Southern United States Politics

I may be wrong, but isn't it because Lincoln (the winner of the civil war) was a Republican?

In any case, since Reagan, the GOP has reinvented itself as the party of family values, etc.

 

I wanna say that after Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights act "the Democrats lost the south forever" I forgot who was quoted but politicians just mimic their constituents so all the Republicans had to do was mold their image to that of the south at the time

 

Well the Democratic Party split into factions during/after the 1968 primary and the more conservative members of the Democratic Party switched to the republican part as a result of Nixon's southern strategy. By the time Reagan won in 1989, the south was lost

 

The switch officially began in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which finally got rid of segregation. Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater, campaigned against the Civil Rights Act, saying that it would force private business owners to act contrary to their long-held beliefs of not serving, or keeping different races separate at their businesses. While Johnson won a full term in a landslide, carrying 45 states, Goldwater won four Confederate states:



Four years later, the Democrats ran Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, LBJ's Vice President, and Edmund Muskie of Maine for VP. Nixon patented the GOP's Southern Strategy, which was to pander to racists in the South, as the Democrats had run two northern anti-segregation liberals on their ticket. Throw into the mix Alabama's racist Dixiecrat governor George Wallace who made a third party bid and split the Democratic vote across the South, and Richard Nixon won the Presidency easily:



Fast forward to 1976. The Democrats ran Jimmy Carter, the Governor of Georgia, and Walter Mondale, a US Senator from Minnesota for President, and Carter panders mainly to evangelical Christians, who will gladly vote for one of their own.



1980 was when the South was beginning to cement as a Republican stronghold. Despite high inflation and an international crisis, Carter initially had most of his original support in the South as he did in 1976. Ronald Reagan's main strategy was the same as Richard Nixon's: pander to enough racists in the South to flip Carter '76 states from blue to red. Reagan won many Southern states by a rather narrow margin, but it set in fast motion the South's change.



In 1984, Walter Mondale returned to politics and told America a message it didn't want to hear. Reagan's economic policies were making the rich richer, the poor poorer, and making it harder to go from one group to the other. However, simply attacking Reagan did nothing, and Mondale managed to carry only Minnesota, his home state, by 3,700 votes, and Washington, DC.

Although Republicans were winning Southern states by wide margins in the Presidential election, it wasn't until 1994 that they made hardly any inroads in state politics. '94 was when Republicans started winning Congressional seats in the South, as most of the 54 House seats they gained were in the old Confederacy.

2010 was when the dam finally broke in the South. The Democrats had committed an unforgivable sin in the South's eyes: they'd put a Black man in the White House. Many State Legislatures in the South were still controlled by Democrats at that point: In 2010, Republicans took control of the Legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and North Carolina, Legislatures that it's safe to say that it's impossible for Democrats to ever win back.

 

I'm taking AP U.S History in school, so this is my bread and butter.

To give a back story, Democrats were basically Southern farmers prior to the 60's and the Great Depression was when they shined through. Farmers were very hard-hit during the Depression and they wanted the government to do something about the financial crisis. They supported the mild welfare state in the 1930's.

Then came the 1950's and the civil rights era when the liberal Warren court came into power. They were known to overturn many Jim Crow laws in their rulings like Brown v. BOE. Since the 50's were a very conservative era (teens often heard this, "Don't even THINK about sex!"), conservatives were angry and believed that the court "legislated from the bench."

Still, during this time, the Democrats (mostly in the South) supported the New Deal programs and high taxes on the rich while the Republicans favored otherwise. Race and religion weren't even in the picture yet.

Then came the 60's when high school and university students were the most radical liberals at the time. Free Love, peace protests, increasing acceptance of abortion and homosexuality angered the religious conservatives.

As the U.S ended involvement in the Vietnam War, stagflation and the oil crisis happened. Inflation hit the teens and even past 20%, causing the people to seek for new ways to benefit the nation. Steel factories and other manufacturing jobs closed down in the North and Northeast, causing unemployment to shoot up as well. Since the Republican party was losing influence prior to this, they seized this chance to revamp their platform and offer newer alternatives, led my Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was a very well-off actor. Although he admired the New Deal programs, he simply hated the high taxes. Since the nation was experiencing high inflation, there's nothing better than tax reductions during this time. The party still supported states' rights, which is what the Jim Crow supporters wanted due to their distaste of the Civil Rights Acts. Since the liberal Warren Court allowed many "obscene" acts to be made, like their neutral position of homosexuality and abortion, the party began to attract religious conservatives. The conservative movement was led by Ronald Reagan, who deplored communism, which is why religious conservatives joined the Republican party ("godless communism").

 

AwesomeGaytheist really delivered here, so I don't have a ton to add. I found Rick Persteins books on Nixon and Goldwater to be good reads on the era and gathers a lot of what motivated these changes.

The history of "party systems" in the USA is pretty interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing. Although they each had some tendencies, the parties were much less strictly ideological than they are today, such that there was such a thing as relatively conservative democrats and relatively liberal republicans. This is the fifth party system in the USA.

It's interesting to me as well that post Nixon's southern strategy, democrats also needed to play along and at least nip off some bits of the southern states for victory, which has a large part to due with the victories of Carter and Clinton. Obama was able to put together a different coalition to win, so we shall see if another democrat is able to leverage a similar path. Possibly, we are looking at our 6th political system.

---------- Post added 2nd Apr 2015 at 04:26 PM ----------

Actually, race is a huge factor in assembling the coalition that pushed through the New Deal. There were (and some of these still remain) carve outs in many of these laws specifically to exclude black Americans. The exemptions on which workers are eligible for social security are pretty interesting in this regard.

 

More concerning is that the republican dominated state assemblies are deliberately gerrymandering (redrawing political jurisdictions) that favour republicans, so the number of democrats versus their representative counterparts may not be favorably matched...I can't believe this is even allowed!

 

Let me throw a monkey wrench in what has been a well-thought out and cogent argument, especially by AwsomGaytheist.

What I have to contribute is perhaps nothing more than perhaps a conspiracy theory. Johnson, despite signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was one our countries most bigoted presidents. His "Great Society" crippled the African-American family and furthered the creation of negative stereotypes of the "welfare queen" and the "absent father". Johnson's welfare reforms created a permanent underclass. Whom did this benefit? The Democrats. The Democrats now had a loyal base for which they bought and paid, dependent on them to meet their needs.

Cynical isn't it. Goldwater for many was nothing more than a rabid dog at the time without any real pull. The Republicans was a party of adults, of moderates. It also was fairly progressive. The Democrats now had a lock on the poor, and a means for demonizing Republicans. The adults of the party dwindled and the religious right, the social conservatives, and the Tea Party developed to fill the void.

Let's not be mistaken both parties are in the hands of big money. Neither party cares for us. The exist now only the care and feeding of billionaires and their corporations. As an example: Bill and Melinda Gates got into the education business in the 80's and thus was born "Core Curriculum". Test well, but don't think deeply, creating just the right worker bees needed to support their corporate hive.

Long story short both parties pandered to their lowest common denominator, and what we have is a fractured system and with no genuine leaders with the potential of dynastic rule by the Clintons or the Bushes. Norway keeps looking better and better to me.

 

Tscott, that's a ridiculous, insulting and racist theory you've put forth.

It's truly amazing that republicans cannot understand why they get such extremely low numbers of black voters when they constantly tell them that the only reason they vote Democratic Party is cause they're too stupid.