It’s been 40 years since Richard M. Nixon came up with the “Southern Strategy” so aptly named by political analyst Kevin Phillips. Nixon took advantage of the once solidly Democratic South by playing upon upheavals caused by integration and civil rights and Southern conservative disgust with 1960s cultural change.
The GOP lock on the South helped presidents including Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. It also helped the GOP win Congress in 1994 along with innumerable state contests.
But if you read Sunday’s New York Times, Republican influence on the South is waning seriously and has been for years although not many have noticed. Barack Obama’s big win in North Carolina last week only underscores the changing politics and demographics in Dixie. Donkey successes reverberate through Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere.
Writing in the Times, author Jack Bass notes: “The story is most dramatic in Virginia, which in 1976 was the only state in the South that failed to back Jimmy Carter for president.” While Virginia Republicans still dominate in Congress, Democrats have won back-to-back governorships and are likely to take a U.S. Senate with Mark Warner.
“The trends suggest a region in transformation, with dynamic economic growth, an expanded black middle class, the arrival of millions of white migrants, the return of scores of thousands of African-American expatriates, and an emerging native white generation with little or no memory of racial segregation. The result has been greater tolerance, an expanded pool of talent, and growing openness to new ideas,” according to Bass.
When intolerance raises its ugly head, it is now beaten down. Witness George Allen’s loss in the Senate to Jim Webb after his ill-thought, racist heckle of “macaca” to a dark-skinned Virginia. Grinning, cowboy-boot-wearing Allen had been a perennial favorite whose “Aw, Shucks” demeanor seemed to play well in the Old Dominion. Well, not any more.
This is enormously positive change. Yesterday, for Mother’s Day, I took Mom out to a restaurant in a shopping mall in Henrico County’s West End. She was getting pretty tired of food in assisted living, so we went expensive. I was pleased to see that many of the families enjoying the pricey holiday specials were African-American. It was a scene hard to imagine 25 years ago when I last lived in Richmond.
