The Southern Strategy Revisited

Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South

Joseph A. Aistrup

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813119045
• eBook ISBN: 9780813183923
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The 1994 elections represented a watershed year for southern Republicans. For the first time since Reconstruction, they gained control of a majority of national seats and governorships. Yet, despite these impressive gains, southern Republicans control only three of twenty-two state legislative chambers and 37 percent of state legislative seats. Joseph A. Aistrup addresses why this divergence between the national and subnational levels persists even after GOP national landslides in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1994.

Explanations for this divergence lie in the interaction between the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" -a set of coherent ideological tactics designed to lure southern whites to support GOP candidates-and the Republicans' top-down party development efforts. Aistrup analyzes the historical evolution of the Republican Southern Strategy from Goldwater in 1961 to the "Contract with America" in 1994. Examining the roles of ideology, intra party politics, gerrymandering, and Democratic incumbency in Republican top-down advancement, he predicts the extent to which these will remain significant obstacles to GOP success in subnational elections after 1994.

Aistrup reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Southern Strategy as it relates to candidate ideology and examines the influences of Republican victories in national and statewide offices on the party's subnational advancement. He shows a clear connection between Republican presidential success and southern Republican advancement in local elections.

SECTION 1

THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY IS MORE THAN JUST A RECIPE TO ATTRACT VARIOUS disparate political groupings to the Republican party’s presidential ticket; it is an ideological carrot for wooing presidential supporters into the Republican party. Reinforcing the South Strategy’s messages are the Grand Old Party’s (GOP) efforts to build on their presidential triumphs by transferring this success at the top to other levels of electoral competition (Bass and De Vries 1976, 31). Once the party has built a successful presidential coalition in a state, it concentrates its resources to build a winning coalition at the lower levels of competition—contests for the U.S. Senate, state gubernatorial offices, congressional seats, and, lastly, state legislature posts. For purposes of this book, this mode of party development is labeled as “Republican top-down advancement.”

At one political level, the wisdom of this strategy is apparent. By 1980 the Republicans possessed ten of the twenty-two Senate seats, five of the eleven governorships, and little over 30 percent of the U.S. House seats (Bullock 1987). By 1994, Southern Republicans had increased their control to 13 of 22 U.S. Senate seats, 6 of 11 governorships, and 64 of 125 U.S. House seats. However, at another political level, the wisdom of this strategy is less than lucid. The conservative, sometimes racial, sometimes religious, content of the Southern Strategy’s messages entices many conservative reactionaries into the party who clash with the Republicans’ natural base, the upwardly mobile, business and professional classes who have come to typify the “new South” (Sundquist 1983, ch. 18). This has led to the situation where some Republican state parties are strife-torn and lack ideological coherence on social issues.

In addition, the top-down advancement process means that while the GOP now possesses a majority of national offices and governorships, it still only controls three of twenty-two state legislative chambers. Despite this tension and its significance for the GOP’s efforts in the South, there has been a relative lack of attention among scholars as to the precise nature of this strategy and its goals, or how it is shaping the future of Southern politics. This book identifies the fundamental issues of the Southern Strategy, traces its evolution since its conception in the early 1960s, and shows how this strategy affects patterns of GOP top-down advancement in the South in ten of eleven formerly Confederate states (excluding Louisiana) from 1964 to 1994.¹ This book accomplishes this task by dividing this study into two sections: The first section defines the distinct concepts of the Southern Strategy and top-down advancement and charts the top-down advancement of the Southern Republican parties up to 1994. The second section identifies the obstacles that Southern Republicans have confronted and explores which of these obstacles are a significant hindrance for the Republicans in the future. This section also analyzes the interaction between the Southern Strategy and top-down advancement in the South and its regions.

Chapter 1

Seeds of Change

FOR THIRTY YEARS, THE REPUBLICANS’ SOUTHERN STRATEGY HAS BUILT winning coalitions for presidential elections in the South. For Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, this strategy was simply “to go hunting where the ducks are” (Bass and De Vries 1976, 26). The ducks to which Goldwater referred were strongly ideological, racially motivated, white conservatives. In short, the Goldwater Southern Strategy was merely an attempt to attract states’ rights voters to the Republican party (Bass and De Vries 1976, 27-28).

In the Nixon years, the Southern Strategy evolved, melding economic conservatives with states’ rights advocates. In large part, the Southern Strategy was packaged and sold as a hands-off approach to governing the nation and, more specifically, the South (Lamis 1988, 26). The 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator George McGovern (S.D.), cynically described it: “What is the Southern Strategy? It is this. It says to the South: Let the poor stay poor, let your economy trail the nation, forget about decent homes and medical care for all your people, choose officials who will oppose every effort to benefit the many at the expense of the few—and in return, we will try to overlook the rights of the black man, appoint a few southerners to high office, and lift your spirits by attacking the ‘eastern establishment’ whose bank accounts we are filling [up] with your labor and your industry. It is a clever strategy” (Bass and De Vries 1976, 31).

In the Reagan years the Southern Strategy continued its evolution, reaching new heights. In 1980 and 1984, Reagan forged a Southern coalition that reflected elements from the old-time gospel hour, economic conservatism, and states’ rights (Black and Black 1987, 240-49, 315). Reagan’s coalition was impressive, because he was the first Republican presidential candidate to bring together these diverse groups of white voters in successive elections (Edsall and Edsall 1992). Reagan’s efforts also paved the way for George Bush’s strong showing in the South in 1988 and 1992.

An overall assessment of the Southern Strategy is that it has been successful. Goldwater carried four Deep South states. In 1972 Nixon carried all eleven Southern states.² In 1980 Reagan won all of the Southern states, except for Carter’s home state of Georgia. In 1984 and 1988 Reagan and Bush, respectively, won all eleven Southern states. Finally, even though Bush lost the 1992 presidential election, the South was Bush’s strongest electoral region.

POLITICS IN THE SOUTH: THEN AND NOW

Before the 1940s the Republican party was virtually nonexistent in the South (Key 1949). Since Reconstruction the one-party system in the South had been synonymous with Democratic dominance and white supremacy (Key 1949; Lamis 1988; Black and Black 1987). Beginning in 1948, several major upheavals in Southern politics resulted in the gradual emergence of the Republican party and the replacement of the one-party system with a competitive two-party system (Lamis 1988; Black and Black 1987).

To comprehend the political and social evolution of the South, it is necessary for one to understand the historical roots of this change. Even though the roots of the metamorphosis can be traced back to the origins of the U.S. Constitution, the meaningful transformations started after Democratic President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military and the 1948 Democratic convention accepted several pro-civil rights platform planks. Truman’s and the Northern Democrats’ actions caused Governor Strom Thurmond (S.C.) to lead the Dixiecrat revolt. In four Southern states the Thurmond Dixiecrat ticket gained at least a plurality of the vote. This event was significant for two reasons. First, it was the initial split between Northerners and Southerners within the Democratic party over the issue of race. Second, it was a harbinger of increasing numbers of Southern white voters supporting non-Democratic candidates for president (Sundquist 1983, ch. 12).

In the vanguard of this initial political change, social reforms instigated in the 1950s and 1960s by the federal government also had a profound effect on the South. The Supreme Court played a vital role in this process with its rulings on two cases: Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954), which struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine, and Baker v. Carr (1962), which instituted the “one person, one vote” dictum (Bass and Terrill 1986, chs. 3, 6).

The effects of the Brown decision on the South were immense: resistance to the Brown decision came from many strata of white Southern society. Southern congressmen and governors called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Southern state legislatures passed numerous laws to protect all-white institutions. No facet of Southern society felt the Brown decision more poignantly than the public school systems. After numerous later rulings by the courts, which refined the Brown decision and finally forced the process of desegregation, several Southern public school systems closed their doors rather than desegregate (Bass and Terrill 1986). Some of the more publicized school desegregation debacles included: Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’s attempt to keep blacks out of Central High School in Little Rock (Bass and De Vries 1976, ch. 5), Alabama Governor George Wallace’s stand on the front steps of the University of Alabama, and the riots at “Ole Miss.” The primary effect of the courts’ decisions was a rebellion by Southern whites against the federal court orders that would eventually change the social system of the South.

Throughout the 1950s, one of the targets of the tidal wave of Southern discontent about race was the Republican party. It was a Republican Supreme Court that struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine, and it was Republican President Eisenhower who mobilized federal troops in Little Rock (Bass and De Vries 1976). In addition, racially liberal Republicans from the Northeast were the primary sponsors of civil rights legislation in the post–World War II period (Carmines and Stimson 1989, 37). All of these actions reinforced the carpetbagger, party-of-Lincoln image of the Republicans in the South. However, this Southern image of the Republican party would soon transform into one more appealing to Southern whites. Beginning in 1962, the Southern Republicans began to openly accept a number of segregationist candidates under their party umbrella (Bass and De Vries 1976; Burnham 1964; Klinkner 1992).

The unhealed wounds between Northern and Southern Democrats from the 1948 election festered in 1964, when a Democratically led Congress, prompted by a Democratic president from the South, pushed various civil rights reforms. Most prominently, the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) ensured the civil and political rights of blacks and other minorities. Taken as a whole, these reforms opened the political process to Southern blacks (Black and Black 1987; Sundquist 1983; Bass and Terrill 1986).

In addition to the changes forced upon Southerners through legal reforms, the indigenous social fabric of the South has also been recast. A large number of people—Mexican immigrants in Texas, Cuban and Haitian refugees in southern Florida, and retirees from the Northeast and other parts of the United States—have migrated to the South (Black and Black 1987, chs. 1-3). Through the operation of its military bases, the federal government also contributes to the influx of population into the South.

Just as more people have been attracted to the South, industry and business have also moved there to take advantage of cheap and abundant labor. These new industries and businesses attracted young people from all over the United States to fill management and technical positions in urban areas (Cobb 1982). With the influx of new jobs, prosperity followed. In 1940, approximately 30 percent of Southern white males were middle-class. By the 1980s, almost 60 percent were middle class (Black and Black 1987, 53).

Running parallel to the industrialization and the growth of the middle-class is the rapid urbanization of the South (Black and Black 1987, ch. 2; Cobb 1984). As the industrial and service sectors of the economy developed in urban centers of the South, many Southerners, mainly poor whites and blacks, who represented the cheap and abundant labor force, moved to the urban areas (Cobb 1984, ch. 7). Thus industrialization in Southern urban centers led to prosperity for educated immigrants and natives, who were hired into managerial and professional occupations. Industrialization also led to great income disparities, as blacks and poor whites moved to the urban centers to fill low-wage industrial and service-sector jobs (Cobb 1984, ch. 7).

This situation created two Souths: a “new” South composed of a new middle-class and expatriated non-Southerners living mainly in the urban centers, and an “old” South composed of native Southerners maintaining their way of life in the more rural communities (Black and Black 1987, chs. 1, 5; Seagull 1975, ch. 7) and poor whites and blacks who traded rural poverty for the low-paying jobs in the urban centers (Cobb 1984, ch. 7).

The Political Transformation

The Southern Strategy was developed to take advantage of the upheavals in the southern structure (Bass and De Vries 1976, 22-33). The major goal of the Southern Strategy was to transform the Republicans’ reputation as the party of Lincoln, Yankees, and carpetbaggers into the party that protects white interests (Klinkner 1992; Bass and De Vries 1976, 22-23). Thus, subtle segregationist threads are sewn in to the tapestry of the Southern Strategy. As a response in part to the GOP’s new image and the liberalizing changes in the national Democrats’ policy positions, the Southern Democrats evolved from a party that depended on race-baiting, white supremacists to a party that needs and depends on black support to win elections (Lamis 1988).

Significantly, the GOP began a conscious effort to recast their Southern image after Nixon’s loss in 1960. Under the influence of Goldwater and his allies, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) program “Operation Dixie” (Klinkner 1992) changed to openly promote a more conservative state rights’ and segregationist policies and to recruit candidates of this ilk. Republican segregationist candidates made respectable showings in the 1962 South Carolina U.S. Senate elections, where William Workman received 43 percent of the vote, and in the 1962 Alabama U.S. Senate election, where James Martin was seven thousand votes shy of unseating Democratic Senator Lister Hill (Burnham 1964; Klinkner 1992, 1-18).

Even with the subtle change toward accepting candidates who were more in tune with the predominant white Southern party at that time, it was not until the 1964 presidential campaign that the Republicans’ new image became solidified. The key event that highlighted the Republicans’ new strategy and led to the Democrats shedding their old segregationist image was the national Democrats’ support of civil rights and Goldwater’s and the Republican party’s support of states’ rights (Bass and De Vries 1976, 29). This election, more than any other (Carmines and Stimson 1989), drew clear lines of division and provided a glimpse of the future of party politics in the South and the rest of the nation. The battle was defined in the South as segregation versus desegregation. However, it was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who promoted segregational politics. Since 1964, blacks have become a vital segment of the Southern Democratic coalition (Lamis 1988), and Southern whites have slowly migrated into the GOP (Petrocik 1987).

This gradual transition led to Southern blacks and whites forming coalitions within the Democratic party to elect Southern Democrats. It is difficult to understate the import of these black-white coalitions for Southern politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Lamis (1988) documented that the victories of many Southern Democratic congressmen during this period can be attributed to the strength of black-white coalitions; indeed, the development of such coalitions is partially responsible for deterring further Republican gains (Lamis 1988, chs. 3, 15). The strongest evidence suggesting the salience of the black-white coalitions for Democratic victories can be seen in the 1982 election, when George Wallace successfully gained the governor’s chair in Alabama for the fourth time (not counting his ex-wife’s terms as governor). Even Wallace, who made a career of opposing civil rights and equality for blacks, succumbed to the need to woo blacks’ votes to win (Lamis 1988, 88-91).

Naturally, in courting the blacks’ vote, Democratic politicians had to moderate their political stances on racial matters (Bullock 1981). As Lamis (1988) notes, the trick for Democratic candidates in the 1970s and 1980s was to be conservative enough to obtain a sufficient percentage of white votes to add to their solid black support to achieve an electoral majority. Few Republicans felt that they could build a successful black-white coalition as Arkansas’ Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller did in the 1960s.

In tandem with the Southern Strategy issue orientation, a number of Republicans attempted to use subtle segregationist suggestions to win elections. Southern Republicans developed a set of policy positions that reinforced their racially conservative policy orientations. Republicans opposed forced busing, employment quotas, affirmative action, and welfare programs; at the same time, they favored local control and tax exemptions for segregated private schools (Lamis 1988, 24). Segregationist policies became more abstract, a Reagan official explained: “You’re getting abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes . . . [these policies] are totally economic things and a by-produce of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it” (Lamis 1988, 26). All this points to the relevance of Carmines and Stimson’s (1989, 131-37) observation that a number of policy questions revolving around racial policies have become a part of ideology. Many conservatives were not supportive of the civil rights agenda of the 1970s and 1980s.

With Republican candidates promoting conservative racial and economic policies, it led to an interesting balancing act as Republicans attempted to gauge how extreme they should be with their conservative ideology to win their nomination but not lose the moderate white vote in the general election. Depending on the size of the black vote captured by the Democrats, most Republicans in the 1970s and 1980s were forced to attract enough white votes to counterbalance the Democrats’ successes with blacks (Black and Black 1987, ch. 6). Therefore, losing the moderate white vote was very damaging to a Republican candidate during the 1970s and 1980s, because it was difficult to obtain a majority of votes in most constituencies with only the support of white conservati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables, and Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Appendix 1 Interviews
• Appendix 2 Demographic Clusters
• Appendix 3 Measures of Policy Conservatism
• Appendix 4 Pool Time-Series Design
• Appendix 5 The Measurement of Republican Subnational Advancement
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index