I’m actually trying to point out that history is a lot more nuanced than the left-wing idea that “the South was full of racists for a hundred years, but then the South eventually went Republican, so that means those Southern Republicans must also be racists.” It ignores the idea that the demographics of a region could shift over time, as the older racist Democrats died off and were replaced by Republicans for whom race was no longer the main voting issue.
Here is the south in the election of 1960. A solid line of blue racist Dixiecrats.
Then here is 1964. Something…strange has happened.
Then here is 1968. Something even stranger has happened!
And then 1972! What gives?
It’s almost as if…all the racist Dixiecrats from 1960 decided to start voting for someone other than Democrats. Did something happen in 1964 that changed their minds about Democrats? And where did they end up? It’s a mystery!
Only 1 Democrat has won the south in any Presidential election since 1960. That was…Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Enidigm
1870
Well, that’s an idea, but i’m not sure it’s really supported, just asserted. Effectively your saying that the South isn’t racist today, but happens to be Republican, so Republicans aren’t racist, QED.
Now i’m not eager to paint with such broad strokes half the country as some here, but the reason Democrats switch to the Republican party was because of the Southern Strategy to court racist Democrats to the Republican party because they felt alienated by the Civil Rights movement. So i think your lack of information here (from ignorance or willfullness) is glossing over the history of the switch of the South from one party to another, and the switch within the parties themselves.
He’s also ignoring that the parties were not ideologically split conservative / liberal before 1964. There were conservative (and racist) people in the Dem party in 1960, and liberal people in the Rep party in 1960. That began to change after 1964.
I love how Republicans have to go back to the year 1960 to find an example of when they weren’t the baddies.
Enidigm
1873
This line of thinking AB espouses is only a bit more credulous (or annoying) than when IL claims the American Civil War was about Royalists vs Roundheads.
Another great example where you try to imply something by talking in generalities, instead of looking at the actual details of what happened. So you could look at the election of 1972 and say “Nixon only won the South by appealing to racists (and somehow the rest of the country didn’t notice this racism)”…or you could come to the more logical conclusion of, “Once racism was no longer a voting issue (after the Civil Rights Act of 1964), Southerners were free to vote based on other issues. And Southerners voted for Nixon for the same general reasons that the rest of the country voted for Nixon.”
Right: because once race is no longer a dividing party issue, the South was free to vote based on other issues.
You could do that, but not anyone with 1) education in the matter and 2) integrity.
Why didn’t they vote for the President who shepherded the Civil Rights Act through Congress and signed it? Why did they vote for the Democrat before the act, and then vote for the Republican after the act, and then vote for the Segregationist?
No, that’s not what I’m asserting, because that’s not how logic works. That argument is just as flawed as saying, “Southern Democrats were racist for a hundred years leading up to 1964, and then the South started voting for Republicans after that, so therefore all those racist Democrats became Republicans.”
Southern Democrats didn’t switch to the Republican Party en masse; most Southern Democrats remained lifelong Democrats, and those Southern Democrats continued to win state elections for years. You’re mistaking a change in demographics over time (which definitely happened, as the older Democrats died off and were replaced by younger Republicans) with Democrats just switching parties en masse (which did not happen).
But we should really save this discussion for the “Racist Democrats Became Republicans Because Reasons” thread, instead of hijacking this thread further.
Yes can we please go back to arguing that billionaires are just Nazi’s with more money, and working at Amazon is just modern day slavery.
Your question answers itself: Deep-South Democrats voted against the President who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is why they voted for the Republican candidate. Goldwater also ran on a platform of states’ rights, but he was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP. And Deep-South Democrats voted for the Segregationist because they were still clinging to their racist beliefs, which again doesn’t signal an overwhelming switch to the Republican Party.
It sounds strangely like you agree that they never voted for a Republican before 1964, and virtually never voted for a Democrat after 1964, and equally strangely like you think that nothing changed in 1964.
The South voted overwhelmingly for Carter in 1976. Was that because Carter was running on an explicitly racist platform, or was it because race was no longer a dividing issue in Presidential elections by that point?
Of course I agree that something changed in 1964, but that thing wasn’t “Southern Democrats overwhelmingly moved to the Republican Party” or “Southern states overwhelmingly started electing Republican candidates in state elections”. You are aware that Democrats can still vote for Republican candidates for President, aren’t you??
False dichotomy. Something else happened in 1974.
Wait, didn’t you start this with a claim about the Nixon campaign for…President? If you’re not talking about Presidential elections, what’s the point of your objection?
(Those goalposts are heavy. Put them down, man!)
Did the Republican party’s supposed embrace of racism just end with Ford? Or maybe racism had nothing to do with why the party won the election in the first place.
Because the Presidential election results are used to imply other things about the South which don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Look at any survey of racial attitudes by state or geographical region.
I’m sorry, everyone. Sometimes my basic faith in the cognitive abilities of the species leads me astray, when I’m like, “Surely nobody will argue the self-evident facts that the Nixon campaign made explicit the ongoing shift of the GOP into the capital-and-racists party, and that that remains the largest axis along which the American electorate is split in 2019.”
I should know better by now. Sorry 'bout that.
I’m sorry your own cognitive abilities led you to an overly simplistic and misleading conclusion, and that your own political beliefs mean that you’ll ignore evidence to the contrary.
Don’t feed the trolls, folks. Y’all know better. Especially the off-topic trolls.
