DBAHC: Make the South and Oklahoma vote GOP

Maybe make Goldwater's southern strategy an effective GOP tactic? After him, it was trashed by George Romney. It could have worked in 1968 and 1972 when the South was unhappy over President Humphrey, but after they made concessions to the South it went right back to a Democratic stronghold
 
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Maybe make Goldwater's southern strategy an effective GOP tactic? After him, it was trashed by George Romney. It could have worked in 1968 and 1972 when the South was unhappy over President Humphrey, but after they made concessions to the South it went right back to a Democratic stronghold

Ugh, thanks for reminding me of that dirtbag Dixiecrat Jimmy Carter. It was truly impressive, albeit in the most disgusting way, how he rode the post-Humphrey backlash to the Democratic nomination in '76.

About the only good thing you can say about that redneck thug is that his platform was SO extreme(Peace Corps to South Africa?!) that he managed to alienate the entirety of the country outside Dixie in the election.
 
About the only good thing you can say about that redneck thug is that his platform was SO extreme(Peace Corps to South Africa?!) that he managed to alienate the entirety of the country outside Dixie in the election.

He was only trying to stop the mad General Malan. Even today, blacks in South Africa have a high opinion of Carter for toppling the apartheid regime.
 
Humphrey kept alot of traditional Democratic voting areas still voting Democratic, but his penchant for compromise has been criticized on public policy grounds. I'm not sure if it was worth it.

Going against his own political history, his administration concentrated on making sure the government was desegregated and that the rule of law applied equally to Blacks and Whites. But it pretty much abandoned any attempt at desegregating private clubs and businesses. People forget that the 1964 civil rights legislation actually applied to private businesses, they couldn't turn away Black customers and had to hire Black workers and so on. The Humphrey administration pretty much stopped that and didn't do much to stop the successful effort in the South to get around desegregation by just transferring government functions to "private" entities, such as schools. Like with the nineteenth century reconstruction, its another case of three steps forward, two steps back.

And of course his vetoes of the clean air and clean water and other environmental legislation may have kept Oklahoma voting Democratic, and Alaska and West Virginia too, but in public policy terms may have been even worse than the reversal on segregation.

Anyway, I think these areas would have wound up switching to the GOP by just not having a Humphrey administration -the 1968 election was really close- or having one that was actually, you know, liberal.
 
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