In the book "Wallace", by Marshall Frady, Gov. George Wallace was asked about his conservatism. His response was, "What'cha mean, now?" and emphasized that he wasn't "one of those ultraconservatives. They're just interested about money." Wallace then went on to talk about his spending proposals for schools and roads and hospitals, and said of these projects, "That's helpin' foks!".
In that same book, there was a quote from one of Wallace's advisers. I don't remember which one, but the adviser was speaking about the Alabama electorate swinging to Goldwater in 1964. The adviser said something to the effect that Alabamians didn't really like Goldwater; he just voted against the Civil Rights bill and they returned the favor by voting for Goldwater. There was no hankering for the kind of economic conservatism Goldwater proposed; much of the South's prosperity at that time was due to the actions of the Federal Government. (This would not be as true in 1980 as it was in 1964.)
Carter was not perceived as a liberal by most Southern voters, and there were many Southerners whose politics were, quite frankly, much like mine; a conservative social outlook, advocating a strong national defense (while not being war enthusiasts), but with a liberal outlook on economic policy. That, and he was one of them. The Southern states he did the worst in were oil states (TX, LA) and states with significant influx of northerners (FL, VA).
Carter was never the hopeless underdog that he seemed to be during that campaign; all of the fatal slippage came in the last week. He finished poorly. I firmly believe that if Carter had debated both Reagan AND Anderson, he would have avoided what happened in the end, and would have eked it out.
Good post. Obviously, "conservative" and "liberal" can mean totally different things depending on the situation. Someone's economic conservatism (in favor of less regulation and lower taxes, let's say) won't necessarily correlate to his/her social conservatism (pro-life and very pro-gun, let's say), and neither will NECESSARILY correlate to his/her cultural conservatism (preference for tradition and religious, let's say). I'd argue our "one size fits all" definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" didn't really start to form until Buckley came around.
