDemocratic governor, George Wallace,running on a third party ticket — the American Independent Party. Wallace wonmost of the South in 1968, then returned to the Democratic Party and sought theDemocratic nomination unsuccessfully in 1972 and 1976, while the AmericanIndependent Party became an increasingly fringyhangout for John Birchers and washed-up segregationists in subsequent presidentialelections. The organized conservativemovement was split during that time as to their electoral strategy. One factionwanted to build the American Independent Party, while the other sought to take over the Republican Party. The lattereventually won out. In 1972 the American Independent Party nominated BircherJohn G. Schmitz of California, who did poorly and carried no states at all, with hishighest vote percentage of 9.3% in Idaho, then split into two factions for the 1976and 1980 elections and faded off into history. The American Independent Partyis now only active in California, and gave Alan Keyestheir ballot line in 2008. 1972- success and sadness With the AIP nomination of Schmitz,any hope conservatives had of the AIP as a viable electoral vehicle in thesouth faded, and Nixon played his Southern strategy well in 1972, sweeping allthe Southern states and most of the rest of the country. Among the bones Nixonthrew out to the South was his nomination of two anti-civil rights judges tothe Supreme Court, George Harrold Carswell and Clement Haynesworth. Nixonalso played to ignorant rubes in northern cities as well, such as the reactionary and thuggish AFL-CIO trade unionleadership who had organized pro-Vietnam Warriots in the wake of the Kent Stateshootings, and popularized “silent majority” as a neologism – whichincluded playing the racism card in the south and the patriotism card in thenorth. Both the formerly-solid South and longtime union/Democrat strongholds inthe rust belt went heavily for Nixon. Since that time, the conservativemovement’s strategy has been to use theRepublican Party as their electoral vehicle. 1976- Scandals will have their way Nixon, of course, was pawned in 1974 by Chuck Colsonand G. Gordon Liddy and turned the reins over to Gerald Ford.The Democratic nomination of the Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter,running as the anti-Watergate candidate, temporarily halted the Southernstrategy, as Carter won every Southern state except for Virginia[1].As the 1968 and 1976 elections showed, the South was still reluctant to moveinto the Republican column, especially if a Southerner were on the ticket.However, the conservative movement had gotten fully behind Ronald Reagan,who gave incumbent Gerald Ford a strong challenge for the nomination, and the Southernstrategy was resurrected during the late 1970s in a more organized forminvolving the rise of the religious rightand groups like the Moral Majority, all intended to change the political landscape in thesouth for good. Part of this strategy also involved wooing ultraconservativeSouthern Democratic senators to switch parties, and many of them did. 1980 In 1980, Reagan launched hiscampaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi,a highly symbolic move showing the Southern strategy was alive and well .Reagan won with a combination of the Southern strategy and figuring out how toget the working poor angry at the welfare poor, and vote Republican. 1984 Reagan didn’t need the Southernstrategy, since Mondale won only his home state, Minnesota,and Washington, D.C. Andso on… While the Southern United States hasbeen viewed as a solid Republican voting bloc since 1980, recent elections haveshown a number of cracks starting to show in this strategy: Bill Clintonwon much of the South in 1992 and 1996, and Barack Obamacarried North Carolina, Virginia and Florida in 2008. Due to Sun Belt migration patterns, some politicalobservers are predicting a split in the South as a unified political bloc, withthe eastern Atlantic states becoming liberal and Democratic-leaning and the Deep South remaining aconservative stronghold