The future of the GOP's demographics

[Maistre]

First, the Southern strategy was about outreach to suburban, moderate Southerners, not white racists. 

Who told you this?

White residents in Southern metropolitan areas (I'm assuming what you mean by "moderate" (lol) white suburban southerners) were already a good base of support for the Republicans before the infamous 'southern strategy'. This was not because of some sort of tactic but mere demographic change, the South was catching up economically with the rest of the nation. Southerners and non-Southerners were moving away from Yankeeland/rural Southern areas to better opportunities in the more urban areas.

The 'Southern Strategy' (and Goldwater came up with it first) was about shoring up the rest of the Southern white vote, or as Goldwater put it, "hunt where the ducks are."

[Oldiesfreak1854]

First, the Southern strategy was about outreach to suburban, moderate Southerners, not white racists.

Who told you this?

White residents in Southern metropolitan areas (I'm assuming what you mean by "moderate" (lol) white suburban southerners) were already a good base of support for the Republicans before the infamous 'southern strategy'. This was not because of some sort of tactic but mere demographic change, the South was catching up economically with the rest of the nation. Southerners and non-Southerners were moving away from Yankeeland/rural Southern areas to better opportunities in the more urban areas.

The 'Southern Strategy' (and Goldwater came up with it first) was about shoring up the rest of the Southern white vote, or as Goldwater put it, "hunt where the ducks are."

That was one election.

[Maistre]

Well, yes, that 'one election' was also when the Goldwater campaign tried to woo the white South. It was your insinuation that somehow the 'Southern strategy' was about wooing Southerners in the urban and suburban areas, but I just showed you that those areas were voting Republican before the 'Southern strategy' took place.

FWIW, here is the guy the Nixon administration recruited to run for Governor in 1970.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Well, yes, that 'one election' was also when the Goldwater campaign tried to woo the white South. It was your insinuation that somehow the 'Southern strategy' was about wooing Southerners in the urban and suburban areas, but I just showed you that those areas were voting Republican before the 'Southern strategy' took place.

FWIW, here is the guy the Nixon administration recruited to run for Governor in 1970.

1) I find it incredibly disturbing that you actually seem to WANT this to be the case.

2) Southern Whites swung heavily back toward Wallace (despite what he ran as, he was a Democrat who was more fiscally liberal and liberal on Vietnam than his two opponents) and heavily toward Carter in 1976 and even stayed somewhat loyal in 1980 (especially the rural ones, looking at county maps; Reagan's strength was in the suburbs).  Did they vote GOP in 1972 and 1984 heavily?  Yeah, but who didn't?  Every other region supported the Republicans, too.  Clinton pealed quite a few back in '92 and '96.  The first election that could be objectively seen as a permanent Southern realignment toward the GOP is 2000.  And that's a long time after the CRA, VRA or Southern Strategy.  I don't care what Goldwater did, there was a reason he got absolutely demolished and a lot of Republicans refused to campaign for him (not sure what he expected when he opposed civil rights legislation that 80%+ of his party supported); but Nixon said repeatedly in his memoirs that he knew he could never reach the Wallace voter due to his civil rights views.

[Maistre]

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I don't want anything champ. I don't particularly have a personal connection with things that happened 50 years ago. I merely deal with facts.

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Many did. Southern suburbs did not. To them, Wallace was a low class demagogue who did not mesh with middle-class respectability. (Good old Strom was ok though)

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Well, lol at that last one. But people weren't exactly flocking to the Wallace campaign because of his views on Medicare or whatever. North or South.

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Of course, he was a good Southern boy. That was why they voted for him. This wasn't particularly indicative of any trends or demographic changes. To say this is a reason Wallace 1968 voters would have supported HHH is madness.

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ok; organize this stuff into something relevant.

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Of course. Nixon could not embrace Wallace because it would hurt him elsewhere. But to think that Nixon's strategy was to reach "racially-progressive" voters in Southern suburbs is pure insanity. If you disagree, please explain the policies Nixon advocated to reach these suburban racial progressives in the South.

Was it perhaps advocating busing? Housing? What policies?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Whereas Wallace campaigned as a crude, shameless segregationist, the Republican Southern Strategy was to use coded appeals to white racial resentment on issues like busing, welfare, taxes, and government spending-along with more abstract/meta things like "states rights" and "limited government." The latter strategy was particularly effective in the suburbs, where (educated, middle-class, white) Republican voters thought of themselves as being "enlightened" on racial issues-even though they proved receptive to dog whistle politics. Consider that the racially and socioeconomically homogeneous suburbs they lived in were a direct legacy (if not a deliberate creation) of institutionalized racism.

If Goldwater and Nixon pioneered the Southern Strategy, Reagan and Bush Sr. (Willie Horton, anyone?) perfected it.

[Maistre]

For what it's worth, the Nixon administration and Southern Republicans did try to go after the Wallace vote (call it Southern Strategy 1.2) in the 1970 midterm elections. This was after Nixon's attempt at offing George Wallace failed, leading Southern Republicans to try to imitate him to win elections, but it largely failed (Albert Watson being a good example).

It wasn't until Reagan that the alignment was complete.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The "Southern Strategy" originally referred to the 68 campaign that went after the votes in the Outer South - areas that went for LBJ before voting for Nixon - and was about tapping into opposition to cultural liberalism and federal intrusion broadly, not just on racial issues.

[Brittain33]

The "Southern Strategy" originally referred to the 68 campaign that went after the votes in the Outer South - areas that went for LBJ before voting for Nixon - and was about tapping into opposition to cultural liberalism and federal intrusion broadly, not just on racial issues.

Federal intrusion was largely about racial issues.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The "Southern Strategy" originally referred to the 68 campaign that went after the votes in the Outer South - areas that went for LBJ before voting for Nixon - and was about tapping into opposition to cultural liberalism and federal intrusion broadly, not just on racial issues.

Federal intrusion was largely about racial issues.

A lot of these areas had a very small if any black population.  Racial issues was the most obvious example of federal intrusion, but there was a symbolic and cultural resonance beyond that.  These places hated Yankee liberals a heck of a lot more than they hated blacks.

[Brittain33]

The "Southern Strategy" originally referred to the 68 campaign that went after the votes in the Outer South - areas that went for LBJ before voting for Nixon - and was about tapping into opposition to cultural liberalism and federal intrusion broadly, not just on racial issues.

Federal intrusion was largely about racial issues.

A lot of these areas had a very small if any black population.  Racial issues was the most obvious example of federal intrusion, but there was a symbolic and cultural resonance beyond that.  These places hated Yankee liberals a heck of a lot more than they hated blacks.

I appreciate how difficult it is, as someone from a different generation who has ethical values that are incompatible with racism, to acknowledge this recent history within your party.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The "Southern Strategy" originally referred to the 68 campaign that went after the votes in the Outer South - areas that went for LBJ before voting for Nixon - and was about tapping into opposition to cultural liberalism and federal intrusion broadly, not just on racial issues.

Federal intrusion was largely about racial issues.

A lot of these areas had a very small if any black population.  Racial issues was the most obvious example of federal intrusion, but there was a symbolic and cultural resonance beyond that.  These places hated Yankee liberals a heck of a lot more than they hated blacks.

I appreciate how difficult it is, as someone from a different generation who has ethical values that are incompatible with racism, to acknowledge this recent history within your party.

There was plenty of, often overt, appeal to racism in the South among Republican candidates. That wasn't "The Southern Strategy," which was just one part of a complicated realignment that took place over six decades.

from the horse's mouth:

Boyd, James. "Nixon's Southern strategy 'It's All In the Charts'", New York Times, May 17, 1970

[Brittain33]

The keystone of the Southern Strategy was Nixon's working with Strom Thurmond to get his endorsement and behind the scenes support for the 1968 Republican nomination. Nixon's concessions included nominating Supreme Court justices who reflected Thurmond's vies and pulling back on federal enforcement of integration (this was nearly 15 years after Brown.)

Look up Nixon's first two nominations for the Supreme Court: they were from South Carolina and Georgia.

South Carolina and Georgia are not in the upper south.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The keystone of the Southern Strategy was Nixon's working with Strom Thurmond to get his endorsement and behind the scenes support for the 1968 Republican nomination. Nixon's concessions included nominating Supreme Court justices who reflected Thurmond's vies and pulling back on federal enforcement of integration (this was nearly 15 years after Brown.)

Look up Nixon's first two nominations for the Supreme Court: they were from South Carolina and Georgia.

South Carolina and Georgia are not in the upper south.

Nixon's first nominee was Warren Burger, but I see you are referring to two successive failed nominees to fill Fortas' seat. Yes, that is an instance of Nixon wanting to appeal to the South.

The question of what constitutes the Southern Strategy is something of a semantic one, as there was a Dent strategy focused winning the support of the South for Nixon on the nomination and South Carolina with the support of Thurmond, and a Phillips strategy focused on the general election wherein the Outer South is appealed to as one part of a grand national strategy. The latter was what columnist Joe Alsop popularized as the "Southern Strategy" in 68. It is misleading to conflate the two, but perhaps it has to be said more accurately that there were a plurality of Southern strategies, with divisions over whether to follow them.  Nixon's advisors certainly did not speak with anything like a singular voice.

[Adam Griffin]

The keystone of the Southern Strategy was Nixon's working with Strom Thurmond to get his endorsement and behind the scenes support for the 1968 Republican nomination. Nixon's concessions included nominating Supreme Court justices who reflected Thurmond's vies and pulling back on federal enforcement of integration (this was nearly 15 years after Brown.)

Look up Nixon's first two nominations for the Supreme Court: they were from South Carolina and Georgia.

South Carolina and Georgia are not in the upper south.

A significant chunk of the population of Georgia and some parts of SC were/are in the Upper South, I would argue (especially when you don't break it up into Upper South, Mid South, Deep South or an equivalent combo). I believe this is about the best modern day assessment of what's Upper South:



Georgia in particular has always had two distinct cultures and the dividing line between them has more or less always passed through the modern ATL metro. Today, the metro is so influential and geographically-expansive that it does a good job at maintaining said division (while also creating to some degree its own Third Way), but geography and other factors kept North Georgia and South Georgia clearly divided into Upper and Deep South even before then and even without a large metropolitan area separating the two.

Another good map to see what I mean is the majority-minority counties of the past 100 years. Everything north of the counties that were M-M at one point or another was definitively (white) Upper South, and everything south of it was definitively (white) Deep South. The stretch of M-M counties itself for all intents and purposes can be considered Deep South as well. Metro ATL's growth, again, complicates this simple definition in the present day.

[Brittain33]

That map puts Birmingham, Alabama in the upper south. If that's the case, there is no distinction to be made about a largely white "upper south" where race issues were not significant and the Deep South where they were. The points about "the modern ATL metro" has no relevance to the 1960s, although if Forsyth County is part of the "upper south," see the previous sentence. The fact the upper south grazes South Carolina does not make Strom Thurmond an Appalachian politician.

[muon2]

Griff's maps define the Upland South, which is not exactly the same as the Upper South. The Upland South is defined by topography, and the Cotton Belt is just below it in elevation. By that measure Birmingham is in the Upland South. The Upper South is a group of states defined in contrast to the Deep South. The Deep South historically refers to those Southern states that were in the Confederacy at the time of the attack on Ft Sumter (SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX), so the Upper South included the remaining states of the Confederacy (VA, NC, TN, AR). Modern usage tends to add some border states to the Upper South (most commonly KY and WV), just as it sometimes drops some from the Deep South (TX and FL), due to demographic changes since the Civil War.

[King of Kensington]

They should have a look north and consider the strategy pursued by Stephen Harper in Canada.