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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (67606)	10/16/2008 7:09:49 PM
From: thames_sider	Respond to of 90947

Here's were bein' a dang ferinner leads you astray. It surely did... I didn't realise that was the situation, so late on especially. I knew the South had voted solidly Democrat for a long while, but thought that had mostly ended by 1980 or so and I hadn't realised the level of solidity in lower offices... nor what a risk LBJ clearly took. Small wonder if so that Reagan could be so confident the crowd voted blue. Anyhow, in a crowd full of southern Democrats of that ilk, I agree it's odd if they were unaware of the nuance. It seems to imply that they truly didn't notice it at the time. I still would have thought Reagan (or someone on his staff, if he wasn't speaking ex tempore) might have noticed the phrase and its significance, since Brooks said they had the discussion about speaking there at all, but if they weren't themselves southerners perhaps not... But why say it at all? Maybe, maybe, it was tucked in there for later notice, but that's a reach. I can see why it's controversial, anyhow. (incidentally, I noticed in passing that the Wikipedia article I referenced still favours the deliberate interpretation...). My thanks for the clarification.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (67606)	10/17/2008 11:12:54 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

And the case often gets presented, as if the shift to the Republicans, or the Republicans taking advantage of it (as if any party would tell large groups of people, "no we don't want your votes"), was somehow racist. The shift was largely about Democrats becoming less conservative on "social issues", where the South is more conservative. There are other reasons as well, some of the other positions in the south are also closer to the Republicans (for example there is more support in the south for a strong military than the country as a whole), but the south staid Democrat for a long time largely as a matter of tradition. The Republicans where the party of Lincoln, and (even though Lincoln didn't want to treat the defeated south harshly) the party most behind harsh "Reconstruction" after the Civil War. In the mid to late twentieth century many voters had their fathers, their father's fathers, their father's father's fathers vote for Democrats (I say fathers rather than parents, not to slight or ignore women, but because before 1920 women couldn't vote). This tradition took a long time to break down even after the Republicans and the South's political views started to match to a greater than the South's did with the Democrats. At first you had the South providing a lot of conservative Democrats, while some more liberal northern areas provided liberal Republicans who on many issues where to the left of these Democrats. But gradually this shifted with the liberals voting for Democrats rather than liberal Republicans, and the conservatives voting for Republicans rather than conservative Democrats.