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.