The Southern Strategy

The Southern Strategy was to attract all disenfranchised conservative voters, not racists. Democrats and Media claim that after Republicans passed the 1964 Civil Rights, all the racists Democrats switched sides, thus absolving the DNC's KKK, segregation, minority oppression, and the RNC became the racists and started winning the South. The facts show that's a complete delusion. ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2021-07-04

Alt-History

Left	Right
Nixon (Republicans) went after the disenfranchised Southern Democrat racists after LBJ passed 1964 civil rights act, and they all switched parties. Thus the entire racist past (and present) of the Democrats is wiped clean, and the Republicans own all the prior sins.	Nixon lost the South, and Democrats continued to carry the South for 40 years. There's never been a shred of evidence that lifelong Democrats switched parties to the Republicans over race or a minor 1960's addendum to the Fair Housing Law that Republicans passed in 1875, especially when the Republicans had a richer history of passing more significant Civil Rights (including ending slavery).

No one denies that that the Nixon campaign had a "southern strategy", but the left distorted it from attracting disenfranchised conservative democrat voters, to targeting (and capturing) democrat racist voters. Which makes no sense, since the latter was a smaller set, and Democrats had George Wallace (extreme racist Democrat) to vote for.

▶ The History

• Historically, the Republicans had freed the slaves, driven civil rights (1866, 1875, 1957).
• JFK wanted to rehabilitate the Democrats and his own image (Hitler or Communist sympathizer). So he copied the civil rights acts of 1875 and 1957, and he pushed The Civil Rights act of 1963.
• That was blocked by his own party until he took a bullet. And then it took the greater support among Republicans than Democras to get it passed. Johnson only supported it in order to, “have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years.”

▼ The History

❝ These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again. ❞ ~ Lyndon Baynes Johnson ℹ️ Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957

Historically, the Republicans had driven civil rights, including:

• Abraham Lincoln, The American Civil War of 1861 : Freeing the slaves

• Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1875: providing for equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibiting exclusion from jury service.

• Eisenhower: the Civil Rights Act of 1957: Protection for African American voting rights - opposed by the longest single person filibuster with Strom Thurmon (D), South Carolina. This was there to strengthen Brown vs. Board of education and voting right protections.
  • While this was the first civil rights act since 1875, it was thus most significant, it almost never gets mentioned in leftist circles, why do you think that is?

• Then JFK wanted to pretend that Democrats cared about civil rights too, even though he had been a Hitler sympathizer and pro-fascist, and his party had given us the KKK, Jim Crow, Segregation. So he copied the Republican Civil Rights Acts (1875, 1957) and regurgitated The Civil Rights act of 1963 (passed in 1964). Which just said we should enforce the laws that had been on the books for 90 years.

• The Democrats opposed this through threat of filibuster. Until JFK was shot, and the Johnson put it back up as part of his New Deal. And, it was the Republicans that broke the deadlock and voted for it in greater numbers than the Democrats did (and got it passed). The Democrats and Media pretended it mattered, and took credit.

• This had little effect on voter roles. It alienated a few Democrat politicians, and Strom Thurmond switched parties in a huff (which is probably where the Democrat fiction of a mass switch comes from: one alienated high profile Southerner). But since the 1964 act had no teeth and just reiterated what was already on the books and the Republicans had previously passed, it wasn't like lifelong racists were going to move to the party that was responsible for more on civil rights than the Democrats. They just aren't that stupid... and people are stubborn.

• Democrats know how to take a good idea and push it until it becomes a bad one. And then they pushed for the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Between welfare and taking credit for "Civil Rights", the racist Johnson said, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years.” Not that he really wanted to do anything to help blacks, he just wanted to appeal to their racism. This goes with a longer quote of his from the same time.

• The Democrats just wanted to shut up the uppity blacks, and there were MLK riots in 1968, so Johnson wanted to give them another act, not out of any particular caring, just pandering and thus, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was created. While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, and you could (and people did) sue civilly, the 1968 act added federal criminal punishment -- which changes surprisingly little, since 99% of the enforcement is done via civil suit. But it looked good on paper, and that's what counts to Democrats (the feels, not the thinks). In the end, the 1968 act, started the delusions with "hate crimes" and fascination with quotas, and they replaced big government discrimination of blacks, with big government discrimination on anyone who is not a protected class and listed as such.

▶ The Strategy

• The Repubicans created the "Southern Strategy" to appeal to the broad groups alienated by Johnson's radicalism, identity politics, central authority and tax and spend New Deal. (Carpet bagging northerners and big government was still unpopular in the South).
• Racist were a small percentage of the electorate, even in the South. And they would never be attracted to the Republicans with their richer history of defending civil rights.
• The Democrat Party had no defense, so they turned to Saul Alinsky and Joseph Goebbles "big lie", and used the Frankfurt Schools Critical Race Theory: if you can't divide by class, try race instead. So they called the Republicans "racists", and rebranded the Republican's Southern Strategy as, "a strategy to appeal to racists". Which makes no sense to anyone but miseducated or ignorant leftists.

▼ The Strategy

🗒️ Note:

Martin Luther King, Jr. praised Nixon for his “assiduous labor and dauntless courage” in helping to get the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through the Senate. Nixon also supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1960, 1964 and 1968 as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1960, Nixon got nearly a third of the black vote, more than any other Republican since. The premise was this guy was the racist, compared to George Wallace: the segregationist Democrat.

The Republicans (according to all those involved in this re-positioning) realized that the Democrats radical cultural marxism (and identity politics) was alienating a good percentage of their voters (not just in the south, but in rural America and the South), so they devised as part of this strategy, "we need to not alienate and belittle them and make ourselves more appealing than the progressive big government types".

Southern conservative democrats were upset over civil rights (racism) AND democrats all over were getting alienated at the federal intrusion (federalism and activist anti-conservativism), and felt alienated by their party's betrayal. Remember back then you still had conservative and moderates Democrats. The Republicans tried to pickup these anti-federalist and the conservative democrats by not playing identity politics (that the entire South was bigots), or that the government wasn't the cure to everything (since the South still had bitter memories of "reconstruction" and northern carpet baggers, and rural places remembered the failures of the New Deal). That was their Southern Strategy, to attract the disaffected Democrat voters, who were disaffected by the big federal intrusions, welfare programs, quotas and selective definitions like "hate crime". (Making it more a crime to beat up a black person than a white person).

The DNC, being bitter clingers to their ideologies, had to do something to blame the voters who were leaving and the RNC for their failures (as they've always done). So they convinced people only bad people would leave: they had to be racists, bigots and bad folk. So the Republican's Southern Strategy was re-invented as, "the RNC convinced the south that they were more welcoming to racists, and all the lifelong racists switched parties immediately, and that's why the Republicans was beginning to win more elections. Since the Press is provincial liberals that don't get out of their coastal enclaves much (at least not to rural America, or to the south), they believed what they were told, and repeated it. And the urbanites that never had been to the South, or talked to actual people outside the big cities, were easy to convince of "others".

So it's not that there wasn't a southern strategy... it just wasn't what 95% of the people use it to mean.

🗒️ Note:

Ironically, Jimmy Carter had his own Southern Strategy -- and it was to do what the Democrats accuse the Republicans of doing. Jimmy Carter was recognizing and targeting the George Wallace voters in the south, in both 1976 and 1980. Since he was from the party of life long racism and the KKK, he was successful at doing exactly what the Democrats accuse Republicans of: winning all the southern states with the exception of Virginia. Carter successfully formed a winning coalition in those states by appealing to two seemingly disparate voting groups: African Americans and rural whites who had voted for George Wallace -- e.g. the racists.

▶ Did it work?

Were they successful?" (at attracting voters, let alone the small subset that were racists). And the answer is: not really.

• Lifelong racists weren't going to switch parties with such stalwarts in the DNC as George Wallace, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter, and the rich history of the Democrats and the KKK. Especially over a law, that couldn't get passed without the Republicans higher support.
• Which is why Democrats won the South in 1968, 1976, 1988, 1992, and 1996. (Nixon landslided in 1972, and Reagan did in 1980 and 1984 -- so they carried everything).
• It wasn't until the year 2000 (32 years after "The Southern Strategy"), that Republicans started really carrying the South regularly.

▼ Did it work?

Were they successful?" (at attracting voters, let alone the small subset that were racists). And the answer is: not really.

• 1968 - when this supposedly started: Nixon didn't carry the South in 1968. George Wallace (D) (running as independent) did carry the South, and was definitely the racist candidate, and came lovingly back to his Democrat party after the election.
• 1972 - Nixon carried everything in a landslide, but that was because a Northern catastrophe ran against him (McGovern was a left wing extremist that had his VP bow out in scandal). The only State that went for McGovern was Massachusetts.
• 1976 - Carter carried every Southern state, Ford didn't get any. This is 8 years into the Southern Strategy, why weren't the racists voting Republican?
• 1980 - Reagan won in a landlslide, but Georgia still went for Carter. Carter was desperate in his massive loss, and kindled the "Republicans are Racist" by accusing Reagan's state and individual rights messages as being dog whistles for rolling back civil rights gains. (Something that never happened). It was that campaign dirty trick that popularized the "Republicans are the racists" meme's, that prey on those who don't know better.
• 1984 - To prove the landslide in 1980 wasn't a fluke, Reagan won even bigger in 1984. Much of that was Mondale was a northern buffoon that couldn't even win the primary (it was given to him by superdelegates) -- and picking Geraldine Ferraro, another Northern Carpet-bagger from Mass., was an exceptionally lousy ticket, and it performed accordingly. (They were nicknamed, "Fritz and Tits").
• 1988 - Bush crushed Dukakis, and Dukakis only won the primary by leaking a tape that got Joe Biden thrown out of the race (plagiarism). But the nation was still wallowing in the afterglow of the Reagan economy pulling us out of the Carter malaise, and Dukakis had major blunders like "Willie Horton" affair which was pilloried in an ad Revolving Door (where Dukakis supported furloughs of those with life sentences, even after a few of them committed kidnapping and rapes, and were still at large). Then he rode in a Tank to show his understanding of the military, and that event (politician playing dress-up) is still used to warning to politicians, "don't have a Dukakis moment".
• 1992 - Clinton carried more of the South than George Bush. This is 24 years after the Southern Strategy, and still there was no marked swing in voting patterns in the south going to Republicans.
• 1992 - Clinton carried more of the South than George Bush. This is 24 years after the Southern Strategy, and still there was no marked swing in voting patterns in the south going to Republicans.
• 1996 - Clinton still got more electoral votes in the South than Dole, though things were shifting a little. But Democrats got caught in campaign scandals (what else is new), and the economy was hot, it seems the South is slightly less tolerant of liars than the north.
• 2000 - Bush carried the South -- finally, 32 years after the Southern Strategy was created, a Republican carried the South. The fact that he was seen as a Southerner (with his drawl/twang) and Chaney was a midwesterner didn't hurt, Democrats had burned themselves with the Lewinsky scandal and Gore was an caustic idiot and Joe Lieberman was a Northerner. No evidence that racial policies played any more of a part in this campaign than the prior 8. (Nixon's first term it mattered, but that was because
• 2004 - Bush carried the South, again -- but come on, could you have a worse candidate for the South than John Kerry, an anti-military activist, Northern millionaire from Massachusetts, along with philandering John Edwards? Those two couldn't have beaten a black souther candidate in the South.
• 2008 - Obama did not carry the south - but this was probably more about his big government federalism, and being a corrupt Chicago community organizer that went to Harvard. He did carry Florida in 2012.

So if there was a huge swing of voters and representatives, they never showed up at the polls. (At least not nationally).

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Conclusion

🗒️ Note:
Either all the Democrats are completely ignorant of history and all these facts, or they know they are lying and trusting that their base is ignorant/lazy/partisan enough to never see through it, or have a problem with their dishonesty/ignorance. Neither reflects well on them.

So the facts are:

1. the southern strategy according to people that were there, was to go after disenfranchised democrat voters (most weren't racists), and they were more disenfranchised over big government federalism
2. The shift actually started in the 50s (after Eisenhower sent troops to desegregate southern schools), but it was based on economics (not race).
3. the idea is that lifelong Democrat racists are going to switch parties to the one that did more for civil rights, all because they were pissed over a minor copy-cat laws, while the Republicans had done far more to disenfranchise them? It's such nonsense that only uninformed Democrats and their media could believe it.
4. if there was a huge swing of racist voters and representatives, they never showed up at the polls. No one has every shown evidence of a big shift. There's a lot more evidence that the vast majority of racists stayed put in the DNC. And that the Conservative and Moderate Democrats fled (or driven) out of the party slowly.
5. Remember the basics: as the South got less racist, they became more Republican. As the North got more racist, they became more Democrat. Where's the big shift?

When you think about the absurdity of the claim, it falls apart:

• lifelong racists are going to switch parties to the party that's been a bigger problem for them, but they don't show up in the polls for 30+ years?
• Why would Republicans appeal to a few racists, when there were masses of disaffected voters frustrated at Democrats tax and spend policies?

Far more likely was a generational thing; the old racist guard slowly died off (voting Democrat), and new kids of the South, who is traditionally individualist and anti-Big Government, shifted more and more towards the party that would protect their interests. And Democrats blame the other side and racism to avoid introspection and growth.

🗒️ Note:

This isn't claiming there wasn't racists on both sides, or that politicians don't pander to populist sentiments. But the point is the Democrats in the South didn't switch, they died out over time. And more and more new people in the South, were more and more Republican. The South outgrew the racist Democrats and old conservatism, and grew into a more Republican (less racist) new conservatism. So the South may have switched, but the racists, by and large did not. And leftist playing semantics with "switched", or pretending that 50s conservatism is the same as 2020s conservatism, are being dishonest or stupid.

Videos

PragerU
How the script flipped, Carol Swain retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University.

Southern Strategy / Big Switch
Debate Cenk Uygur v Ben Shapiro - Cenk (Young Turks) gets destroyed, again.

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🔗 More

Politics Power relations between individuals or groups, such as the distribution of resources or status.

Terms We need to agree on what terms mean. This used to be easy, before SJW's/Marxists started Orwelling our language.

The Left Lies When the truth disagrees with your agenda, you can grow (change) or lie. The left usually chooses the latter.

Alt-History This is a list of the alternate history that the left uses to twist perception and thus twist reality.

Republicans are racists Democrats distract from issues by accusing anyone that disagrees as being racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.

Richard Nixon Complex guy, but always the outsider, hated/cheated by the media, he did some good things, but was a quitter.

🗒️ Notes

Books

• Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party ~ Dinesh D'Souza
• The Greatest Comeback : How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority ~ Patrick J. Buchanan
• A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow ~ David L. Chappell
• The Emerging Republican Majority ~ Kevin P. Phillips

🔗 Links

• Substack: The myth of a Southern Strategy Donsurber
• RealClearPolitics: The Republican Racist Myth Destroys Chuck rangle over lie. by Mona Charen)
• Power Line : The 'Southern Strategy' Debunked Again
• American Greatness : The Switch That Never Happened: How the South Really Went GOP
• The American Conservative : Nixon in Dixie
• Claremont Institute : The Myth of the Racist Republicans
• Townhall : Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' and a Liberal Big Lie
• Breitbart : The Truth About 'The Southern Strategy' The MSM Doesn't Want You To Know
• DailyCaller : The GOP ‘Southern Strategy’ Reconsidered
• National Review : The Party of Civil Rights
• National Review : Yes, the Party of Civil Rights
• New York Times (Magazine) : The Myth of the Southern Strategy
• PJ Media : History Lesson: Racist Democrats and the Big Lie
• 270toWin : Historical Presidential Elections
• Freedom's Journal : Urban Legends: The Dixiecrats and The GOP
• WND : KKK's 1st targets were Republicans
• The Blaze: Alabama Democrat’s $100,000 Challenge Backfires Democrat dares Alabamans show whites who adopted black babies. It didn't end well for him

👎 Junk

• 💩Wikipedia: Southern Strategy
  • Wikipedia: Civil Rights Act of 1964
  • Wikipedia: Civil Rights Act of 1968
• 💩The Rise of Southern Republicans ~ Earl Black and Merle Black
• 💩From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963–1994 (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History) ~ Dan T. Carter
• 💩The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South (In the 1990s) ~ Joseph A. Aistrup
• 💩NYT:Newt’s Southern Strategy Charles Blow writes alt-reality version of history.
• 💩WaPo:RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes Falsely Claims the Southern Strategy was about using race as a Wedge Issue, and that a Republican apology was about that (and not about just giving up on fighting for the black vote).
• Forgetting the South and the Southern Strategy Paper on Southern Strategy
• A more nuanced (but still dishonest) look at the big switch that took 50 years; Rumble. The old racist democrats did not switch parties. The parties positions switched a little -- but not the people.

Tags: Politics  Terms  Left Lies  Alt-History  Republicans are racists/all  Nixon

Wikipedia:The Southern Strategy

Wikipedia repeats the far-left Alt-history version of "The Southern Strategy, and censored all the conservative voices and references. So like in many parts of Wikipedia, the "neutral" view, suppresses the conflicting perceptions on what happened, why, and the unflattering truths of the Democrats during this era.