Comment by rayiner
5 years ago
I think you’re overlooking some of the context of this thread. It started when someone said that republicans invoked states rights to justify opposing the Civil Rights Acts. Following that up with, “the Civil Rights Act was a huge precipitating event for southern Democrats to become Republicans” falsely reinforces the idea that Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Acts, when in fact they supported it overwhelmingly. Nor does it make sense to say that southern segregationists would leave the Democratic Party in response, to decamp for a party that supported the Civil Rights Act even more strongly.
Some Democrats like Thurmond did switch in 1964, because once Democrats abandoned their support for segregation, they found they shared other principles with Republicans. But focusing on those isolated instances overlooks and downplays the deep alliance between Democrats and segregationists. Woodrow Wilson, a pioneer of modern progressive “governance by expert bureaucracy” re-segregated the federal workforce. Segregationist Democrats were a key pillar of support for FDR’s New Deal. George Wallace was a segregationist, and also a New Dealer, a champion of labor who called for expanding Social Security. From 1930-1970, the Democratic coalition was glued together by the New Deal, with northern Democrats agreeing to look the other way at what southern Democrats were doing. (I use 1970 as the end date, because those alliances were in place even by Carter’s time: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jimmy-carters-racist-camp.... Carter would not have won without the South.)
In fact, a minority of Republicans in the 1960s, like Barry Goldwater, did make overtures towards anti-integration forces, in an effort to win southern votes. But they never managed to dismantle the Democratic New Deal coalition in the south. That didn’t happen until much later. And at that point, two major things had happened. Southern states has transitioned from agricultural to industrial. The economy of places like Georgia had boomed by drawing businesses from northern states with lower taxes and less regulation. At the same time, the focus of the “civil rights” movement changed. It moved onto very different issues like affirmative action. I happen to support affirmative action, but it’s hard to deny that it’s an ideologically very different thing than the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its the class “negative right” versus “positive right” dichotomy that’s always divided conservative versus liberal thought.
The reason I take an exception to the characterization above is that through omission framing, it attempts to tarnish Republicans for something they were on the right side of, while absolving Democrats of something they were for a long time on the wrong side of. It also falsely equates very different civil rights policies. It goes to Biden’s “[Romney] wants to put y’all back in chains” rhetoric. No, it was Democrats who wanted to do that. Romney, and modern Republicans, don’t want to use the power of government to affirmatively erase historical inequities. But it was the Romney-type pro-business Republicans that were a bulwark of the Civil Rights Acts.
Thanks for the response! I get how this thread is about framing and partisanship and that is the part that is boring for me. I am more interested in the broader topic of the realignment, and I think you are articulating the clearest and strongest version of your argument that I've heard. I'd recap it as follows:
1) Democrats were the party of white ethno-nationalism, starting in the 1800s. 2) Democrats abandon that plank by the 1960s, joining with longstanding Republican efforts and overturning Jim Crow. 3) Much later, for unrelated reasons, the South becomes Republicans.
Is that about right?
I agree with #1 and #2. I disagree with #3 and I don't see how the facts support it.
First, there's the "much later" part of #3. Here [1] are presidential voting records for the 13 states of the confederacy. In every case but Missouri, there is a) a period of near-uniform Democratic domination from 1880-1944, b) a string of Democratic losses, and at least two Republican victories, by 1972.
(Yes, Carter won several of those states after Nixon's disgrace. To some degree I contest the conclusions you're drawing there: so did Hoover, Clinton, etc to lesser degrees. I acknowledge that many of these states were purple in the 1970s, but I don't think that supports the timeline of #3 in context.)
Second, there is the claim of "unrelated reasons". The idea that "a minority of Republicans in the 1960s" made overtures to segregationist Dems is equivalent to saying "Nixon didn't do anything like the Southern Strategy", right? (Or were you talking about regional races?) Doesn't that assertion, in turn, hinge on the idea that "states' rights" (to pick one example) is not an overture? If so, I would call it a weak argument.
[1]
https://www.270towin.com/states/Alabama https://www.270towin.com/states/Georgia https://www.270towin.com/states/Louisiana https://www.270towin.com/states/Mississippi https://www.270towin.com/states/Missouri https://www.270towin.com/states/North_Carolina https://www.270towin.com/states/South_Carolina https://www.270towin.com/states/Tennessee https://www.270towin.com/states/Texas https://www.270towin.com/states/Virginia
First: the timing of the transition. Let’s take Alabama. In 1960, it voted for JFK, who was perceived as weak on civil liberties. Then in 1964, it went Goldwater because LBJ didn’t appear on the ballot. In 1968, it voted for Wallace, who was not a Republican, he was a New Deal Democrat. In 1972, it voted for Nixon. But Nixon won almost every state, including New York. In 1976, Carter blew out Ford in Alabama, winning by 13 points, compared to his 2.5 point margin in New York. That shows the Southern Democratic contingent was alive and well as of 1976. It voted for Reagan in 1980, but by one point, compared to Reagan’s 9 point margin in the rest of the country. Carter ran more closely with Reagan in Alabama than he did in New York.
The question is: if the 1964 Civil Rights Act caused a mass exodus from Democrats to Republicans, why was a Democrat outperforming in Alabama compared to New York even by 1980? Democratic support for the Civil Rights Acts May have broken the “solid south” but that doesn’t mean those people became Republicans—who also supported civil rights. Other things needed to happen.
What those things were: they’re related but not the same as “civil rights.” “Civil rights” isn’t a single policy, but a range of policies with different ideological implications. Republicans strongly opposed de jure discrimination, and supported civil rights laws that eliminated such discrimination. But by the 1970s, the fight had moved to different issues: forced bussing, affirmative action, etc. And the race riots of the 1960s, and skyrocketing crime in cities, made “law and order” hot-button issues. Nixon and Reagan capitalized on southern views on those policies.
Saying that Nixon’s “southern strategy” was rooted in opposition to “civil rights” is a very Democratic way to look at the issue. Nixon helped champion the 1957 Civil Rights Act through Congress. He never backtracked on that. What he did was promise disaffected southern Democrats that he would not use the force of government to integrate private society, and would maintain law and order. (So did Carter, by the way.) It’s maybe fair to say it was an appeal to southern racism, but it was not ideologically inconsistent with his support for the civil rights act, and ideologically consistent with conservatism in general. (I happen to agree that you need affirmative action to erase previous discrimination. But I think it’s not intellectually honest to pretend that opposing affirmative measures to equalize society is on a continuum with opposing measures to eliminate de jure discrimination. They’re categorically different things.)
Apart from that, some reasons were in fact unrelated. Starting in the 1970s, the southern economies moved from agricultural to commercial. Southern states realized they could outbid northern states for business though low taxes and low regulation. Southern cities like Atlanta and Charlotte boomed during this period. That dissipated the New Deal sentiments that had previously tied the south to Democrats.
If you asked me what caused the modern Republican “solid south,” I would not say “the civil rights acts.” I think that an unwarranted attempt to tar modern conservatism in with segregationism, which is especially galling because New Deal liberals were in an alliance with segregationists at that time. I would say the proximate cause is the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, and the economic development of the south as being reliant on low taxes and regulation as a way to outcompete the north.