bluefrog
Go Blazers, GO!
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- Sep 23, 2008
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"The story begins about a half-century ago, back when the right to vote in the South was the almost exclusive domain of white people. In those days, the Republican Party barely existed in the region. White Southerners had been raised on horror stories of the indignities visited upon their forebears by the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, a project of Yankee Republicans. Through the middle of the 20th century, there was no more loyal component of the national Democratic coalition than the South. When, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1936, he tallied more than 80 percent of the vote in six Southern states -- including 99 percent in South Carolina and 97 percent in Mississippi.
The shift came when civil rights emerged as a leading national issue, one that ultimately forced the Democratic Party to choose between pro-integration Northerners (led by urban leaders whose machines were increasingly dependent on black voters, many of whom had fled the Jim Crow South) and the reliable South. The fateful moment, if there was one, took place in 1964, when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Republicans spurned the racially liberal Nelson Rockefeller for their presidential nomination, instead picking Barry Goldwater, who had joined the Southern Democratic filibuster of the new law. Dixie's swing in that fall's election was dramatic. Even as Goldwater lost in an epic landslide nationally, he carried five Southern states. His tally in Mississippi: 87 percent.
But the '64 results were only a hint of what was to come. Southerners did not begin checking off Republican names up and down the ballot overnight. For years to come, in fact, Goldwater's success looked more like an aberration, at least when it came to statewide and local elections. White voters remained emotionally connected to the Democratic identities they'd inherited and receptive to the Democratic candidates -- many of them conservatives who would today be recognized as Republicans -- they saw on their ballots. And in most pockets of the South, Republican organizations were only beginning to show signs of life. Except at the presidential level, the South remained an overwhelmingly Democratic region through the 1970s."
There aren't many southerners on this forum but I thought it was an interesting read. I've got to run to the store now to stock up on beer and toilet paper for the hurricane...
"The story begins about a half-century ago, back when the right to vote in the South was the almost exclusive domain of white people. In those days, the Republican Party barely existed in the region. White Southerners had been raised on horror stories of the indignities visited upon their forebears by the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, a project of Yankee Republicans. Through the middle of the 20th century, there was no more loyal component of the national Democratic coalition than the South. When, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1936, he tallied more than 80 percent of the vote in six Southern states -- including 99 percent in South Carolina and 97 percent in Mississippi.
The shift came when civil rights emerged as a leading national issue, one that ultimately forced the Democratic Party to choose between pro-integration Northerners (led by urban leaders whose machines were increasingly dependent on black voters, many of whom had fled the Jim Crow South) and the reliable South. The fateful moment, if there was one, took place in 1964, when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Republicans spurned the racially liberal Nelson Rockefeller for their presidential nomination, instead picking Barry Goldwater, who had joined the Southern Democratic filibuster of the new law. Dixie's swing in that fall's election was dramatic. Even as Goldwater lost in an epic landslide nationally, he carried five Southern states. His tally in Mississippi: 87 percent.
But the '64 results were only a hint of what was to come. Southerners did not begin checking off Republican names up and down the ballot overnight. For years to come, in fact, Goldwater's success looked more like an aberration, at least when it came to statewide and local elections. White voters remained emotionally connected to the Democratic identities they'd inherited and receptive to the Democratic candidates -- many of them conservatives who would today be recognized as Republicans -- they saw on their ballots. And in most pockets of the South, Republican organizations were only beginning to show signs of life. Except at the presidential level, the South remained an overwhelmingly Democratic region through the 1970s."
There aren't many southerners on this forum but I thought it was an interesting read. I've got to run to the store now to stock up on beer and toilet paper for the hurricane...
