Thursday, August 17, 2017

More about the false narrative about the"Southern Strategy"

A while ago I wrote an essay regarding the  The Fallacy of the Republican/Democratic Flip/Flop on Civil Rights and Racism

Recently I had an occasion to revisit the subject.

There is a difference between a platform and a worldview. Millions of people do not just decided one day that they will forsake a premise of their life long value system against racism, and decide they want to be racists to get more votes. It is more than intellectually dishonest to propose such a thing, it is ludicrous. As has been seen over and over, people with solid moral compass, attempt to maintain their course (and even if they fail they still no what is right and what is wrong); it is those with abhorrent and selfish values, that believe people are inferior to them, that often times seem the light and change their moral compass. Further the whole idea of the Southern Strategy is Republicans took over the Democrat oppression of blacks, something there is no evidence of. In fact during the 1960s Republicans took control of Presidential elections no state and local elections. So regardless of who Southern racists voted for President, the Democrats would stay fully in charge of the state and local government for decades.

The whole Southern Strategy revisionist history was nothing more than identity politics, pushed by the likes of the extreme left wing by people such as Paul Krugman (Krugman says the Dixiecrats became Republicans, but fails to mention the Dixiecarts Party was founded and dissolved in 1948. So somehow the ex- Dixiecrats waited some 16 years to become Republicans. The truth is all the Dixiecrats fell back into the Democrat party and only 3 ex-Dixiecrats actually switched sides in the 1960s and became Republicans. The point is numerous historians and political scientists have written exposés on the false narrative of the flip/ flop Southern Strategy.

"Political scientist Nelson W. Polsby argued that economic development was more central than racial desegregation in the evolution of the postwar South in Congress.[104] In The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South, the British political scientist Byron E. Shafer and the Canadian Richard Johnston developed Polsby's argument in greater depth. Using roll call analysis of voting patterns in the House of Representatives, they found that issues of desegregation and race were less important than issues of economics and social class when it came to the transformation of partisanship in the South.[105] This view is backed by Glenn Feldman who notes that the early narratives on the southern realignment focused on the idea of appealing to racism. This argument was first and thus took hold as the accepted narrative. He notes, however, that Lassiter's dissenting view on this subject, a view that the realignment was a "suburban strategy" rather than a "southern strategy", was just one of the first of a rapidly growing list of scholars who see the civil rights "white backlash" as a secondary or minor factor. Authors such as Tim Boyd, George Lewis, Michael Bowen, and John W. White follow the lead of Lassiter, Shafer and Johnston in viewing suburban voters and their self interests as the primary reason for the realignment. He does not discount race as part of the motivation of these suburban voters who were fleeing urban crime and school busing.[10] " wikipedia

 "If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats’ 1964 about-face on the issue. Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties. Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats. It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. History Lesson: Racist Democrats and the Big Lie

The Myth of ‘the Southern Strategy’

The Myth of the Southern Strategy (2)

The "Southern Strategy" Myth

Misunderstanding the Southern Realignment

The Myth of the Racist Republicans

"Their Democratic Party home during America’s most horrible years of racism and bigotry – murder and; mayhem – hatred and terrorism – intolerance and exclusion. But let’s take a look at how many Dixiecrat segregationists became Republicans after 1964. Only these three (3) switched parties, how surprising!

Gov. Mills E. Godwin, Jr. D-VA
Sen. Jesse Helms, Jr. D-NC
Sen. Strom Thurmond D-SC"

Did the Democrats and GOP “Switch Sides” after the Civil Rights Act in 1964?