Any suggestion that the Republicans won the South by anything but thoroughly and utterly racist means is bullshit.
Total bullshit.
Complete, utter, absolute.
My last trip to the South, just a couple of weeks ago, I found myself behind a pickup with a display of the Georgia Stars and Bars, calling the incumbent Gov a turncoat, obviously by implication meaning that the Republican candidate wasn’t a turncoat and that he was the one a true Southerner - white Southerner, obviously - would vote for.
This pattern is hardly the exception. To quote from a little history (full article at
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/23/172905.shtml)
“In 1980, Ronald Reagan opened his campaign for the presidency in Philadelphia, Miss., with a speech on states’ rights. Philadelphia was known for only one event – it was where three civil rights workers (Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney) had been murdered in 1964.
Republicans insist the choice of that particular location was not intended to send a message, yet no alternative explanation has ever been suggested – after all, Philadelphia, Miss., is not a natural place to start a presidential campaign.”
This incident alone erased and will erase until the day I die any thought of ever pulling a lever for a Republican candidate. If Reagan roasts in Hell forever, it’ll be too short a sentence for what he did that day by figuratively dancing on the graves of those slain civil rights’ workers.
The article then reviews Republican strategy in the South. Fast forwarding from Grant to 1964:
“In 1964, the Republicans changed their Southern strategy to a new model – that of direct support for Southern opposition to desegregation. This strategy cost them the outer South, but gained them the Deep South. It also severed the party from blacks, and that proved to be permanent.
On the other hand, by getting 48.7 percent of Southern votes, Goldwater became the first Republican in history to do better in the South than the North. And the South’s share of the national vote rose to 17.4 percent.
Nixon played a careful version of the Southern strategy in 1968, combining Ike’s class strategy with Goldwater’s racial appeal. In 1968, riots in northern cities had nationalized the race issue – so it was possible to gain Northern as well as Southern votes by a mild racial appeal…
It was the desire to win the Wallace vote that shaped a large part of Nixon’s policies and even more his rhetoric in the next four years. After Wallace was shot in a Maryland parking lot, while the Democrats nominated George McGovern, Nixon’s task was done for him. He carried the South with an astounding 71.3 percent of the vote, getting more than 10 million votes there – more than twice as many as 1968. And he did more than 10 percent better in the South than in the rest of the country.”
Everyone knows the above is the truth, but nobody says it out loud, in the interests of civility.
My hope is that Bush, who the above article makes clear, has abandoned this Southern strategy, despite the Jones incident, will make it possible for those younger than myself to truly have a choice about which party to vote for. But speaking for myself, there is no way I could reconcile a vote for a Republican with my conscience.