I've got a bit of time to kill, so I thought I'd respond to the recent Claremont Institute's response to the argument that the Republican Party ascended on the back of racism. While Cobb is right that it does raise questions, these questions can be answered in a pretty straightforward manner.
Take the quote below:
The myth that links the GOP with racism leads us to expect that the GOP should have advanced first and most strongly where and when the politics of white solidarity were most intense. The GOP should have entrenched itself first among Deep South whites and only later in the Periphery. The GOP should have appealed at least as much, if not more, therefore, to the less educated, working-class whites who were not its natural voters elsewhere in the country but who were George Wallace's base. The GOP should have received more support from native white Southerners raised on the region's traditional racism than from white immigrants to the region from the Midwest and elsewhere. And as the Southern electorate aged over the ensuing decades, older voters should have identified as Republicans at higher rates than younger ones raised in a less racist era.
Points to consider:
1. Over the course of time, ideologies of conservatism and liberalism map onto political parties in very different ways. The idea of state's rights (now a conservative principle) was first evoked by the DNC, whereas massive redistribution of wealth was first evoked by the GOP.
2. The Deep South and most of the surrounding states were dominated by the Democratic Party. The larger the black presence in the state, the greater the level of dominance.
3. Party ID endures over time, even as national ideologies shift. But at the same time people are also known to cast split tickets when the national and the local conflict.
4. In 1980 Ronald Reagan begins his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with one phrase: state's rights.
While the author does well in separating the Deep South from the periphery, he doesn't quite grapple with the points above. Why would we expect GOP dominance to start immediately in the Deep South, when the Democratic Party was already deeply conservative AND deeply entrenched in that area of the country? There is a REASON why Zell Miller is a Republican in all but name.
At the same time he doesn't quite get around to talking about the ideological predispositions of the parties and how they were related to race. How does the GOP go from supporting 40 acres and a mule in 1865 to supporting state's rights come 1980? Surely they don't reflect the same ideological predispositions?
Finally what Carter and the others are arguing is that the Southern Strategy is responsible for Republican dominance...but this doesn't start UNTIL Reagan. Why doesn't the author grapple with the electoral patterns of 1980 and beyond rather than conflating different electoral eras?
I don't have so much time that I can crunch the numbers myself, but I'm betting that republican dominance begins when the deep south shifts...and that this shift occurs over the course of years as older democrats first vote republican in national elections, then gradually change their partisan identification.
You are technically correct. But I don't see it truly transforming the American landscape until Reagan. Compare Nixon's policies for example to Bill Clinton's and Nixon comes off looking like a Socialist. So busing is able to stoke working class white resentment, but it doesn't transform policy preferences on non racial-redistribution. The process is a lagged one.
Posted by: lks at May 15, 2004 08:37 AM
I was under the impression the "Southern Strategy" originated with Barry Goldwater, and was done successfully by Richard Nixon. Reagan came much later.
Posted by: Isome at May 13, 2004 01:09 AM