Posted on 05/01/2013 6:32:43 PM PDT by neverdem
I by-and-large agree with the thrust of Jamelle Bouie’s recent American Prospect article, which argues that Republicans badly misapprehend the reason(s) African-Americans generally vote for Democratic candidates. Too many conservatives assert that African-Americans have developed a “false consciousness” and simply need to be shown the error of their ways before they’ll start supporting Republicans. Asking “What’s the matter with black people?” simply isn’t going to get the GOP very far in its minority outreach efforts.
But in the course of this argument, Bouie makes the following statement: “White Southerners jumped ship from Democratic presidential candidates in the 1960s, and this was followed by a similar shift on the congressional level, and eventually, the state legislative level. That the [last] two took time doesn’t discount the first.”
If you polled pundits, you’d probably get 90 percent agreement with this statement. And if you polled political scientists, you’d likely get a majority to sign off on it. That’s maddening, because it’s incorrect.
I’ve written at length on this, both in my book and here, but it is worth revisiting. In truth, the white South began breaking away from the Democrats in the 1920s, as population centers began to develop in what was being called the “New South” (remember, at the beginning of the 20th century, New Orleans was the only thing approximating what we currently think of as a city in the South).
In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR performed worse in the South in every election following his 1932 election. By the mid-1940s, the GOP was winning about a quarter of the Southern vote in presidential elections...
(Excerpt) Read more at dyn.realclearpolitics.com ...
Southern Democrats are still around, like Dickhead Harpoon Liam. My guess is he still has his Klan outfit.
Some of us have actually been Republicans since there were any. During the Civil War, much of Southern Appalachia actually sympathized with the Union. After the war, many were Republicans, although they had little effect on the course of things.
Born in the late 50s. We had crosses burning at the end of our streets because we sympathized with the blacks during the 60’s. Gotta love those loving Democrats! It scared the hell out of me as a small child! Yes, I’m Caucasian!
So, what part of the Caucasus are you from?
I am 65 and have never voted for a Democrat for state or national office. My first vote for President was for Richard Nixon. And I would vote for him again in a heartbeat.
My first political exposure was from a high school history/government teacher. We watched the 1964 elections and discussed the candidates, process and parties. He was a Republican. There were very very few Republicans in Texas at that time.
BUT bear in mind, the Dems in TX were far more fiscally and socially conservative than 80% of the Current GOP. FACT.
Yes the shift began in the early 1960’s.
Yeah, but pretty much all of those Appalachian Republicans became Democrats during Reconstruction. Having your property looted will do that to you.
My understanding was that Ann Coulter developed this at length in her book about racial conning.
Lol..the South supported FDR's unprecedented third term in 1940 in numbers that exceeded 80%.
That was "worse" than the greater than 90% support the region gave FDR in his 1932 campaign against Hoover, only if you're a slippery sophist or a statistician.
The simple fact was no section of America was a stronger supporter of the entire progressive New Deal expansion of government from 1932 - 1944 than the South.
As another poster notes, Texas went through the same shift. Republicans didn't start winning elections until the 60's. But, that doesn't mean there were no Republicans in Texas before then.
Ping!
Well he's wrong, there was no shift toward the GOP by the South in the 1930s or 1940s. FDR got Hugo Chavez like numbers there every election. When things finally did shift away from the Democrats in the South, it wasn't toward the GOP it was towards third parties.
I sure didn’t see that, do you have some quotes?
To me this is the author revealing the opposite, Republicans were making gains because of their civil rights efforts.
“”But the big breakthrough, to the extent that there was one, came in 1952. Dwight Eisenhower won 48 percent of the vote there, compared to Adlai Stevenson’s 52 percent. He carried most of the “peripheral South” — Virginia, Tennessee, Texas and Florida — and made inroads in the “Deep South,” almost carrying South Carolina and losing North Carolina and Louisiana by single digits.
Even in what we might call the “Deepest South” — Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi — Eisenhower kept Stevenson under 70 percent, which might not seem like much until you realize that Tom Dewey got 18 percent in Georgia against FDR in 1944, and that this had been an improvement over Herbert Hoover’s 8 percent in 1932.
In 1956, Eisenhower became the first Republican since Reconstruction to win a plurality of the vote in the South, 49.8 percent to 48.9 percent. He once again carried the peripheral South, but also took Louisiana with 53 percent of the vote. He won nearly 40 percent of the vote in Alabama. This is all the more jarring when you realize that the Brown v. Board decision was handed down in the interim, that the administration had appointed the chief justice who wrote the decision, and that the administration had opposed the school board.
Nor can we simply write this off to Eisenhower’s celebrity. The GOP was slowly improving its showings at the congressional level as well. It won a special election to a House seat in west Texas in 1950, and began winning urban congressional districts in Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Virginia with regularity beginning in 1952.””
John Tower is one who turned to the left but he was a real conservative from 1961 to 1965; then he moved left slowly at first, then embraced abortion and opposed SDI.
This is what he wrote.
“”In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR performed worse in the South in every election following his 1932 election. By the mid-1940s, the GOP was winning about a quarter of the Southern vote in presidential elections.
But the big breakthrough, to the extent that there was one, came in 1952. Dwight Eisenhower won 48 percent of the vote there, compared to Adlai Stevenson’s 52 percent. He carried most of the “peripheral South” — Virginia, Tennessee, Texas and Florida — and made inroads in the “Deep South,” almost carrying South Carolina and losing North Carolina and Louisiana by single digits.
Even in what we might call the “Deepest South” — Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi — Eisenhower kept Stevenson under 70 percent, which might not seem like much until you realize that Tom Dewey got 18 percent in Georgia against FDR in 1944, and that this had been an improvement over Herbert Hoover’s 8 percent in 1932.
In 1956, Eisenhower became the first Republican since Reconstruction to win a plurality of the vote in the South,””
Now I just say I'm a Honkey or a Cracker...
Yes, I remember Tower. Think I have a book written by him in my library.
He was from Wichita Falls. That is 90 miles from where I live.
My great grandfather soured on FDR when he saw cattle killed to reduce herds without preserving the meat for consumption. Farmers were paid to kill the livestock and bury it.
The 3rd term was the final blow for him, according to my father.
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