The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics

The GOP Southern Strategy was but one in a series of decisions the GOP has made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call in their book, "The Long Southern Strategy."

In "The Long Southern Strategy," Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields demonstrate that this strategy was not, as political scientists might be tempted to think, just about electoral politics. Instead, to fully understand the contemporary Trumpism) one must look at the interdependence of racism, White Christian Nationalism and patriarchy inherent in the GOP's long southern strategy.

The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. 

Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s Operation Dixie in his 1964 bid for the White House, and continuing through Pres. Richard Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, the Republican Party targeted disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. 

To realign these voters with the GOP, the party capitalized on white racial angst that threatened southern white control. However—and this is critical—that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” 

In the wake of the 1970’s Feminist Movement the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional southern gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, particularly women. And when the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention became increasingly fundamentalist and politically active, the GOP tied its fate to the Christian Right. 

Republicans embodied southern white male dominate culture by emphasizing an "us vs. them" outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, encouraging defensiveness, and championing a politics of retribution. In doing so, the GOP politicized evangelical fundamentalist Christianity as represented by the Southern Baptist Convention, nationalized southern white identity, rebranded itself to the country at large, and fundamentally altered the vision and tone of American politics.

Republicans began to mirror southern white culture by emphasizing an “us vs. them” outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, depicting one’s way of life as under attack, encouraging defensiveness toward social changes, and championing a politics of vengeance. Over time, that made the party southern, not in terms of place, but in its vision, in its demands, in its rhetoric, and in its spirit. In doing so, it nationalized southern white identity, and that has changed American politics.

The Long Southern Strategy was “long” because all three components of the strategy—choosing to exploit white racial angst, fear of feminism, and evangelical (southern) Christian righteousness—were necessary to build a solid red base in the states of the old Confederacy. The stark polarization that resulted from these partisan choices unraveled the New Deal coalition. 

It also redivided white Americans not just along the Mason-Dixon line, but across the imagined fault line of southern identity. Thus, conservatism was redefined on the basis of white southern identity, and that definition became the baseline ideology of the Republican brand nationwide. 

A partisan sorting and realignment followed. As a result, the distribution of white Americans who harbor Racial Resentment or Modern Sexist attitudes or who identify as Christian fundamentalists is no longer even across the parties, and now, within the GOP, there is not enough opposition to fully suppress such prejudice or religiosity.

Understanding Donald Trump and The GOP

We originally published this article in December 2015. It seems the right time to again move this article front and center.

The GOP finds itself trapped in its southern strategy that has not only gone bad, but has left it exposed naked as Trumpism.

Starting in the 1960s, the Republican Party made a conscious effort to win votes in the South by appealing to racists. As Kevin Phillips, a political strategist for Nixon, explained in 1970: "The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

The cynical strategy has, sadly, often paid off. However, by appealing to the lowest common denominator, Republicans have become the party of white identity politics. Donald Trump has taken that to the next level.

Donald Trump's racial rhetoric openly aknowledges the Party coalition Richard Nixon began to put together in 1968 - welcoming the segregationist white Southern Democrats into the former Party of Lincoln - and expanded by Ronald Reagan in 1980 - welcoming socially conservative white evangelicals into the Neo-Republican Party.

From post civil war reconstruction to the 1960's the south was solid Jim Crow Dixicrat Democrat. And then the Civil Rights Movement happened. President Johnson, a Democrat, pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Because of that, Dixicrats began to flee the Democratic Party across the Southern confederate states to the Republican Party. This was the point in time when the Democratic and Republican parties began to assume their current identities as "liberal" and "conservative," respectively — and as we understand those terms today. Today, neither party stands for what it did from the mid-1800's through the mid-1900's, especially but not exclusively on racial issues.

The Democratic coalition included white supremacists (Dixicrats) through the mid-1960’s. By 1968, Republicans, led by Richard Nixon, saw the chance to take that segment of voters away from Democrats through a "Southern Strategy" of appealing to white racism against African Americans. And that, in fact, has been the Republican strategy consistently from the 1960s to Pres. Reagan's, Pres. G.H.W. Bush's, Pres. G.W. Bush's campaigns, and ultimately onto Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

In the 1970s, white evangelical Christians were alarmed by rapid social changes, including legal abortion, LGBT rights, the legal availability of contraceptives for women, and equal employment rights for women. But above all, they were most alarmed by court ordered school desegregation busing, bringing black students into white schools. To the New Christian Right these changes constituted a crisis that threatened the white Christian American social order. In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan forged a partnership with the Christian Right to help him win election. Messaging to the Christian Right has held an equal place hand in hand with southern strategy messaging every since.

The southern strategy of coded bigoted messaging and religious right social issue messaging has worked to give Republicans solid control of local and state governments across the old southern confederate states. It has also worked to give Republicans control of most congressional districts across the old south, and therefore control of the U.S. House.

Republicans have gotten away with codified bigoted messaging because, as a practical matter, there was no political price to pay. Democrats have been reluctant to call out Republicans on their southern strategy, fearful that it might encourage even greater racial backlash. Indeed, the Democratic Party establishment developed their own Southern strategy, of sorts, electing centrists like Bill Clinton of Arkansas to the White House and a cadre of blue dog Democrats to Congress in the 1990's and early 2000's.

But the hope Democrats could woo back the old southern Dixicrats by moderating their liberalism was a fantasy. Conservatives upped the ante by moving the centrist middle further and further to the right with social causes and by ever more loudly encouraging Americans to hate their democratically elected government for catering to people of color, social deviants, immigrants, and everyone not part of the conservative religious right.

The “Medicare Advantage” Plan to Kill Real Medicare

The Hartmann Report, by Thom Hartmann: If the corporate health insurance industry can move more than half of senior Americans off traditional Medicare and onto their corporate for profit "Advantage" plans, it’ll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether — and they’re nearly there now.

In 2003, George W Bush set up the destruction and privatization of Medicare. The end of “real Medicare” is getting closer every day, and Congress and Medicare’s administrators are doing nothing.

Last Friday the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) announced a 14.5% increase in Medicare Part B premiums, raising the monthly payments by the lowest-income Medicare recipients from $148.50 a month to $170.10 a month next year.

If you’re trying to live on the bottom rung of Social Security (about $365/month), that’s consequential. People with Medigap policies are also seeing their policy price rises announced this month.

This price hike, though, raises the larger issue of what's happening to Medicare itself and whether the entire system may be out of business in a few years, in part because our government is being robbed blind by all these so-called “Advantage” plans.

It all began with George W. Bush, who’d spent most of his life openly and proudly campaigning to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

In 2003 Congress and the Bush administration rolled out a privatization option, allowing private for-profit insurance companies to sell policies branded as “Medicare Advantage” to gullible seniors who think they’re buying the actual Medicare Parts A and B. As a result, today companies eager to rip off seniors are flooding the market, particularly with TV advertising.

The simple fact is that Medicare Advantage is hurting traditional Medicare, because that system is paying the insurance companies, in most cases, far more than it would be paying to simply cover the costs of its regular Medicare recipients.

Biden Tells USPS Board Chairman Bloom, You’re Fired

Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate two new members to the United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors to replace Governors Ron Bloom and John Barger when their terms expire in December.

• Daniel Tangherlini, Nominee for Governor, United States Postal Service
• Derek Kan, Nominee for Governor, United States Postal Service

The Washington Post first broke the news early Friday morning that Pres. Joe Biden would not reappoint United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors Chairman Ron A. Bloom to a new seven year term. Bloom’s term as a board member is set to expire December 8, 2021. Biden will instead nominate a new person to take his place on the board.

In the first months of his administration Biden filled three open seats on the U.S. Postal Service’s board of governors. Even with Biden's three appointees — Ron Stroman, a former deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, the CEO of Vote at Home, an organization that promotes voting by mail; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel for the American Postal Workers Union — the majority of the board members, all appointed by Pres. Trump, by a margin of two, support Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's moves to lower USPS service levels and increase costs to mail letters and packages. But that’s all about to change.

Bloom, a conservative Wall Street Democrat, was nominated to the Postal Service Board of Governors by Pres. Trump, confirmed by the Senate and began his service Aug. 20, 2019. Bloom served the remainder of a then vacant seat seven-year term that expired Dec. 8, 2020, and is currently serving a one year holdover term. He was elected on Feb. 9, 2021 by his fellow Trump appointed Governors to serve as the 24th Chairman of the Board of Governors.

Bloom shares responsiblity with Postmaster General DeJoy for reducing mail service levels and hiking mail rates, actions DeJoy began to implement in the summer of 2020, immediately after then Pres. Donald Trump appointed him to the position.

Time for Pres. Biden and Congress to Save the USPS

It’s no secret how much the USPS has been struggling in recent years. With the rise of the Internet and ubiquitous email drastically cutting snail mail volumes and stamp sales revenues, coupled with a disastrous 2006 Congressional mandate forcing the agency to annually contribute huge payments into postal employees’ retirement and health benefits to fully fund it 50 years into the future, the USPS has been running annual operational deficits most of this century. Since 2006, the postal service has been handling less snail mail year after year, and it’s been losing more and more money. In 2019, the USPS handled about a third less mail than in 2006.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy saw these annual deficits and created a 10-plan to alleviate them, though it may not be the plan that will actually alleviate deficits. In fact, DeJoy’s new plan could have several negative effects, such as longer and less reliable mail delivery times, higher mail service rates and a larger workload for existing postal workers.

DeJoy’s plan to cut service levels while raising the cost to use USPS services appears more likely to push the USPS into a death spiral. And while Donald Trump famously feuded with the Postal Service, Republicans have targeted the postal institution for privatization for a long time.

As The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman noted in an August 2020 column, the reason for this is likely that the USPS represents everything Republicans hate, and getting rid of it serves a goal they all tend to share.

USPS Board of Governors Reappoint Ron Bloom Chairman

On November 10, 2021, the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) nine member board of governors, dominated by six of former President Donald Trump’s appointees, reappointed Trump appointee Ron A. Bloom as Board Chairman for another year. The problem is that Bloom’s term as a board member is set to expire December 8, 2021.

Bloom was nominated to the Postal Service Board of Governors by President Donald Trump, confirmed by the Senate and began his service Aug. 20, 2019. Bloom served the remainder of a seven-year term that expired Dec. 8, 2020. When Pres. didn't officially reappoint Bloom for another full term, or appoint someone else for the full term, the USPS Board voted themselves voted to appoint Bloom for a one year holdover term. He was then elected by his fellow Trump appointed Governors, on Feb. 9, 2021, to serve as the 24th Chairman of the Board of Governors.

The Board's action to reappoint Bloom to the Chair position for another year was opposed by Pres. Joe Biden’s three appointees to the board. The six Trump appointee board members refused to allow Biden's three appointees to voice their objections to Bloom’s reappointment as chairman, ruling that their objections were not in order.

The Trump appointees also reappointed current vice chairman, Roman Martinez IV, to an additional one-year term. Martinez, an investment banker who was also appointed by Trump, is serving a seven-year term that will not expire until 2024.

None of the governors discussed the significance of their vote to appoint Bloom to the chair position, however, it clearly signals they intend to reappoint Bloom to another one year holdover term on December 8, if Biden does not appoint someone else to replace Bloom.

Rep. Katie Porter Explains Why Post Master Louis DeJoy Must Go

During a House oversight committee hearing in Chicago, Friday, while questioning a representative of the USPS, Rep. Katie Porter referenced USPS audit statistics to highlight a definite and dramatic decline in on-time mail deliveries from 92% on-time to 61% on-time since the summer of 2020. Porter was leading up to asking the USPS representative about how delivery times have grown significantly slower since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2020.

"I'm a professor, and I used to do a lot of grading," said Porter. "And 92 is considered widely like an A-minus, 80 is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest possible B. 60 percent is at best a D-minus. The Postal Service delivers 48 percent of the world's mail. It is an institution, it is a civic treasure. And we let it get all the way, what you found, is we let it get all the way down to that D-minus level."

As Porter said on Twitter, "On-time mail delivery has plummeted under Postmaster Louis DeJoy—forcing veterans to wait longer for prescriptions, seniors to scramble to pay bills without their Social Security checks, and communities to feel less connected."

The audit found that during the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right around 92 percent — that is 92 percent of the mail got there within the standard of on time,” said Porter in the hearing, holding up a whiteboard displaying the data. “That dropped to 80 percent by the fall of 2020, and by January of 2021 was hovering around 61 percent. I realize this has gone up somewhat since then, but I wanted to ask you, when did Mr. DeJoy take over as postmaster? Do you know?”

“The summer of 2020,” said the witness.

President Donald Trump appointed Dejoy postmaster general for the U.S. Postal Service in May 2020. At the time he held interests of at least $70m in companies that compete w/the Postal Service. Documentation published in October 2021 show that DeJoy had conflicts of interest relating to the company where he served as a chief executive, XPO Logistics, as well as 13 other major companies that have relationships with or compete with the Postal Service.

Rep. Porter is a member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform which has been investigating declining delivery standards at USPS since Mr DeJoy’s appointment.

Watch:

20 State Attorneys General Sue USPS

On October 1, 2021 Postmaster General Louis DeJoy officially implemented his sweeping 10-year USPS restructuring plan that slows mail delivery while making it much more expensive to mail letters and packages. In mid-October twenty state attorneys general filed a complaint over DeJoy’s plan. 

The AG’s suit against the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) argues that the Postal Service didn’t fully vet DeJoy’s 10-year plan. “The Plan will transform virtually every aspect of the Postal Service… rework how the Postal Service transports mail and other products; overhaul its processing and logistics network; enact slower service standards for First-Class Mail and Periodicals and First-Class Packages Services; reconfigure the location of places where customers can obtain postal products and services; and adjust rates,” the attorneys general said in a joint statement.

“Postmaster General DeJoy’s plan to transform the Postal Service will impact mail delivery for everyone in Pennsylvania and across the nation,” said Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro. “This plan is being enacted without any meaningful oversight and review, and the Postal Regulatory Commission, states, experts, and the public deserve to have their voices heard.”

DeJoy’s “radical” plan could “destroy the timely mail service that people depend on for medications, bill payments, and business operations in rural parts of the state,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a separate statement.

The complaint charges that the DeJoy plan “reflects multiple unprecedented changes in the Postal Service’s operations and service, at a time when reliance on the mail remains at historic levels, and states across the country are grappling with a resurgence of COVID-19 cases caused by the Delta variant.” The AGs argue that “[t]o date, the Postal Service has only submitted two requests for an advisory opinion to the Commission on important but narrow changes that represent only a small portion of the Plan’s scope.”

USPS Board of Governors to Meet 11-10-2021

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors will meet Nov. 10, 2021, in open session at Postal Service headquarters, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington, DC. The public is welcome to observe the meeting beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET in the Benjamin Franklin Room on the 11th floor. The Board is expected to discuss the following items:

Long Past Time to Fire Postmaster DeJoy

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) used to be one of the best-run and most popular agencies in the American government. But under the leadership of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, on-time delivery has plummeted, wreaking havoc on both individuals and businesses. 

Now, as of October 1, 2021, he has imposed additional sweeping changes with his 10-year USPS restructuring plan that further slows mail delivery while making it much more expensive to mail letters and packages. This is supposedly meant to address a substantial operating deficit, but it could very easily lead to a death spiral, as the worse service causes customers to flee to private shippers, cutting revenue further. That may even be intentional — as John Nichols argues at The Nation, it all smells like the start of a plan for privatizing the agency entirely.

Dejoy’s 10-year plan has drawn a complaint from 20 states’ attorneys general against the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), which argues that the Postal Service didn’t fully vet DeJoy’s 10-year plan: “The Plan will transform virtually every aspect of the Postal Service … rework how the Postal Service transports mail and other products; overhaul its processing and logistics network; enact slower service standards for First-Class Mail and Periodicals and First-Class Packages Services; reconfigure the location of places where customers can obtain postal products and services; and adjust rates,” the attorneys general said in a joint statement.

Privatizing the USPS would seem to benefit DeJoy's business interests, as well as the investment banking interests of Ron Bloom who currently serves as Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors.

The U.S. Postal Service Was Never a Business. Stop Treating it Like One

When the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General, our nation had not yet been founded. The Bill of Rights would not be drafted for another 16 years. Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, the United States Postal Service provides every person in America with a private, affordable, and reliable means to exchange information.

From its origins in the U.S. Constitution, it was intended to connect us to one another, so that we could live as one nation. That idea is even written into Title 39 of the U.S. Code:

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.

The Postal Service even serves as a baseline for the exercise of American constitutional rights through its conveyance of mail in election ballots.

Recent news that the Postal Service’s financial condition is being used as a pretext for degrading its service – including allowing mail to go undelivered for days and scaling back the hours of or closing post offices – threatens to degrade that constitutional baseline as well.

Republicans Setup USPS for Financial Failure

The USPS has been struggling financially fin the 21st century, in part because email has reduced letter mail volume and revenue, but also because of an extraordinary requirement the Republican controlled Congress and President George W. Bush imposed on it in 2006. Unlike any other government agency or private company, the USPS is required to prepay health benefits for retirees 75 years into the future. This means that the Postal Service must have funds in reserve to pay for future workers who have not been born yet. This requirement has been an albatross around the neck of the USPS ever since it was implemented, costing billions of dollars every year and making up nearly all of its operating losses, which totaled $8.8 billion in fiscal year 2019.

Collin Co., Texas 2020 Election Summary

Collin County, Texas, is one of the fast growing suburban counties in Texas and the U.S. Its relatively young population has a high portion of college educated professional men and women, and it has a growing population of Asian-American voters.

Hispanic-American Voters In Texas

The Texas Tribune Reports: Donald Trump made inroads in South Texas this year. Voters in the historically Democratic stronghold of South Texas are left wondering whether this was simply a strange election during moi an unusual year or a sign of a profound political realignment in the region.

Texas 2020 vs 2016 Turnout - EV Day 18

Texas currently has 16.95 million people, or about 78% of the state’s voting-age population, registered to vote for a net gain of 1.85 million voters over the 15.1 million Texans registered for the 2016 general election. However, there are more than 3 million Texans currently registered who were not registered in 2016. Most of those new registrations are in the 12 most populous and rapidly growing urban/suburban counties that are increasingly left-leaning. (See table below)

Collin Co. TX Bellwether - EV Update

Collin County, Texas, is one of the fast growing suburban counties in Texas and the U.S. Its relatively young population has a high portion of college educated professional men and women, and it has a growing population of Asian-American voters.

Since the 2016 election, the county net voter registration count has increased from 540K to more than 654K, a net registration increase of 114K registrations. The median age of all registered voters is 47 years with slightly more females (321.4K) than males (290.8K) registered to vote.

Colorado Early Voting Turnout - Oct. 26

With one week left before Election Day, more than 1,790,827 Colorado voters have already cast their ballots, far outpacing ballot returns compared to the same time period before the previous two federal elections.

As of late Monday, the latest figures available, 1.79 million of the 3.7 million active voters in the state have cast ballots, Democratic voters slightly leading Unaffiliated voters in ballots returned.

Statewide, 37% of the ballots that have been cast so far are from registered Democrats, 35.5% are from Unaffiliated voters and 26.4% from Republicans.

Across in the 29 counties that make up the 3rd Congressional District, where the ultra-right Republican Lauren Boebert and moderate Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush are campaigning for that now open seat, 217,242 ballots have been cast through Monday, which makes up about 47% of all active voters in the district.

Banking Early Dem Turnout Eliminates Election Night Drama

Daily Kos — An army of early Democratic voters just might kill Trump's chance to sow chaos on election night:

White Men W/O College Dump Trump

According to a report from MSNBC, the single largest segment of Donald Trump's base — non-college-educated white men — are fleeing the president's camp at an alarming rate and admitting that they have become embarrassed by his actions and his bullying. This was a key 2016 voting bloc for Trump nationally and in Texas.