Body of Paper
Several well-respected theories have been developed in regard to the turn of the South’s political allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. V.O Key, Jr, Key’s study of the South best represents the first theory. He concluded that although most Southerners aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, in reality, they only shared a few ideas in common. Their main united view was the resentment of the Republican Party that had condemned the South and began the era of Reconstruction under President Johnson. The irony in this case brings to light the truths that Southern Democrats really had no political foundation to support their views. Key thought the South’s allegiance to the Democratic Party was solely based on history and tradition of white supremacy, religion, and patriotism (Key, 1984, 16). Today, other authors also continue to develop Key’s ideas. Republican political analyst Kevin Phillips believed that the South was losing touch with its historically Democratic roots before realignment, and in turn, a new population of Republicans support emerged (Phillips, 1969, 32-33, 42).
Earl Black and Merle Black have developed a second theory as to why the South realigned its political allegiance. Their main theory stated that the rise of the Republican Party in the South has led to the creation of an environment driven by competitive democracy. They believed that the realignment in the South was strongly influenced by the political parties themselves. They have examined the strategies used by the Republican Party to break apart the once solid Democratic South (Black and Black, 1992, 5). Earl and Merle Black argued that the Republican Party fully intended to seize the South when they nominated Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a politician who is credited for the spark of the resurgence of the American Conservatism movement, as their presidential candidate in 1964. The Republican Party eventually succeeded in this goal when Nixon swept the entire South in 1972. This political tactic was the catalyst that began the South’s change in supporting the Republican Party.
What is difficult for people to understand is that most Southern Democrats from Reconstruction to the mid 1960’s had more in common with Republicans and their views than they did with Democrats. Being a Democrat was just simply a label for most Southern people because almost everyone in the South called himself or herself a Democrat. In actuality, most Southerners wanted a smaller and more locally ruled government, which really more closely matched the ideals of Republican belief.
In 1968, the Republican Party gained significant headway in their control of the South, particularly in the Peripheral South. This expansion of power could have been more noteworthy had George Wallace, a Southern populist and segregationist, not run for president. The Republican Party won over the hearts and minds of Southerners in 1972 when Nixon acquired the electoral votes from the entire South. The South was feeling betrayed by its very own Democratic Party largely due to the rising support of equality for African Americans which was a vast shift in the traditional Democratic view. As a result, Democrats rebelled against the disregard of the people and their needs by voting Republican. Other political analysts such as David Sears, Douglas Gatlin, Edward Carmines, Nicholas Valentino, and James Stimson saw race and segregation and the failure of the Democratic Party to respond to its supporters as the main reason the South changed their political allegiance (Carmines, 1986, 903).
Many people argue that the most recent major political realignment to take place in the United States was the Republican takeover of the South that occurred in 1968 with the election of Republican Richard Nixon as president. In this election, the Republican Party received extraordinary support from the South, more specifically the “Peripheral South”. In the 1972 election cycle, the Republicans, for the first time in history, swept the entire South. This event marked the end of the Democratic South and the birth of the Republican South. Suddenly, voters from the South, who had historically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, transformed into supporters of the Republican Party.
The political parties fought hard against each other to gain Southern votes with various strategies. By neglecting to please Southern voters, the political parties themselves were significant contributors to the political realignment in the South. The issues Southerners found to be most pressing during the late 1960’s was the integration of black and white people in public facilities. This struggle for equality served as the central theme of Nixon’s campaign. In 1968, Nixon’s campaign targeted the voters in the South by harassing the government and its role in the desegregation of buses. The South expressed interest in the Republican Party because Republicans supported issues such as social order, strong family values, patriotism, and love of religion. These were important topics to the people, who were the stronghold of the Republican movement. The people of the South appreciated the conscious effort by the Republican Party to address the issues of race and segregation. The push by Republicans played a significant role in the South’s realignment.
Up until the 1960’s, the South aligned itself with the Democratic Party at most every level of government. In 1972 during Nixon’s reelection, he swept up every vote in the South from the Democratic candidate George McGovern, an icon for American liberalism who showed opposition to the war in Vietnam. This political realignment astounded the people of America because no one could believe that the Dixiecrats, Southern white people who wanted to restore the traditions and lifestyle of the South, had turned from their original political party. The Democrats have not been able to carry as heavy of a weight in the South since the election of 1972, and the Republican Party continues to prevail in the South.
Nixon worked hard to maintain the support he had earned from Southern voters. He clearly understood that the Deep South would most likely support Wallace. Nixon turned his focus to the Peripheral South. He garnered support and a crucial endorsement from Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. Thurmond was a longtime Democrat who took a stand against his own party because of their support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After switching parties, Thurmond campaigned in the South to gain support for Nixon and the Republican Party. Thurmond suggested that a vote for Wallace was in reality a vote for Humphrey, a favorite among the nation’s labor unions and the Americans who were troubled by the young anti-war protesters, since Wallace would take votes away from Nixon (Black and Black, 1992, 168). Ruth Coulter from the Birmingham News wrote that:
“If Wallace takes too many votes away from Nixon, we could just end up with Humphrey. Our country cannot stand four years under the leadership of a man who wears the mantle of Lyndon Baines Johnson” (“Wallace Could Help Elect Humphrey,” 1968, A-10).
By following the middle road, Nixon’s stance on civil rights was not identical to that of Goldwater’s. This proved to be effective in gathering voters. Nixon agreed the desegregation should be legal, but he did not support the idea the federal government had the power or authority to control the state’s rights, which is a view that is supported by Southern States. In particular, this position that Nixon stood for was the foundation that built his Southern Strategy. Also, another major component of Nixon’s Southern Strategy was to attack the busing system, controlled by the federal government, which served as an aid to integrating public schools. In his speeches, Nixon repeatedly declared that in reality, the goal of the federal government was to eliminate the state’s power to control education and busing. Even the Department of Education in the Southern states believed they were being mandated by the federal government, and the people of the South saw this as an interference to the state’s rights. The integration of black and white students at school did not sit well in the minds of many Southern people. Nixon expressed his view in a televised interview and said:
“I believe…that the Supreme Court decision was a correct decision, Brown versus the Board of Education.
But, on the other hand, while that decision dealt with segregation and said that we would not have segregation, when you go beyond that and say that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government and the Federal courts, in effect, to act as local school districts in determining how we carry that out, and then use the power of the Federal Treasury to withhold funds or give funds in order to carry it out, then I think we are going too far.
In my view, that kind of activity should be very scrupulously examined and in many cases I think should be rescinded” (Black and Black, 1992, 299).
The result was that Nixon and his Southern Strategy led to many Southern people voting for a Republican candidate.
Another group of people and potential supporters the Nixon campaign dedicated itself to was the “Silent Majority.” Nixon defined this group of people as Americans who did not take part in the massive civil rights protests happening across the United States. The Silent Majority was upset with the rebellious spirit the Democratic Party had developed and additionally, the Silent Majority supported the war in Vietnam. The media often overlooked them, and to Nixon’s luck, an overwhelming number of the Silent Majority lived in the South. Nixon was an appealing candidate to this group of potential voters. The Silent Majority embraced Nixon’s campaign because it attacked the growing protest culture throughout the United States and supported the Vietnam War. This gave Nixon an advantage over the other presidential candidates in the 1972 election.
During Nixon’s crusade, he stressed the necessity for law and order in the United States. This message was not only directed toward his supporters, but also to the socially liberal youth known as hippies. Jules Witcover states that:
“Nixon’s ‘emphasis on the crime rate, civil disobedience and restlessness among minority groups had, obviously, two purposes: to tap the general discontent among whites and to counter George Wallace with a velvet-glove version of the mailed fist with which Wallace saluted the white backlash’…In so doing, Nixon ‘could give his allies in the South and blue-collar North raw material with which to lure Wallacites into the GOP ranks’” (Witcover, 1970, 364-265).
Nixon’s campaign helped the Republican Party firmly establish itself as the new States’ Rights Party and the party that was willing to represent and carry on the values upheld in the South. The clear and refined vision Nixon was able to articulate further helped the Republicans gain steam.
The election in 1968 is believed to be the most critical election for Southern realignment. From then on, the Republicans would maintain control of the South’s electoral votes. Nixon defeated both Humphrey and Wallace. He gained votes not only in the Peripheral South, but also nation-wide. Wallace secured the electoral votes from the states in the Deep South and Arkansas. Humphrey was able to seize the electoral votes from Texas, and Nixon acquired the electoral votes of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee (Dave Leip). If George Wallace had not run as a presidential candidate, it was likely that Nixon would have swept the entire South’s electoral votes. Nixon successfully labeled the Republican Party as the leading party among Southern white voters. Nixon and his campaign had completely realigned the South’s political allegiance and established the Republican Party as the most highly regarded party in the South. Table 5 shows how the South voted in the 1968 election.
Table 5:
Leip, David. “Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.” 2004. David Leip. 16 March. 2012 < http://uselectionatlas.org/>.
A key Republican strategist during this time was Kevin Phillips. He was a major factor and helped form the Republican’s strategy in capturing votes of the South from the Democrats. He interpreted the 1968 election won by Nixon as a national rejection of “Democratic liberalism” saying, “[the] repudiation visited upon the Democratic Party for
its ambitious social programming, and inability to handle the urban and Negro revolutions…was comparable in scope to that given conservative Republicanism in 1932 for its failure to cope with the economic crisis of the Depression” (Phillips, 1969, 25 and 287). Phillips viewed the South as the place where the conservative Republican Party
would evolve and build its power and support.
In 1972, Nixon recognized that running against Democratic candidate George McGovern from South Dakota would be a challenge, but instead, Nixon viewed the situation as a gateway for the Republican Party to expand even further in the South. Civil Rights and racial issues were not the forefront of Nixon’s campaign in 1972 because they were not the most serious issues society was facing. However, he did continue to help
African Americans reach equality in the labor force through his use of quotas and the fundamentals of affirmative action, and Nixon criticized the bus system for integrating. McGovern barely attempted to campaign in the South believing he could not put a dent in Nixon’s newfound territory, and there was no chance of the Southerners voting against Nixon. This refrain the Democrats took from campaigning in the South showed that little support remained for the Democratic Party. It also shored up the stronghold Republicans in the South. The North and urban centers were the Democrat’s only hope for any support and votes.
When the Republicans completely took hold of the South, it marked the beginning of a new and changed nation. Nixon’s campaign transformed the Solid Democratic South into the Solid Republican South. The Republican Party was now able to clinch all the electoral votes from the Southern states and no longer relied on its previous bases for support scattered throughout the United States. This made obtaining the presidency for Republicans much easier than before. Nixon’s tremendous victory in the South in 1972 is shown in Table 6.
Table 6:
Leip, David. “Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.” 2004. David Leip. 1 Dec. 2007 < http://uselectionatlas.org/>.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Nixon’s presidency propelled a change in the South’s political allegiance, and it remains virtually unchanged to this day. The Republican Party has maintained and supported the “New” South by continuing to instill the ideology of conservatism. The Republican Party believes in lower taxes, smaller government, and most importantly, state’s rights to govern. By staying loyal to the conservative base and conservative principles, the strength of the Republican Party in the South continues to thrive in large part because of the work of Richard Nixon. The Nixon years served as the agent by which the South’s political direction shifted from Democratic to Republican. Nixon’s leadership style was a welcome one. He was the type of president that voters looked to lead them because they trusted him. He had a clear understanding of what voters in the South wanted, and his message resonated loudly and clearly to many, whether they were Republican or not. Today, the South remains a political stronghold for the Republican Party, and Nixon’s legacy will not soon be forgotten.
Works Cited
Black, Earl, and Merle Black. Politics and Society in the South. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
---. The Vital South: How Presidents are Elected. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. “On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution.” The American Political Science Review 80.3 (1986): 901-920.
Key, V.O., Jr. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
Leip, David. “Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.” 2004. David Leip. 1 Feb. 2012 < http://uselectionatlas.org/>.
O’Connor, Karen, and Larry J. Sabato. American Government: Continuity and Change. Alternate 2012 ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.
Phillips, Kevin P. The Emerging Republican Majority. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House: 1969.
“Wallace Could Help Elect Humphrey.” Letter to the Editor. Birmingham News 4 Nov. 1968, natl. ed.: A10.
White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1964. New York: New American Library, 1965.
---. The Making of the President 1968. New York: New American Library, 1969.
---. The Making of the President 1972. New York: New American Library, 1973.
Witcover, Jules. Marathon. New York: Viking, 1977.
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