They get a lot of support from the Pro-Life Movement, which embraced them after Roe vs Wade. That is a lot of their support in the Midwest Plains States too.
Depends on the era. OTL Pro-lifers started to turn towards the Republican Party beginning in 1976, but most stayed Democrats until the late Reagan era at the earliest, until a combination of Ted Kennedy's coathanger speech in response to the Bork nomination and the snubbing of Casey the Elder during the 1992 Democratic Convention discredited the Democrats in the eyes of the movement. So by itself a change in stance on abortion is unlikely to affect things, by that time the Southern Strategy was in place.They get a lot of support from the Pro-Life Movement, which embraced them after Roe vs Wade. That is a lot of their support in the Midwest Plains States too.
The conventional view (which may well be mistaken!) was that African-American soldiers were treated as heroes in Europe and then came home to be treated as second-class citizens. And this jump started the Civil Rights movement.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!)/
The conventional view (which may well be mistaken!) was that African-American soldiers were treated as heroes in Europe and then came home to be treated as second-class citizens. And this jump started the Civil Rights movement.
Eisenhower had HUGE bipartisan appeal though. He was a moderate war hero who both parties wanted to nominate. He was literally a once in a life time candidatePotentially. Eisenhower made huge gains in the South and he didn't exactly have a Southern Strategy.
In 1968 specifically, Nixon won the South because of a vote split. Humphrey's allies in Labor could not bring him southern union members in large numbers because many were going for Wallace. Wallace was winning the rural white vote and the working class vote, while Humphrey had to settle for the black (still not that large because the registration drives weren't all that successful as of yet) and liberal vote, while Nixon took a lot of moderates and suburbanites, as well as normal Democrat voters disgusted with the rioting but who abandoned Wallace at the last minute because of LeMay. Without Curtis LeMay on the ticket, Wallace probably takes a few more states. He was way more popular than people remember;way more charismatic than previous Dixiecrat type candidates like Thurmond and Byrd, and was able to utilize populism and the situation at hand to expand outside his regional base. At one point, he was polling at around 29% of the vote. Nixon wasn't some kind of crypto-Klansman who summoned the ghost of Nathan Bedford Forrest to bring him Tennessee's electoral votes. Rather, he positioned himself between Wallace and Humphrey and was able to win with his coalition. Remember also that the Republican Party in the south collapsed after Watergate. The "Southern Strategy" wasn't a lightbulb that was just turned on. Winning the South for the GOP was something that took 25 years of work after Nixon, and came into fruition in 2000 when George W. Bush was able to peel off social conservatives from the Democratic coalition.Being against busing wasn't considered catering to racists (although sometimes it was and called out on)
A lot of pro-civil rights families were against busing. The sad fact was (and still is) that black schools were worst because they got a lot less funding. Nixon campaigned on kids going to the good school where you bought your house. Yes he used it as videoed to racist, but thousands of northern families didn't see that. I don't think the issue of busing won the south
demographic changes to the South in the mid 20th century, stemming from the invention of air conditioning, which brought many Northerners who had supported the Republican Party to southern suburbs of booming Sunbelt towns. The South also was finally in the 1950s and 1960s starting to see the kind of capital formation that was bringing it out of the destitution that had existed since the Civil War, stemming from the power of Southern Congressmen and Senators under the seniority system in bringing home the bacon, as well as growth in its manufacturing and defense sectors. This allowed a middle class that had previously not really existed to start forming in the South, and the Republicans by and large did well with middle class voters.
The idea that there is a singular "racist" vote out there, just lying dormant until it hears the right dog whistles, is incorrect. Public opinion polling reveals that voters opinions change about things. America went through a rightward shift in the 1970s because of the failure of the postwar Liberal order to ensure domestic tranquility and to overcome the economic challenges that sprung up. The South, economically speaking, was a lot more eager for government spending programs when it was rising out of poverty than after it had developed a middle class. This isn't exactly abnormal.
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?
Say Richard Nixon wins the 1960 Presidential Election and pushes hard for Civil Rights in his first term, the African American community particularly in the South would become a reliable voting bloc for the Republican Party. That alone would be enough for the Republicans to be competitive in the "Solid South" from the Democratic party.
I agree. A lot of early Civil Rights actions for decades before the biggest successes of the 1960s.I think that is fairly well documented, tho the term "jump start" may not quite be accurate. . .