The future of the GOP's demographics

[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.