The Southern strategy (1964-2012) is an American political strategy where Republicans win over angry white men, particularly in the South, by appealing to their racism. It has turned the Party of Lincoln into the party of white segregationists, both in the South and in white-flight suburbia. It has made the South the Republican heartland.
The Republicans champion policies that mainly benefit the rich, but to win elections they need millions to vote against their class interests. So they push issues based on race and religion: gay marriage, abortion, crime, welfare, drugs, food stamps, etc.
Reagan’s welfare queen is a good example. Reagan never said she was black. In fact, she was completely made up. But white stereotypes and white anger at taxes being “wasted” on blacks (read: unworthy people) took over from there. It gave ordinary white people a reason to favour tax cuts that mainly benefit the rich.
In the 1960s Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, on the heels of the civil rights reforms, were the the first to practise the Southern strategy but it did not work well outside the South.
Nixon turned it into something that worked nationwide by using less nakedly racist messages: racist dog whistles. For example, he would talk about “law and order”, letting his white racist listeners fill in the blanks about who the troublemakers were.
Lee Atwater, adviser to Reagan and Bush the Elder, put it this way in 1981:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like “forced busing”, “states’ rights” and all that stuff.
In 1988 Atwater gave us the infamous Willie Horton ad, which played on white racist stereotypes and fears about “black” crime. It allowed him to paint Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president, as being “soft on crime” (Read: Not keeping those frightening black people in line).
In 1996 Roger Ailes, former Nixon media adviser, started Fox News, broadcasting racist dog whistles from coast to coast.
The Southern strategy broke the back of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of working-class blacks and whites. Which in turn allowed New Deal and civil rights policies to be weakened starting in the early 1970s.
For 40 years there were only two Democratic presidents: Carter and Clinton. Both were white Southerners.
Enter Mitt Romney in 2012. His father opposed Goldwater’s Southern strategy, but Mitt Romney ran with it. Screw blacks. Screw Latinos. He went all out for the white vote – and lost.
The trouble is, the Southern strategy drives away voters, like women, gays, blacks, Asian Americans and Latinos. Meanwhile the white share of the vote has been dropping since 1980. There are no longer enough angry white men left to make it work.
To win nationwide with the Southern strategy you now need at least 61% of the white vote. No one in the past 60 years has ever won that many white votes without being a sitting president. Even Bush would lose if the 2004 election were held with 2012 demographics.