In one narrow sense, you’ve got to admit that it worked: the GOP sure has a stranglehold on Southern states’ electoral votes.
Even when they run an effete, Harvard-educated ex-governor of Massachusetts whose religion is (shall we say) not exactly aligned theologically with Baptism, they forget all that and support him better than a good ole boy from Missipi with an accent you can barely comprehend. They have the south locked up tight.
No, “R” doesn’t have to stand for “racist,” any more than it has to stand for “Romney-Ryan” or “Republican,” but you’ve got to wonder who is going to be biased against a black President. Even if you don’t subscribe to the thesis that GOP voters are any more racist than Dems, or that Southerners are even a shade more racist than Northerners, or that young folks are more open-minded about race than the elderly, the clear geography of this past election was pretty clear that Romney is the landslide President of the Southern part of the U.S. Can they win back the other parts and still appeal to the South, though? If so, how?
Remember that Obama won re-election with a lousy economy, something traditionally hard to do, making Romney’s defeat even worse than it seemed. How are the Republicans going to make inroads into the Northern states in an economy that will probably be better in 2016?
Thanks for giving credence to the whole identity politics theory.
I’ll say this directly to you.
Lyndon Johnson took a gigantic political risk by pursuing civil rights in 1964 and 1965. He won only because of overwhelming amount of good feeling he had left after Kennedy’s assassination. Southerners were almost hysterical over the bills and the real filibusters they held then were nothing like the phony procedural ones today. Southern Democrats left the party in droves after 1965. And the Republicans welcomed them with open arms.
They didn’t have to. They could have said, “we’re the party of Lincoln, and we’re going down the only decent road. We don’t want you. Form a regional hate party and disappear.”
But they didn’t. Instead they launched the Southern Strategy and made a deliberate effort to win over the haters. Over four decades the Republican Party maintained one of the most brilliant branding campaigns in American history. They branded themselves - quietly, under the table, viva voce, never putting the words on paper or anywhere else - the party of intolerance. Everybody understood it. Most especially the groups they declared their intolerance for understood it. It worked spectacularly, for and against.
It was a short-term strategy, if 1968 to 2004 can be labeled short-term. Republicans won seven presidential elections over that time. They regained control of Congress after a 40-year drought and have been competitive even when not in charge. It worked great while it lasted.
But it’s over. The groups that the Republican Party is intolerant toward are now a majority of the population. And growing. And growing faster than the groups that embraced the Republican policies of intolerance. Well, these groups are actually shrinking. The disparity between the two sets of numbers will get larger in every national election.
It is not a matter of choosing the right candidate. The issue is the branding of the party, the self-imposed, short-term, sell-your-soul-to-the-devil deal that the Republicans made with the worst segments of 1960s society. The devil has returned and is brandishing his contract. America is now going to run by Them, by all those Thems that the Republican Party has publicly and repeatedly denounced as unbiblical sources of evil. Don’t expect anyone to feel sorry as the Party is dragged down into the Pit. You did it to yourselves.
Be patient. We’ve dragged the Confederacy almost up to the 20th century already.
You’re welcome, whatever the hell you’re talking about.
Please read Exapno’s post. Several times.
Daily. Before breakfast.
For several years.
You can be saved, but only if you follow my prescription rigorously.
Correction. I meant sotto voce, of course. I was in mid-step and my brain went, *what *did you say? Sigh.
However, I would much rather be wrong in such inconsequential things than about something like the Southern Strategy.
I don’t think it is strictly a southern thing, the GOP has made good inroads with rural white voters outside the south in areas like the midwest, southwest, northwest, etc. I am under the impression that rural whites used to be strong supporters of progressivism and anti-plutocrat populism back in FDRs days. Now they are the opposite on those issues.
But again, a coalition built around retired people, southerners and whites from small towns is going to make it hard to get to 51% of the electorate.
You also have to take into account that the south is turning. VA and NC weren’t swing states before 2008. There is speculation (no idea if it’ll lead anywhere) that Texas and Georgia could also become swing states if the democrats devoted more time to registering voters. Texas’s eligible voting population is something like 42% non-white. The problem is supposedly the democratic party doesn’t want to invest the money needed to register enough latinos to turn the state purple. But if Texas goes purple, then the southern strategy has been a total failure. FL, VA, NC and TX (and possibly GA) all become swing states and they have the most electoral votes.
I don’t think they can make inroads until they sincerely change their policies. Their policies are hostile to and dismissive of anyone who isn’t a white, christian, heterosexual male with a stable income. They can gussy it up all they want, but until that changes I don’t see them making serious inroads.
Republicans do not have the South “locked up”; recall the result in 1976 and the result in 1992. When the Democrats run a white southern male, they make inroads on this coalition.
The maps from the recent election are instructive. There are very few urban conservative areas. Even urban conservative areas that were staunchly Republican not too long ago (Orange County, CA, I’m looking at you) have started to go more and more Democratic.
By the same token, the Republicans managed some pretty thorough shellackings of Democratic presidential candidates in 1980, 1984, and 1988. In each of those elections, the Republican president won not only the South and “West” (code for rural states west of the Mississippi River), they won states in the NorthEast as well. And the urban MidWest. So it’s perfectly possible for the Republicans to run candidates who appeal to both Southerners and Northeners. Just hasn’t happened for a while.