As the OP says, can the Republicans gain the Solid South from the Democrats without becoming a party that allows racists and racial resentment to fester since Nixon's Southern Strategy?
Can Republicans gain the Solid South post-Civil Rights without catering to racists?
- Thread starter Nightingale
- Start date
Eisenhower won Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia in 1952 mostly with the help of veterans and the small but significant black votes in those states.
While the share of Republican voters were increasing with the growing suburban areas and increased numbers of Northern transplants, it was the vacuum caused by the Civil Rights Acts that allowed the Republican Party to win elections with candidates like Bo Callaway, Jesse Helms.
While the share of Republican voters were increasing with the growing suburban areas and increased numbers of Northern transplants, it was the vacuum caused by the Civil Rights Acts that allowed the Republican Party to win elections with candidates like Bo Callaway, Jesse Helms.
Can you have Republicans win the Solid South by catering to suburbanites and not Jesse Helms-David Duke style people?
This might just be a cop out, but why not just focus on the Democrats losing it instead with consistent incompetence?
Unless you are looking for balanced politics with roughly equal power for both parties.
Unless you are looking for balanced politics with roughly equal power for both parties.
I wanted balanced politics, with both Dems and Reps occasionally getting landslides here and there, which would be balanced by landslides of each other's rival.
This may be unfair to say but one of the most prominent characteristics of white southerners is the feeling that they are being persecuted by outside forces and the passage of the Civil Rights Acts added to that, and with the use of "Dog whistle politics" and "Code Word Racism" the Republican Party found a way to win.
As for catering to suburban voters, there was really not enough until recently, and they were most around cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, and Charlotte, most of the white voters are in rural areas.
It was Barry Goldwater in 1964 who made inroads in the solid south with his opposition to civil rights.
Like I posted before it was the passage of the Civil Rights Acts created a vacuum with the Democrats in the South winning with a coalition of African-American voters and white moderates and this allowed the Republican Party to pick off the old segregation social conservatives and add them to economic conservatives and with gerrymandering the Republican candidates who were the most conservative were the ones who are winning the primaries and this pushing the party further to the right.
The problem with pointing to Eisenhower as proof that moderate republicans could win in the South is that his victories were more personal than partisan ones. The South still elected no Republican Senators or Governors, and very few Republican members of the US House during his administration. (The few Republicans in the House were mostly from traditionally Republican Appalachian districts like TN-01 and TN-02, or else from areas that weren't really too "southern" like the newly created VA-10 in the DC suburbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Broyhill or Bill Cramer's Florida district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Cramer which had a lot of northern retirees in Saint Petersburg. And Bruce Alger, who won in Dallas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Alger was nobody's idea of a moderate.)
What counts as "appealing to racists"?
Opposition to busing would (so long as the Democrats favoured it) be enough to keep the racists on board (along with a goodly slice of the not so racist), w/o the need to make an obvious play for their support.
Opposition to busing would (so long as the Democrats favoured it) be enough to keep the racists on board (along with a goodly slice of the not so racist), w/o the need to make an obvious play for their support.
Appealing to racists meaning "dog-whistling, race-baiting". Busing is a different issue that conservatives, moderates and even liberals like Humphrey hated.
So just to be clear, the flip side of this is that the Democratic Party retains southern racists and fails to put in a Civil Rights plank. Because racism was a primary identifier of southern voters. You're not going to find a POD that has southerners saying, "maybe I'll vote my suburban interests rather than my racists interests this time" en masse without going back to at least the 19th century, probably earlier. There is going to be a huge block of racist voters in the south, somebody is going to court them.
Or I guess you could have a more powerful third-party situation, but that's not going to hand the region to the Republicans.
Or I guess you could have a more powerful third-party situation, but that's not going to hand the region to the Republicans.
Or changing internal migration patterns. If the Gulf Coast became TTL's Detroit, that could go a long way. But it's hard to imagine a way to keep the south "solid" in these scenarios. Like what would cause people to move to Tennessee that would also cause them to move to Alabama, to Texas, to the Carolinas?
Probablly ASB, and outside the OP, but waiving away the Afro American migration to the north leaves a much larger Black voting block in the South. More so if the White portion of the migration still occurs.
Alternately, & perhaps a tiny bit more realistic is the Republican party remains the civil liberties party. It backs voter registration & works at removing obstacles to working class economic advancement in the south. This benefits both Afro Americans and the low income "Redneck" demographic. If the latter, & thats a longer odds possibility, discovers Republican policy has removed obstacles & given them greater participation in the mid 20th Century economic revival of the South then there could be a shift of working class voters in the South to Republican politicians.
A third long term thing, again outside the OP would be to start the migration of skilled northern labor and management to the South sooner and expand it. A earlier and larger industrial revival in the South, say from a longer WWI could bring the northern migrants to a broader segment of smaller southern cites & not just to the larger developing mega cities of OTL.
On occasion they might win a landslide, but for the most part I see the south being split between the two parties without the southern strategy. I'm winging this because you didn't specify just how racist the democrats are ITTL, how socially consernative they are, or if a regional 3rd party fills the void.
Republican dominated:
Virginia
Tennessee
South Carolina
Florida
Democratic dominated:
North Carolina
West Virginia
Kentucky
Mississippi
Swing states:
Texas
Georgia
Oklahoma???
Reactionary 3rd party or racist democrats:
Alabama
Arkansas
Republican dominated:
Virginia
Tennessee
South Carolina
Florida
Democratic dominated:
North Carolina
West Virginia
Kentucky
Mississippi
Swing states:
Texas
Georgia
Oklahoma???
Reactionary 3rd party or racist democrats:
Alabama
Arkansas
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
What if replacement soldiers and sailors on a desegregated basis during WWII takes place about a year and a half earlier than it did OTL, and then we have civil rights mainly through legislative rather than judicial action?
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
After African-American citizens have served honorably in a major war, it's hard to make the case that they should be treated as anything other than regular, normal, first-class citizens.
This is not borne out by American history after any war, in which African Americans fought in be it the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War One or World War Two (hell, the Vietnam war!)/