You are conflating two completely different socio-political movements, and then throwing all kinds of irrelevant facts together to piece together your theory. the problem here is that your looking at historical shifts and evolutions through a completely flawed prism. First is the assertion that Nixon ran on a racist platform. This has no basis in reality.
Nixon ran an anti-Communist and anti-crime centered campaign in the 1968 election. The person running the racist, segregationist platform was George Wallace. You’re completely neglecting the existence of the American-Independent party. Wallace won 5 states. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas. The segregationists stuck with the segregationists. This goes back to 1948, when Truman desegregated the military, and then the pissed off segregationist southern-Democrats created the Dixiecrat party. They tried to punish Truman for it, and he ended up trouncing Dewey and them. That was when the Democrat platform on race and civil rights BEGAN
it’s evolution. At this time (1948), the Republicans were still
the civil rights party.
Now. What followed was the Second Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the other parts of the country. This lasted until 1970. What coincided with this was another transplantation of
Republicans from the North, to the South. Almost all of these Republicans were still very deep in the fight for Civil Rights, and still considered that a large part of their platform. This was the beginning of the
Republican evolution. But it was NOT an evolution of platform as much as it was an evolution of geography. (The evolution of platform came later).
The beginning of the “southern strategy” is not in the 70s with Nixon (btw, Nixon was already President by 1970 for two years). It is found in the 1964 election. Goldwater was a strict conservative, and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any further
federal civil rights actions. He did not do this because of racism, nor did he act like he was. He was clear about his opposition to a federal expansion of government using desegregation as an excuse. This attracted a lot of white Southerners who were pro-segregation, yes. But that was only because his goal happened to coincide with their goal. His reasons were 100% different from theirs.
And why was his reason different? Because the Civil Rights movement, which had been dominated by the Republican Party, had recently split. One side considered the fight mainly won (on the federal level) and wanted no more federal action. The other side thought that Civil Rights should naturally lead to a further redistribution and federally enforced nation-wide desegregation of most or all industries, schools, and governments. It was this that led to a Republican rejection of things like affirmative-action (which Nixon supported).
Lyndon Johnson ran a pretty dirty campaign in 1964, and his strategy included blasting Goldwater for voting against the Civil Rights Act (while not mentioning Goldwater’s historic support for civil rights) in the North (running a commercial that likened Goldwater to the leader of the KKK). At the same time, he ran commercials detailing Goldwater’s historic support of civil rights in the Deep South, thus garnering a lot of the segregationist, racist vote. This campaign, along with Goldwater’s refusal to support further federal action on civil rights, was what caused the African Americans to begin their break with the Republicans. They even went so far as to reelect Al Gore Sr., a segregationist, over the Republican.
Now we go to the 1968 election. In the primary, Nixon was actually lauded by civil rights leaders for not referring to the race riots in his anti-crime campaign. It was only during the actual election that he did reference the race riots, and in response, the liberals labeled his pro-state’s rights positions as code for segregation. Nixon was not a segregationist by any means, and in fact would later create a federal affirmative action program. He was specifically trying to appeal to the anti-Communist, anti-socialist elements within the Southern whites, which had already begun dropping their segregationist ideals. His platform was in no way segregationist. George Wallace was the segregationist, and he was the one who got the segregationist vote.
The black vote switched because of the perception that the Republicans had abandoned civil rights (they had not) and also because they were more likely to support the social programs that the Democrats supported. It also helped that the Democrats had largely dropped their explicit racism and support of segregation. Johnson was largely responsible for the change in perception, but anyone can see that his campaign against Goldwater was hardly honest about Goldwater’s positions. Even further, the perception of the African-Americans about the issue, are irrelevant to the truth of the issue.
Posting platforms from 1860 is even more irrelevant. Because no one has tried to claim that the parties do not evolve in their political positions. But just because one party evolves does not mean that it has suddenly become the other party. And it doesn’t mean that it isn’t the same fucking party. And yet further, the Progressives never took over the Republican Party, and actually were eventually driven out of the party. And they didn’t necessarily come from within the party either, they just latched onto the Republicans because the Democrats, at the time, were still largely segregationist, and were still largely regional (the Solid South). The Democrats evolved, yes. They became a home of progressivism as opposed to Republican conservatism, which had existed since the days of Lincoln, and still exists today.
The relevancy of my arguments is that there is some importance to being historically honest. To suggest that the Republicans became the Democrats, or visa versa, is to continue the spread of a complete fabrication. To suggest that the Republicans ever took up segregationist policies is to suggest something with no basis in historical fact. Republicans never got the segregationist vote until long after the segregationist vote had completely dropped segregation as a part of their fucking voting interests. You ask me why this is important while you are calling the party of Lincoln the “racist” party. How does it matter? You make it matter by claiming that this fabrication of Johnson’s is somehow applicable today.
From the wikipedia article on Dixiecrats that you posted but did not read:
The States' Rights Democratic Party dissolved after the 1948 election, as Truman, the Democratic National Committee, and the New Deal Southern Democrats acted to ensure that the Dixiecrat movement would not return in 1952 presidential election. Some local diehards, such as Leander Perez of Louisiana, attempted to keep it in existence in their districts.[9] Regardless of the power struggle within the Democratic Party concerning segregation policy, the South remained a strongly Democratic voting bloc for local, state, and federal Congressional elections, but not in presidential elections.
And no I will not ignore the most important part of the article, which is that most of the Dixiecrat leaders returned to the Democrat party!
Now on to the Deep South and why the Democrats lost it. Goldwater managed to get some votes because of the Republican migrations and because of his coincidental opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, George Wallace did more to hurt the Democrats there than anyone else. He decisively split segregationists and anti-Communists by running a pro-segregation,
isolationist campaign. When Jimmy Carter ran in 72 and 76, he managed to win the South back to the Democrats. However, the fracture was complete with the election of Reagan and the ending of segregation as an issue in the South. This let those southerners who were Republican migrants, and those southerners who were anti-Communist, to come together, and gave the Republicans the Southern White vote. However, they didn’t completely win the votes of the southern white, working class, pro-segregationists, until the 90s. LONG after they had dropped segregation as an issue.
On race issues, the parties did not switch. The Republicans had always been anti-segregation, pro-Civil rights, and they remains so today. They are also conservative, and they do no support federal expansion or federal enforcement of affirmative action or other redistributive policies. Civil rights leaders wanted redistribution, and they tied that fight for redistribution to the civil rights battle, though the battle had long since been won. Republicans rejected the redistribution and were forever branded as segregationists and racists because of it.
That is why this is important. A perception of the second largest political party in the United States exists, and that perception is false and is based on the malice of liberals who never forgave Republicans for forcing progressivism out.
EPT
