Will 2016 Be the Last Hurrah for the Southern Strategy?
In this year’s presidential politics, all eyes are on Georgia. This, of course, is because recent polling indicates the Peach State might be ready to elect its first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992. For many, the reason appears obvious. Georgia’s growing minority population, which the conventional wisdom states will vote Democratic, is growing, and with more and more voters of color, it’s just a matter of time before demography becomes destiny, and like North Carolina and Virginia, the state turns purple on its way to turning true blue.
And that may eventually happen, but many didn’t think that 2016 would be the year, and that 2020 might be a more reasonable timeframe. If that’s the case, then why is Hillary so competitive? In a New York Times op-ed this morning, Joseph Crespino provides an alternative hypothesis that doesn’t rely on the racial makeup of Peach State voters.
Crespino, who is a Professor of History at Emory University, posits that the reason Clinton is competitive is due to a more than 50 year old split in the party that still exists today. Historically, the southern Republicans of Eisenhower’s day were businessmen trying to create the new south. Remember also that blacks had affiliated with the Republican Party since reconstruction. With the impending passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 the Dixiecrats were becoming Republicans, and Crespino describes the 1964 Georgia GOP convention in which the segregationists carried the day in nominating Barry Goldwater.
Although Goldwater didn’t win, the events of 1964 paved the way for the Southern Strategy used at some level by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. In its characterization of Latinos and Muslims, along with its appeal to racialists, the Trump campaign has carried the Southern Strategy to a new level.
Yet this year that mixture may not work. Mr. Trump’s extreme language and divisive policies are alienating moderate Republicans in places like the Atlanta exurbs — where Mrs. Clinton is running nearly even with Mr. Trump. And across the state, polls show a significantly low number of Republicans saying they’ll support their party’s candidate.
Mr. Trump’s campaign most closely resembles the presidential campaigns of George C. Wallace, the arch-segregationist Alabama governor. Indeed, Wallace’s legacy is telling. An economic progressive, he remained a Democrat his entire life. True, he galvanized white working-class disenchantment and pioneered a populist, anti-liberal rhetoric that Ronald Reagan and subsequent Republicans would use to devastating effect. Yet he never had much appeal among the new class of suburban whites; the two were like oil and water. So, too, it would seem, are Donald Trump and moderate Southern Republicans today.
Over the weekend, Greg Bluestein of the AJC published a story illustrating how Republican elected officials and some GOP voters are unwilling to support Donald Trump. This morning, State Rep. Allen Peake of Macon was quoted as saying, “The reality is that Donald Trump as our nominee makes me incredibly fearful for the future of our party. We have alienated Hispanics and African-Americans, both groups who would support us if we stuck to an agenda focused on jobs and the economy.”
Should Hillary Clinton win Georgia in November, the vote will be analyzed to see if it was increased minority voting strength, moderate Republican opposition to Trump, or both, that put the state in the Democrats column. And how the state and national parties react to such a loss, in Georgia or nationally, will determine whether the Southern Strategy has finally become a bigger hindrance than a help to the Republican Party.
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Jon Richards
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If Georgia gopers are like most people, they won’t change until they don’t have any other choice. That means continuing to enable the nationalists, racialists, and Christianists, regardless of what happens in November.
Given how composed and sensible Rick Perry sounded–I’d say we could expect a return to normal politics next cycle.
The national Republican party seemed to get “Southernized” during the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Tom Delay/Dick Armey of Texas pretty much ran the House. That seemed to turn off the Northeast, a more secular region not accustomed to “southern-fried” religion and culture; accordingly, since 1992, the entire Northeast (Maryland to Maine, a region now worth 112 electoral votes) has voted Democratic for president every time save for 2000, when New Hampshire narrowly backed Bush the second over Gore (the other 10 Northeastern states stayed with Gore). Add California’s 55 electoral votes, Illinois’ 20 and Washington’s 12, and a Democratic presidential candidate can claim a reliable base of about 200 electoral votes (not even including the Midwestern states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, which have been in the Democratic presidential camp since 1992, though sometimes by very narrow margins).
The “Southern Strategy” was especially important to the second President Bush, who won only narrowly nationwide in the Electoral College; had he lost Florida in either election, we would have had either President Gore or Kerry. But these days, the GOP cannot rely on a “Solid South” in a presidential election; Virginia for instance is clearly becoming more a mid-Atlantic state (Clinton a sure bet to win there this November, following both Obama victories in the state) and is the most likely southern state Clinton will win this fall. North Carolina, with growth in Charlotte and the Research Triangle area, is at best a 50/50 shot for Trump. South Carolina isn’t likely to flip to Clinton, but Georgia may not be outside the realm of possibility for her, and Florida certainly is in play. The last Republican president not to sweep the entire South was Reagan in 1980—and he lost only Georgia, Jimmy Carter’s home state, while winning handily elsewhere in the country. In the 1980s, Republicans were not particularly dependent on the South for victory—Reagan for instance won every state but Minnesota in 1984, and George H.W. Bush won 40 states in 1988, including states today that are pretty much out of GOP reach, like California, Illinois and New Jersey. Accordingly, it is hard to envision a Trump victory if he loses even just one southern state.
Speaking of Trump, one wonders who is in charge of his campaign strategy? He has events scheduled the next 2 days in Mississippi and Texas, states which should be well out of reach for Clinton. And not long ago he was campaigning in Connecticut, which has voted pretty heavily Democratic for president (double digits or more) the last 20 years. I mean, if Trump is even campaigning in places like Texas and Mississippi, you have to wonder if the race is over. Reminds me of 1992, when the first President Bush, fighting a two-front war against Clinton and Perot, took a “train trip” though Georgia and the Carolinas late that fall—in 3 states that had easily backed him in 1988. Clinton actually ended up winning Georgia that year (by a very slim margin), and Bush fairly easily won South Carolina but took the Tar Heel State by a margin not much bigger than Bill Clinton’s here in Georgia.
Fun fact: Dukakis could have flipped the entire Confederacy (including vote rich Texas and Florida) and still would have lost 288-250.
Other things that have changed: Bush ’88 and Obama ’08 had similar popular vote margins. (Bush: 53.4 Dukakis: 45,6; Obama 52.9 McCain: 45.7) But Obama won 12 fewer states than Bush and 42 fewer electoral votes. That’s from some polarization: There were two states that Dukakis won by more than 10 points: Iowa and Rhode Island. McCain won 15 states by that margin or greater (including Texas and Tennessee). The flip side of that is Obama won very populous states by very big margins: New York by 27 points. Illinois by 25 points. California by 24 points. The polarization and geographic sorting is real. But New Jersey’s shift is astounding: It went from being five points more Republican than Bush’s national vote total in ’88 to being 8 points more Democratic than Obama’s national vote total 20 years later. The GOP ‘southern strategy’ plays terribly in a state that’s almost entirely suburbs.