Matthew Yglesias (August 24, 2007) - Why Did The South Turn Republican? (Politics)

As a person who endured through Jesse Helms' populist racism through his office, yes, the crazy Reaganite right wing views on taxes etc. were indeed there in the South, but that didn't mean the racism wasn't there either.

Helms' famous Willie Horton add was the "white hands" whining that maybe the reason why a poor white guy couldn't get a job was affirmative action.

Now, you're welcome to try to tie affirmative action complaints to larger issues, but that isn't what the Helms-supporting portion of the populace was saying. No, there on the ground, they were pretty clear that they were voting Helms to stop the n***ers from taking over.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 12:07 PM

Matthew should re-read "The Strange Career of Jim Crow". White poor Southerners can get quite redistributionist, if you stroke them the right way. The trick is to convince them that their enemy is the white folks on the hill. The WFotH try to deflect this with appeals to racism. They usually succeed, but not always.

Posted by Joe S. | August 24, 2007 12:10 PM

I think the evidence strongly suggests that conservative politicians get the votes of white southerners precisely because white southerners like conservative positions on taxes, moral values, and national security.

I think you dropped the link to that evidence. My understanding is more in agreement with that of Joe S: "Southerners can get quite redistributionist, if you stroke them the right way."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 24, 2007 12:16 PM

Wasn't there recently a report which said prior to the 60's, support for welfare programs was about the same for whites and blacks, but afterwards, white support dropped drastically? I think it's most likely southern whites started supporting conservative economic policies after they realized that the beneficiaries of the liberal policies would includes blacks.

Posted by Dan the Man | August 24, 2007 12:20 PM

"I think the evidence strongly suggests that conservative politicians get the votes of white southerners precisely because white southerners like conservative positions on taxes, moral values, and national security."

Matt has a point here. EIsenhower won a few southern states in 1952 and more in 1956 by going down there and actively telling people what they wanted to hear about taxes, morality, and national security. He didn't openly appeal to racist sentiments. HOWEVER, he did use code words that suggested to people that he would not disrupt long-held racial practcies. In appealing to "states' rights" and the "Jeffersonian tradition," he let people know that he did not intend to mess with their way of life.

When Goldwater campaigned against the CR Act of 1964, things were more apparent, as they were when Reagan launched his campaign from Philadelphia, MIssissippi. They both talked "states' rights" and "federalism," but they know that these terms have a double-edge in the South.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 12:24 PM

Lincoln was a member of the Republican party - hence no white southern was really interested in voting Lincoln's party until Goldwater and most importantly Reagan gave them a reason to bail a party that that had come to be seen as representing all of those scarry people they were trying to subjugate. I mean many are still fighting the War Between the States/Civil War/War of Northern Agression.

Posted by ET | August 24, 2007 12:26 PM

"The weird thing about Jim Crow politics is that white southerners with conservative views on taxes, moral values, and national security would vote for Democratic presidential candidates who didn't share their views. They did that as part of a strategy for maintaining white supremacy in the South."

A big caveat here, as has been noted by other commenters:

White Southerners may indeed have had conservative views on moral values and national security, but they've always been open to lefty economics.

The problem is not that they're Club For Growth types, the problem is that their economic concerns are able to be easily trumped by other issues.

Posted by Petey | August 24, 2007 12:27 PM

A lot of problems with this. First of all, white southerners didn't move into the Republican Party when the national party broke with them on civil rights; the realignment [and it's interesting how you slip that process in the back door] took some time; 1994 seems to be its completion, and it's hardly left the region without white Democrats; indeed, they hold at least a share of power in at least half the states. Secondly, there's this persistent notion that the region hasn't changed at all over the last two-thirds of a century, that it's still V.O. Key's South [You actually said this yourself a while back; I hope you know better]. That's simply false; Key's South had only a smallish urban middle class, while the modern South has an enormous one. Modern "southern conservatism," then, is far less like plantation conservatism than northern suburban conservatism--and, I might add, suffers from the same vulnerabilities, like its inability to provide the services people actually want. Finally, there's a huge conceptual problem with "conservatism." A lot of white southerners continue to be poor, or near-poor, and there's plenty of evidence that they continue to endorse the concept of government programs to help people, just as they did during the New Deal {That's part of the phenomenon Ross and Reihan Salam talk about with their "Sam's Club conservatives" thesis]. It's the cultural issues that have come to be the problem for them with the Democrats--but that hardly means that they're locked in to the Republicans, whom they persistently mistrust as "country-clubbers." Rather, they feel between a rock and a hard place, forced to choose between a hard-hearted country-club elite and one that holds their values in snobbish contempt. I'm not saying that the Democrats can restore the South to its old status as party bulwark--that's gone [Thank God!], along with the rural, impoverished, disfranchised, Jim Crow society that made it up. But this notion that white southerners are Just One Thing And It Ain't Us says less about Them than about "Us."

Posted by David | August 24, 2007 12:28 PM

I grew up in South Carolina, and I have to disagree with Matt on this one. There is a very strong current of "fuck the rich guys" populism in that part of the South. As Joe S. says above, folks I grew up around can get very "redistributionist," so long as the people on the receiving end of the redistribution are not lazy, baby-spewing, dope smoking, gas-station-robbing layabouts. Or, you know, black. Race still means a hell of a lot in that part of the world, even if it is not as overt as it was when I was a kid.

Posted by Jeff in Texas | August 24, 2007 12:28 PM

So these "conservative" views arise and are reinforced how? Because white supremacy at home has its imperialist counterpart abroad and low taxes etc. are understood on Atwater's terms--it hurts blacks more. Do you find this a massive explanatory leap?

Posted by sniflheim | August 24, 2007 12:29 PM

You state that southerners voted for Democrats despite their preference for low taxes, etc., due to the Democratic Jim Crow politics of the time. The shift to Republican voting is to the party that now best supports Jim Crow.

Southerners changed their preferred party due to racial reasons,the other issues provide cover.

Posted by Mudge | August 24, 2007 12:31 PM

Okay maybe I'm not missing something here.

Matt, you explain in one sentence that Southern Democrats got the votes of Southern whites because they were conservative too and in the next sentence you say the conservative ideology really didn't matter to white Southernersbecause they were more concerned with keeping whites in power.

Which is it?

I have to disagree with both you though. I don't get a sense that Southern whites changed their priorities or ideology at all. They just kept following the same racist politicians as they changed their affiliation from the Democrats to the Republicans.

When Strom Thurman and other Dixiecrats left the party their constituents went with them.

Posted by golden | August 24, 2007 12:31 PM

Petey makes a solid point. Think about the openly racist things that came out of the National Review during the 1950s--the magazine supported segregation because whites represented a "superior civilization." That said, Buckley HATED George Wallace, because Wallace offered up the kind of populist, statist economics that Buckley associated with communism. And Wallace was real popular in the South because he mixed populism and racism.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 12:31 PM

A big difference between economic views in the North and South is that unions are not a big part of the Southern paradigm. If you grow up around unions, you're more likely to be drawn to the Democratic Party (unless, of course, they break your dad's kneecaps or something).

Posted by Steve | August 24, 2007 12:33 PM

Remove "not" from that first sentence and it'll make sense.

Posted by golden | August 24, 2007 12:34 PM

The idea that you could so conveniently analyze race as an element separate and distinct from the relative appeal of modern liberal and conservative social policy is absurd. Race, as I think Dan and others have said, sits at the center of and is coextensive with the ways in which these latter policies are understood and embraced. It is not a choice of either race or conservatism, or whether it is more race or more conservatism, but the ways in which the contours of racial attitudes inform the shape of policy attitudes. Opposition to the welfare state had much to do with absurd images of African American "Welfare Queens" and their racial resonances, as they did with the intellectual merits of such programs or ideologies. Indeed, hard to see the Southern Strategy and the Reagan Revolution as anything less than the cynical knot of racist discourses, ideological conservatism and crass political instrumentalism. Its all of a piece.

Posted by Simplicissimus | August 24, 2007 12:37 PM

Did the GOP become the party that it is today because of the massive influx of white southerners, or did white southerners flood to the GOP because it became the party that it is today?

Little from Column A, little from Column B. The economically conservative GOP took a white-southerner-friendly turn in the mid 60s, and firmly established that position throughout the 70s. The result was really a party that married the Dixiecrat ideals (minus the economic populism) with traditional Republican economic policies. So, to answer the question at hand:

Low taxes: An artifact of the old Republican party. It has nothing to do with the Dixiecrat influx that made the GOP ascendant.

Moral values: Near and dear to the hearts of the Dixiecrats. The increasing GOP emphasis on this really did contribute to (and probably is the biggest cause of) the Dixiecrats coming over.

National security: A wash. The GOP had taken a hawkish position out of necessity in the aftermath of WWII -- the only way to compete with the party that oversaw victory in WWII is to move to the right of it. Due to bases, relative opportunity, etc., the Dixiecrats had always been very pro-defense. The fact that the GOP was too didn't necessarily attract them (that was the racism, er, "moral values"), but it didn't hurt either.

Posted by Joe | August 24, 2007 12:41 PM

"That said, Buckley HATED George Wallace, because Wallace offered up the kind of populist, statist economics that Buckley associated with communism."

Bingo. The Southern re-alignment was all about the '68 Wallace voters moving from D to R between 1964 and 1980.

Those voters are willing to align with the national Republican Party despite the GOP's economic stances, not because of them.

Posted by Petey | August 24, 2007 12:42 PM

Wasn't there recently a report which said prior to the 60's, support for welfare programs was about the same for whites and blacks, but afterwards, white support dropped drastically

It's an international phenomenon.

There are a fair number of studies (here's one) that tend to show that support for social provision in general, transfer payments in particular, and the taxes that pay for them, are inversely proportional to the ethnic and/or racial diversity of a country.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | August 24, 2007 12:43 PM

Ken Mehlman didn't apologize to the NAACP for the Nixon "Southern Strategy" for nothing. Appealing to racists in order to win over the South was a very deliberate move by the GOP. It would simply be silly to deny that at this point.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 24, 2007 12:45 PM

It's a complicated picture, one that lefties like Krugman are always eager to reduce to "white racism" in order to delegitimize the GOP.

White racism is what maintained the DEMOCRATIC Solid South for decades, especially in Congress. Northern liberals weren't too reticent to go along with it. The "northern Democrat (liberal) + Southern Democrat (conservative)" structure began to collapse when the establishment northern liberals, prodded by the civil rights movement, could no longer ignore the brutality and injustice of Jim Crow. But the end of Jim Crow was accompanied by the near-simultaneous end of those same northern liberals. The FDR / Truman / JFK Democrats were in large part replaced by the New Left, which was perceived (fairly or not) as trying to bring about a remake of American society far more radical than just ending segregation. It's absolutely true that the GOP wink-wink-nod-nod to white southern Democrats on the race issue was part of the post-Goldwater GOP message, but those voters were drawn to the GOP for a lot more reasons than that.

Posted by Claudius | August 24, 2007 12:51 PM

Yeah, but GOPers are starting to stray from their old principles that attracted southerners. There could be a rise of the southern populist (i.e: Democrat)occurring again.

http://political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | August 24, 2007 12:53 PM

Matt,

While I think you are by and large historically correct about southern white voters, your characterization of FDR and the south is only partially true.

Initially, during his first term, Roosevelt beholden to white southerners and beset by the economy of the great depression did little. However, after the 1936 election, numerous factor--including newly urbanized blacks switching parties in 1936, black inclusion in organized labor, retreats from the pseudoscience of scientific racism (IQ and race) as well as the influnce of progressives like Harold Ickes and Eleanor Roosevelt--resulted in black inclusion in the FDR's politics. This inclusion translated into monies for infrastructural improvements and building of black hospitals and schools, along with employment in many federal new deal programs.

AS such, many commenters see these institutional gains leveraged under Roosevelt as providing the foundation of the nascent civil rights movement.

Posted by Jeff P | August 24, 2007 12:55 PM

I don't remember where I read it, but I recall some commentator on another site offering this:

"Try to explain southern voting patterns without referring to race."

The takeaway was of course that it's virtually impossible. Southern whites & blacks have fairly similar worldviews but (I think - I don't know how wealthy southern blacks vote as a class) are diametrically opposed in their voting patterns. This is of course true in other parts of the country as well but I believe it's really stark in the south.

Posted by Rob | August 24, 2007 12:55 PM

I agree with most of those who think Matt's a little off on this one. When I think of the old south, I do think of populism and racism coexisting. For every Strom type, I also see a Huey Long.
The white south started its exit of the Democratic Party back in the late '40s when we'd have been better had Strom been elected (sarcasm) and indeed it took over 40 years to complete. And it certainly wasn't over taxes.

Or did Reagan go to Philadelphia Mississipi to deliver his first major speech of the 1980 campaign because it had a worldwide reputation for low taxes?

Posted by howie | August 24, 2007 12:55 PM

Hm. Not quite...

First, Southern Dems of the 1930s overwhelmingly supported the New Deal, with the exception of the Wagner Act. They swung right on economic issues only after the Depression was over and the CIO began moving south in 1946 to organize Southern industry.

Second, Northern Democratic support for segregation waned before Truman took office. With the war coming, FDR banned segregation in defense contracting in June 1941 to secure support of new black Democrats in cities like Chicago and Detroit.

Posted by AWC | August 24, 2007 12:57 PM

Matt has a point here. EIsenhower won a few southern states in 1952 and more in 1956 by going down there and actively telling people what they wanted to hear about taxes, morality, and national security. He didn't openly appeal to racist sentiments. HOWEVER, he did use code words that suggested to people that he would not disrupt long-held racial practcies. In appealing to "states' rights" and the "Jeffersonian tradition," he let people know that he did not intend to mess with their way of life.

When Goldwater campaigned against the CR Act of 1964, things were more apparent, as they were when Reagan launched his campaign from Philadelphia, MIssissippi. They both talked "states' rights" and "federalism," but they know that these terms have a double-edge in the South.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 12:24 PM
*************************************************

Eisenhower didn't intend to mess with their way of life? Must be why he sent Federal troops and marshalls to integrate schools in Little Rock in 1957. Jeez!

Posted by Campesino | August 24, 2007 1:04 PM

I think the real question is not "why did the South vote Republican", but "Why did the Democrats leapfrog the GOP to the left?"

FDR's New Deal Coalition had support from Labor and Southern Democrats. The GOP opposition had support in Business and with the Northeastern Establishment. So why did the JFK-LBJ Democratic Party abandon the fortress it had in the South?

One obvious answer was that it was forced to, on the national level, because of the Civil Rights Movement. Whoever was in charge of the Executive Branch in the 1960s was going to alienate the South, simply because the rest of the country - an electoral majority! - was becoming more strongly against segregation.

Had Nixon WON in 1960, the GOP would have faced implementing de-segregation, and would have faced the undying wrath of the South for imposing a "Second Reconstruction". Southern Democrats in Congress could have been far more vocal in opposition to Republican efforts to pass civil rights laws, since the initiative and responsibility would be coming from the other side of the aisle. Republicans would have been foreclosed from pursuing a "Southern Strategy". Without the burdens of presidential leadership, the national Democratic Party might have avoided making concrete policy statements against segregation, instead allowing non-Southern Democrats more latitude to 'independently follow their constituents demands' - and thus not alienating Southern Democrats.

The country might or might not be very different, because the underlying economic and social trends were not dependent on party politics. Exception: would Nixon have escalated Vietnam? Would he have been so paranoid as to cause Watergate anyway, or would victory in 1960 have avoided it? However, American politics would be VERY different.

Posted by EthanS | August 24, 2007 1:06 PM

The easier explanation, it seems to me, is that there has long been a Northern Party and Southern Party (alternatively, and Urban Party and an Agrarian Party), and that the New Deal complicated that. Now we're moving back to the old ways. Race is probably one of the set of issues, but it's so confounded with other issues now (notably, I'd guess, "morality") that it's hard to assign a weight to it.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 24, 2007 1:07 PM

I am a rich northeastern liberal. I benefit from tax cuts.

Most people in the south do not earn enough to benefit significantly from the Bush tax cuts.

The resulting deficit does not convince me to work harder. I am no more productive with a tax rate of 33% than I would be with a tax rate of 40%. I do have more money to waste on $90 dinners in New York but I don't think that makes me more productive.

So, most people from the south don't benefit much from the tax cuts. Actually, most people in the country don't benefit significantly from the tax cuts.

I wish I could figure out a way to explain to most people in the south and the mid-west that they would be better off under a democrat than under a republican administration.

Posted by neil wilson | August 24, 2007 1:11 PM

matt's view on krugman's column is somewhat confusing.
it is difficult to determine if he isarguing that krugman gives too much emphasis to the role racist pandering played - plays - in republican success in the south.
the post appears to be internally inconsistent.
yes, matt says, it played a role, but not that big a role.
but he cites a history - the move away from democrats by southern whites- that coincides with the dramatically different approach by each party, respectively, to the issue of civil rights.
before the switch in the '60's neither party had done much of anything to confront or deal with the issues of race confronting the country. until about '62, when kennedy brought the hammer down on ole miss, neither party had really signaled a definite approach. once that step was taken - the violent confrontations and kennedy's subsequent speech - well, the rest has been history. as has been the dems' prospects in the south.
nixon, reagan and bush 1 and 2 basically followed the same script. benign neglect - to borrow from tricky dick - with a timely dose of racist dog-whistle politics.
was is just a coincidence that reagan kicks off his campaign in some podunk mississippi town which is famous only for a racist murder? did bush 1 run that willie horton ad to appeal to bay staters? was bush 2's bob jones visit designed to emphasize higher education?
of course not. those were a few of the more obvious symbolic statements that sent a larger message - and a not so subtle on - to southern whites: yes, though i may not have come from you, i am one of you.
and all the stuff about values and national security and taxes just provided the necessary veneer.
no one, not even a racist, wants to be recognized in public as a racist. even david duke denies that he is a racist in front of a camera.
basing one's support on something like values is a much more palatable move for most voters.

Posted by frankie d | August 24, 2007 1:11 PM

I think Krugman's point is that the Republican Party was able to drift conservative even without the nation as a whole drifting more conservative, simply because of the South's shift.

That doesn't seem incompatible with MY's point at all.

Posted by Mr. Noah | August 24, 2007 1:28 PM

There's no doubt that racism played a part in the Republican successes in recent years, but it's been a two-edged coin. Republicans have come to dominate the South (though not to the extent that the Democrats did back in the day), but they've become noncompetitive in their old stomping ground, the Northeast, and let's not forget that from Ike until Bush 41, California's voting record nationally was identical to Idaho's and they only elected two Democrats as governors. Reagan won 49 states in 1984, after all. It's impossible to imagine such an outcome at this point.

As a result of their political style, unrepentant focus on helping those poor, unfortunate souls who make six figures (Bush's risk-takers), and a divisive political culture that is completely focused on winning (or, more accurately, beating those awful liberals), the GOP has managed to exercise the famous tribal prejudices of the South. It has even managed to get smatterings of support all over the country with those appeals by taking advantage of the fear and free-floating anger prevalent in society (greater than in previous generations thanks to the advances of the information age). This is why Howard Dean's 50 state strategy is so smart: why not try to target Wyoming, for example? Culturally it's nothing like Alabama--conservative, but the state went weak in the knees for Dave Freudenthal. The state sent Alan Simpson to the Senate a decade ago--just how right wing can it be?

Posted by Lev | August 24, 2007 1:34 PM

does Matt think it purely coincidental that Reagan began his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss.? Or that Willie Horton was black? Or that people did not know exactly what Nixon meant by "law and order?" Or that there is not currently one black republican in the Senate or House? Racism, aka the "Southern strategy," has formed the rotten core of the republican party for years and years.

Posted by markg | August 24, 2007 1:38 PM

Matt, you're being a bit naive. White southerners are against those things precisely because they are racist.

Posted by Chris | August 24, 2007 1:39 PM

Wow. You must be kidding.

You know nothing about this do you?

Posted by Armando | August 24, 2007 1:44 PM

The south is very pro military. The south has a long tradition of serving their country. What happened was the repugs took american patriotism away from the democrats and made it their own due to the anti protest of the Viet Nam war era. A lot of veterans from the south felt abandoned and the repugs played on this and made it look like this was the fault of democrats. The other reason the south went to the repugs is because the south is very religious and the abortion issue came to play a very important role in politics. The dems came out on the wrong side for many southernors who are not only super patriotic but are very religious too. Add in affirmative action rights issues and you have a perfect storm for repugs claiming the south.

Posted by Rssrai | August 24, 2007 1:50 PM

The south has a long tradition of serving their country.

Except for, you know, when they're committing treason and fighting federal troops.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 24, 2007 1:55 PM

Matt, I think you are just wrong here. The beginning of the end of Democratic dominance in the South came when Hubert Humphrey gave his speech to the 1948 convention, which included:

The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,

Thurmond bolted the party and won four deep south states in 1948. From that point on the votes began to flow to the Republicans and third parties. The Republicans won some southern states in 52 and 56, and then many elected Democrats began to switch to the Republican party, starting with Thurmond who endorsed Goldwater. Wallace's party won the deep south in 1968. And it was all Nixon in 1972.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 24, 2007 2:01 PM

"does Matt think it purely coincidental that Reagan began his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss.? Or that Willie Horton was black? Or that people did not know exactly what Nixon meant by "law and order?" Or that there is not currently one black republican in the Senate or House?"

I would add this fresh piece of race-baiting: remember that Republican aid with the naked white woman asking Harold Ford to "call him"? How blatant was that? And it was in 2006. Ah, progress.

Posted by Unreal Veal | August 24, 2007 2:01 PM

"Without the burdens of presidential leadership, the national Democratic Party might have avoided making concrete policy statements against segregation, instead allowing non-Southern Democrats more latitude to 'independently follow their constituents demands' - and thus not alienating Southern Democrats."

Don't think so. First, because so many northern Democrats represented urban districts, they were going to have to come out against segregation as a national party soon. In your scenario, the Southern Democrats would organize to oppose Nixon's desegregation and civil rights efforts. Bull Connor, etc happen in the civil rights marches (this is almost certainly inevitable - it had already begun by 1960). Northern people suitably continue to be appalled. Southern Democrats demand that the national party back them up (remember, for example, that Bull Connor himself was a very prominent Alabama politician and made a very serious run for governor), the northern Democrats can't do it because of their constituents.

So, either the Democratic national party starts supporting civil rights or it falls apart.

Posted by burritoboy | August 24, 2007 2:02 PM

Ronal Reagan. Shoba County. 1980.

Learn some history.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 24, 2007 2:03 PM

Read Faulkner: White Southerners are all Faulked in the Head. It's the inbreedin'!

That's all I got from The Sound & the Fury... don't think I was drunk enough.

Posted by Gregorio | August 24, 2007 2:06 PM

The more I think about it, the weirder this post of MY's is. I'm not sure what he could be arguing. As others have pointed out, it appears to be internally inconsistent in places. Perhaps that's an artifact of misinterpretation.

Maybe it's a long-form koan.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 24, 2007 2:08 PM

Somewhere, a Harvard American History professor is weeping.

Posted by norbizness | August 24, 2007 2:15 PM

To add to Dan Kervick's fine comment, the relationship between Northern and Southern Democrats had been declining since the early Twenties - particularly over the issue of the Ku Klux Klan. The Democratic party in the north, which had it's base in ethnic urban Americans (heavily Catholic, Jewish or immigrant), was none too charmed by the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s South (it was also strong in many other places, but those places rarely voted for the Democrats anyway).

The Southern delegation to the 1924 Democratic National Convention was at least half Klan. The big battles in the convention were the nomination of Al Smith (a Catholic) and a proposed plank against the Klan. Not only did the Southern delegates, as a bloc, refuse to nominate Smith and opposed the plank, many of them participated in a giant cross burning directly opposite the convention hall and where effigies of Al Smith were lynched.

Posted by burritoboy | August 24, 2007 2:16 PM

Arrogant, better than thou (they're racist, I'm not), analysis is not going to help anyone's understanding of anyone else. I suggest that if anyone really wants to get anywhere with this, its time to reboot. Return to home. Then start with this; they are people just like me. Some of them have brains just like me.

Or maybe you just want to jerk each other off with how much better you are. If so don't let me stop you. Have fun.

Posted by JustMe | August 24, 2007 2:48 PM

Why doesn't the Northeast vote Republican anymore? Between the 1932 and 1980, the country evolved from having regional parties to having ideological ones. Race probably played the biggest role in upending the Southern party system, but disarmament and Vietnam also pulled the Republicans to the right and Democrats to the left, which positions ossified when abortion and womens' issues came to the fore, which in a way are substitutes for race, I think.

Posted by David B. | August 24, 2007 3:02 PM

Ronal Reagan. Shoba County. 1980. Learn some history. Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 24, 2007 2:03 PM

That's Neshoba County, on August 3rd, 1980.

On that page you will find a recording of Reagan's speech there, but be warned, (1) it's over 57MB if you have a slow connection, and (2) it's recorded from the crowd so his volume is not the greatest.

Make up your own mind as to whether or not Reagan was talking about "states rights" to a white crowd in Mississippi by some sort of accident. (NB: Reagan actually begins speaking about 19 minutes in.)

http://www.neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=297&ArticleID=13920&TM=30041

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 3:09 PM

Then start with this; they are people just like me.

Prove it. You lot didn't do a hell of lot of "understanding someone else" over the last six plus years. So, you know, you go first.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 24, 2007 3:15 PM

understanding someone else first involves a candid assessment of everyone's respective positions.
one of this country's biggest problems is the refusal of those in public life - politicians, media figures, pundits, columnists, corporate figures - to ever talk candidly about racism and its impact in this country.
an example: the ridiculous refusal of any national politician to simply offer an official apology for slavery in this country. the fact that a president cannot politically say something as simple as: we, collectively, apologize for that horrific crime that was institutionalized for decades and that benefited our country immeasurably...
the fact that such a move would function as a political suicide note says all one needs to know about this country's inability to confront its own history. and its inability to truly move towards understanding.
fact: this country was built on a racist foundation that profitted enormously from first slave labor and then legalized apartheid. but no american leader has ever stated these irrefutable facts. as a nation we need to acknowledge those facts, discuss them, deal with them and then move on. refusing to do so has led to the kind of paralysis we see today.
even ken mehlmen understood this to a certain degree, hence, his apology for the gop's southern strategy. but that kind of statement, for it to be truly meaningful and effective, has to be far broader and it must also come from someone other than a political operative. say...a president?
if, we are truly committed to healing and understanding, an acknowledgement of realities would be a good place to start.

Posted by frankie d | August 24, 2007 3:22 PM

"Gee, why did Regan win? He didn't seem that racist, huh?"

Matt you're taking a very justified beating on this. Obviously "values" are and have always been just a silly code word for the landed white male supremacy system.

Posted by HeavyJ | August 24, 2007 3:31 PM

It's clear that there's a left-leaning economic thread that weaves through the history of the American South, going back at least to the Southern progressive movement, which married it to a pretty nasty racism, for what its worth.

But while the New Deal was popular throughout much of the South, my understanding is that it was the defection of Southern Democrats and their teaming up with conservative Republicans to form "the conservative coalition" that ground the New Deal to an almost absolute halt beginning in 1937, at the outset of FDR's second term. Since Roosevelt wasn't pushing civil rights, I take it that this was pretty clearly based in a rejection of deficit spending, public works projects, and other "socialist" aspects of the national Democratic program. In fact, the self-contradictory Reaganite combination of economic conservatism and pro-military spendthriftery was already part of the ideology of such mid-century Southern stalwarts as Georgia Senator Dick Russell, along with a stiff dose of white supremacy, pretty much by the time World War II ended -- though no one ever thought to take it to such ludicrous extremes until Reagan.

I wouldn't put things the way Matt does here (rarely would), but I think there's more than a little to what he's saying. At the same time, his critics are right, too, in noting the South's occasional penchant for populism, of which Huey Long, Theodore Bilbo, and young Lyndon Johnson were electoral beneficiaries.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | August 24, 2007 3:50 PM

Matt, you misunderestimate the role race has played in the South.

Both before and after the Civil War (aka "The War of Northern Agression") Southern elites maintained wealth and political power by using race to drive a wedge between blacks and poor Southerners, who had more in common with each other than the poor whites did with the elites.

Especially after the Civil War, poor whites and blacks were economically close to each other, with poor whites only marginally better off. The white elites were successful in focusing the poor white's anger for their economic status at the blacks, when the truth was that it was the elites that were responsible.

When Lyndon Johnson got the Northern Democrats and Republicans in Congress(there were virtually no Southern Republicans in 1964) to enact the Voting Rights Act and the Great Society programs, the Southern Democrats began leaving the Demcratic Party and the GOP welcomed them with open arms.

Meanwhile, Northern Republicans became fewer in number and the Democrats picked up those voters, so that now, some three decades later, the parties have switched places on the map.

You're also making a false assumption that Southerner's views on taxes and national security belong in the GOP. The GOP is the chickenhawk party, and the main GOP argument against taxes is that it is "income redistribution," implying that it takes money from the whites and gives it to the blacks.

Posted by myiq2xu | August 24, 2007 3:55 PM

Sorry, bubba. Krugman is right; you're wrong.

norbizness had the best comment.

Posted by DuBaun | August 24, 2007 4:00 PM

Democratic politicians like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt loyally upheld white supremacy.

Others have dealt with FDR's history of compromises and shifts on race, but Wilson upheld white supremacy because he believed in it. He probably would have considered Thurmond in '48 a little soft on the subject.

Posted by just sayin' | August 24, 2007 4:03 PM

Re: My understanding is more in agreement with that of Joe S: "Southerners can get quite redistributionist, if you stroke them the right way."

Maybe but that doesn't mean they like gays, foreign potentates, or folks that want to grab their guns.

Re: I mean many are still fighting the War Between the States/Civil War/War of Northern Agression.

For sure you can find those folks, but let's also remmeber that a heck of a lot of Southerners have moved north ("-tucky" is an often encountered slang suffix for towns in SE Michigan where southern accents are fairly common, or were when I grew up) and a lot of Northerners have moved south. Throw in people who have immigrated to the South from abroad since Appomattox, and you'll find that Old Dixie is more a creature of the nostalgic imagination than a going concern.

Re: A lot of white southerners continue to be poor, or near-poor, and there's plenty of evidence that they continue to endorse the concept of government programs to help people, just as they did during the New Deal

Indeed, I've seen polls suggesting that Evangelicals (Southern or not) support universal healthcare almost as strongly as urban liberals do.

Posted by JonF | August 24, 2007 4:08 PM

Here's a summary of Reagan's speech at the Neshoba County Fair, 1980.

On Carter's foreign policy:
"Today our friends don't know whether they can trust us, and certainly our enemies have no respect for us."
- He then advocated more pay for military members.

Jokes about how much he loved the Neshoba County Fair but how did they do it without a federal program? (Haw haw haw.) People can solve their problems, don't be afraid, they've created a vast government bureaucracy. When you create them their primary interest is to preserve themselves.

Interestingly enough, he says from his California experience, people don't take welfare because they don't want to work, but because the bureaucracy has trapped them as a "clientele", and keep them on welfare to keep their bureaucratic jobs.

Programs like that and also education should be turned back to the local governments.

"I believe in states' rights, I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves... and I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federalist [?mass?]... And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I [commit] to try to reorder those priorities and to restore to states and local communities those functions which properly belong there."

On industrial policy:
"I'm going to try to change federal regulations and the tax structure that has made this once great powerful industrial giant and this lamp of the world now, with a lower rate of productivity than any of the other industrial nations, with a lower rate of savings and investment on the part of our people, and put us back where we belong."

{How'd that turn out? Did Reagan save our lagging industry?}

Then there was a thrilling analogy about some Irvine athletes competing at home against the posted results & times of the boycotted Moscow Olympics. They won. Reagan told him they had made a noble sacrifice, and they cheered him, and then the Neshoba crowd cheered Reagan.

He makes another joke about old times. Then thanks them.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 4:20 PM

"a lot of Northerners have moved south. Throw in people who have immigrated to the South from abroad since Appomattox, and you'll find that Old Dixie is more a creature of the nostalgic imagination than a going concern."

The problem with that depiction is that:

a. The Northeners are entering a long-settled and already structured political environment.
b. The problem of self-selection. Northeners who are moving south obviously are those willing to live in the South.
c. Nostalgic imagination is important, particularly to the losers of a civil war. And that nostalgic imagination structures many aspects of life.
d. The remnants of Old Dixie's policy choices are still very much in evidence.
e. Southern states' politics are unusually dominated by persons from families with long and prominent political histories in their states.

Posted by burritoboy | August 24, 2007 5:14 PM

Krugman's analysis of the racial issue is OK.

But the point that Matt is missing is that Republican economic policy is not what it use to be.

Remember, prior to 1980 the Republicans were the fiscally responsible party. The southern shift to the republican party was originally based on racism. But the shift was accompanied by a major change in the republican party's economic policies. In the 1930-50 era the poor southern whites did not make enough money to pay taxes. So that got the benefits of the democratic income transfer policies without any of the cost. But by 1980 the poor southerns had become wealthy enough, particularly in the urban centers that they became tax payers. So they started to see that their taxes were going to support poor blacks and did not like this. This coincided with the republican shift to free lunch economics that allowed the two strands of racism and anti-government, anti-tax paying to come together and swing the now middle class southern whites to the republican party.

Posted by spencer | August 24, 2007 5:22 PM

Some of the failures of Southern-based Republicanism has to do with a continued evolution of Southern demographics.

It should be understood that the South is also the home of a majority of the nation's African Americans, and in the last few decades the Great Migration of African Americans fleeing the segregated South of the 1910s and 1920s has in fact reversed itself, with the South being a destination for African Americans to move back to.

Without the South's African Americans in both rural and urban districts, the Democrats would likely not hold a Congressional majority.

African American Southerners are Southerners too, and they vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Hence all the Republican games to rig districts which isolate them.

In addition, the South is home to the largest growing population of Latinos, whose predecessors often came to the South following building booms after entering via various border states.

In many parts of the South, progressive Democrats could build winning coalitions of liberal whites, African Americans, and Latinos -- a key electoral ingredient which was missing before.

In addition, at some point even some Southern Republican politicians will start noticing that if Democrats are dominating national politics and that in the Northeast, Midwest, West, etc., and only more the moderate and liberal Republicans will be able to compete with those non-Southern Democrats, how are screaming Southern right wingers supposed to get on all the pork-controlling committees they want?

If the Democrats take advantage of their potential strong majorities outside the South, then eventually that should also change the nature of Southern conservative / liberal battles.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 5:31 PM

It is amusing that anyone can invoke the lizard brain Republican response about Iraq, see the right's response to the immigration problem, see the hysteria of the right about the jihad, and then try to provide some sort of leveled reason for the southern flood to the Republican Party.

It is gut reaction racism. It has no rational basis.

Posted by Mudge | August 24, 2007 6:43 PM

White southerners are against those things precisely because they are racist.

ding ding ding, we have a winner.

It's cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face conservatism. There are people in the south who, frankly, don't mind living in relative poverty.as long as they believe it's keeping money out of the pockets of 'those people'.

Go and spend a month in South Carolina before the primary, Matt. You'll get to see dog whistle politics and then some, even as the Democrats court the state's black voters. For fuck's sake, you have Limbaugh telling one of his dim-bulb callers that the Democrats support action on Darfur to shore up the black vote.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 24, 2007 6:50 PM

While liberal Jews and the oldline Northern WASP elite can expend endless volumes of ink about the mental and moral deficencies of white Southerners who vote Republican - of course they believe it is completely verboten to write about the moral and intellectual deficiencies of blacks, Jews who vote Democratic by 80-95% margins, or anti-military/anti-American whites who find a welcome home in the Democratic Party.

After all, smearing loyal Democrat groups is wrong because Democrats are enlightened and progressive, while anyone that votes Republican must have a base motive.

So goes the reasoning of Krugman and all of his Elite ilk employed the NYTimes, LATimes, the Big 3 TV stations and the whole class of parasitic intelligensia given lifetime sinecures on campus and at PBS.

It comes from a Democrat obsession to define people by race, gender, and class with people neatly sorted out into the proper "Victim" and "Oppressor" class categories. With Party-line deviants from approved victim groups pilloried if they deviate from correct thought, like black "Uncle Tom" Republicans, or religious Jews that question why ruthless billionaire Jewish donor businessmen and slumlords sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom while they don't get a shot at a 2nd Assistant to a Deputy of a Dem Senator to complain about Hollywood purience.

While the Republicans, unfortunately, have found it easy to go against the poor and middle class to pander to their own billionaires and culturally bootlick to "back to the past" theocrats.

But White Southerners and Reagan Democrats real reasons why they went Republican and are sticking despite Republicans working against their working class and middleclass financial interests have a lot more to do with the sneering contempt Jewish and Gentile Elites in the Democratic upper crust have for them than racism.

American politics moves in cycles. Right now the Republicans have blown it on corruption, incompetence, immigration, inept arrogance causing failure to communicate well, and orchestrating all wealth gains to go to the Richest 1%.

Then we will have Democrats, perverted by their activists and professional victim classes, make America weaker while lecturing the other 80% of America on how stupid, racist, insensitive, and ungenerous with their tax payments they are. Until the country gets sick of smug Democrat elites trying to both preach and using their lawyer elites to again bypass democracy and shove their agenda down everyone's throats through Court Decrees.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 24, 2007 9:21 PM

Re: a. The Northeners are entering a long-settled and already structured political environment.

Which however they are changing. See last fall's election-- or for that matter, the state of Florida, period, which has been so transformed by migration from the north, and from the Carribean, that from Tampa and Orlando south the state is anything but culturally southern.

Re: b. The problem of self-selection. Northeners who are moving south obviously are those willing to live in the South.

Northerners who migrate south do so for many reasons. I doubt nostalgia for the Gone With The Wind world is a big one. Probvabky the biggest reason today is jobs.

Re: c. Nostalgic imagination is important, particularly to the losers of a civil war. And that nostalgic imagination structures many aspects of life.

The losers of the Civil war are all dead. I think the last one shuffled off this mortal coil in 1958.

Re: d. The remnants of Old Dixie's policy choices are still very much in evidence.

Remnants yes. But the plantocracy itself has gone the way of hoop skirts.

Re: e. Southern states' politics are unusually dominated by persons from families with long and prominent political histories in their states.

This tends to be true throughout most of the Eastern US (the region settled the longest). Names like "Taft", "Rockefeller" and "Romney" come to mind here.

Posted by JonF | August 24, 2007 9:46 PM

While liberal Jews and the oldline Northern WASP elite can expend endless volumes of ink about the mental and moral deficencies of white Southerners who vote Republican - of course they believe it is completely verboten to write about the moral and intellectual deficiencies of blacks, Jews who vote Democratic by 80-95% margins, or anti-military/anti-American whites who find a welcome home in the Democratic Party. - Chris Ford

I'm a white Southerner, you moronic jackass, and I'm tired of having to put up with dumbass reprobates like you holding back every bit of development in MY home region because of your fetishistic devotion to reactionary infantilism.

You're just mad because your bastion of Southern right wing dumbassism is receding, even in the South, and you sense the vulnerability.

Even your white neighbors increasingly piss you off and frighten you because they don't give in to your pathetic Confederate devotion.

So you can take your fake, weak, scared little claim to be talkin' for all us white, Southern, Protestant, well-water drinkin' male types and shove it as far up your ass as your brain is.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 10:12 PM

There's been a slew of recent books critiquing the classical narrative of the GOP rise in the South, which claimed that race alone explained the shift. A big part of the critique centers on the growth of the Sun Belt and the increasing political power of suburban Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Birmingham, Charlotte and Nashville. These are the places that drove the switch to the GOP, not the rural whites in the backwoods. And these suburban whites felt the economic message of the modern GOP catered perfectly well to them.

Rural whites migrated to the GOP in national elections but remained - and in many cases still remain - loyal to the Democratic Party in local elections. Remember that the Democratic Party still controls both state houses in MS, AL, LA and AR. It control the House in TN (with a tie in the Senate), NC, KY and OK. And at the local level, there simply is no Republican Party to speak of in many of these rural white counties.

The big question, then, is why do suburban whites in the Sun Belt still vote solidly Republican when suburban whites in the Northeast and Midwest have abandoned the GOP? My guess is that it has to do with religion. Suburban whites in the Northeast and Midwest are socially liberal-to-moderate, especially women. In Brentwood, TN, Hoover, AL, Woodlands, TX and Marietta, GA, the white population is much more religious and socially conservative. These suburban Sunbelt conservatives control their respective state GOPs - especially in states where the GOP has taken control - and they keep economic policy on the conservative side.

So, in national elections, race plays a major role - if not dominant role - in political orientation. In 2004, 85% of white Mississippians voted for Bush. 90% of black Mississippians voted for Kerry. Most of those white Mississippians were rural voters and not Sunbelt Jackson or Memphis suburbanites. The pattern held, though less starkly, elsewhere across the South.

But at the local level the Democratic Party is still either dominant or competitive everywhere except Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. Virginia, another state that moved strongly to the GOP in the early 1990s is starting to swing back strongly to the Democrats now that Northern Virginia (a northeastern suburban area more than a Sunbelt one) is becoming dominant.

Posted by Elrod | August 24, 2007 10:19 PM

So you can take your fake, weak, scared little claim to be talkin' for all us white, Southern, Protestant, well-water drinkin' male types and shove it as far up your ass as your brain is. Posted by El Cid

Sounds like I tweaked a self-loathing white Southerner away from the enjoyment of getting the big, black Johnsons his guilty butt begs for, to spout off his hissy fit.

Carry on, El Cid. Make sure you have plenty of that "Boy-Butter lube" handy.

Nothing quite as loathsome in any culture as someone who hates his own kind. Or their religion, their culture. Who takes a cue from the NY Times that he lives in a wasteland called "Flyover Country" and he should be ashamed that the Elites are ashamed of him and his brethern and folks like El Cid need to bow and scrape hard to get the Elite's acceptance and a treasured head pat...

Posted by Chris Ford | August 24, 2007 10:51 PM

Matt,

It's nuts to say that racist Southern whites bought the conservative program.

Never forget Lyndon Johnson's famous riff on Senator Stennis of Mississippi:

"Wha' when the Mississippi floods ol' John gonna be right here in mah office, an' he'll be telling me it's all tha Communists ah behind it, an' we need govermint help to shore up the banks of tha maghty rivah."

Thomas Watson, the Southern Populist of the early part of the last century was a racist asshole on the Trent Lott model, but he was also an economic leftist, and a model for the later Southern Bourbons who supported the New Deal.

Again, there's that famous short speech Senator Fulbright once made, to applause, at the Arkansas State Fair. "Ah may be a Communist. But Ah'm Yoah Communist."

Posted by David Lloyd-Jones | August 24, 2007 11:00 PM

Sounds like I tweaked a self-loathing white Southerner away from the enjoyment of getting the big, black Johnsons his guilty butt begs for, to spout off his hissy fit.
Carry on, El Cid. Make sure you have plenty of that "Boy-Butter lube" handy.

Oh, goodness, we got another one of these chest-puffing super hetero Republican types who's soon to be arrested in the public restroom begging to suck some big black cop's d*ck.

Just do us a favor and finally go suck that big hard one you eternally fantasize about, instead of yellin' publicly about how Christian and straight you are while feeling up the boyz at the QuickTrip.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 11:10 PM

Wow, Chris Ford, you have a whole bundle of social pathologies on display here. What are your feelings on the Klan, or Wallace? Do enlighten us Jewish and Gentile elites.

And David Lloyd Jones is exactly right about Tom Watson: the original model of the 20th C. southern politician.

However, he started out as something of a liberal on race (for the 1880s, at least) and moved further and further to the right until he was a bigoted reactionary. I forget exactly what caused the shift, but it is in Hofstadter's book on the Populists, Progressives and New Dealers.

Posted by Ben Cronin | August 24, 2007 11:45 PM

Just one thing to add, a Southern saying which may have been buried by Richard Viguerie and the Republican machine, but was basic for three generations, say 1880 through 1965:

"Ain't but three things wrong with the South: Northern banks, northern railroads, an' northern AINsurance comp'nies."

.
.
.

Posted by David Lloyd-Jones | August 25, 2007 1:30 AM

Re: My guess is that it has to do with religion.

I'm not too sure of that. I think you will find that in, say, New England, religious poeple are much more split in their voting patterns than Southern evangelicals are. This certainly holds true of Catholics, and meanwhile African American church-goers (many of whom are evangelical, even fundamentalist) still trend strongly Democrat. (A Black Republican is most strongly predicted not by his church membership but by the size of his bank account) Religion alone is not the explanation.

Posted by JonF | August 25, 2007 1:56 AM

Yeah, it appears I was right about why "El Cid" seems so alienated and resentful of being in the South....

Posted by Chris Ford | August 25, 2007 2:08 AM

It's amazing how willing some liberals are to cover for Southern racism.

You won't understand race in the south unless you have spent some real time in the RURAL south. Unless you have, you just don't know what you're talking about.

Posted by Soullite | August 25, 2007 9:48 AM

Wilson upheld white supremacy because he believed in it. He probably would have considered Thurmond in '48 a little soft on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_a_nation

Posted by jonathan | August 25, 2007 10:13 AM

Yeah, it appears I was right about why "El Cid" seems so alienated and resentful of being in the South....
Posted by Chris Ford | August 25, 2007 2:08 AM

Don't get me wrong, you repressed weirdo who jacks off to bear porn while dressed in Civil War re-enactments.

I'm resentful of people like you being in the South.

See, I'm a real Southerner. You're as much as Southerner as Giuliani was a woman in all his drag show appearances.

Real Southerners don't cry and hold their pee-pee's while they modernize with the rest of the world.

Drag-queen Confederates like you are always running around, scared that your local Deacon is going to catch you when you're trying to touch another choirboy in his special place.

Posted by El Cid | August 25, 2007 10:32 AM

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3067/1/42/

Posted by jonathan | August 25, 2007 2:13 PM

Matt may have learned some keen philosophy at Harvard but I think they forgot the American history.

Why Did The South Turn Republican?

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