Southern Strategy was it racist???

Original post: "so i'm posting on a forum arguing over how the southern strategy wasn't necessarily racist but that republican policies are race neutral so therefore it was just a consequence that racists would choose the race neutral party over the party of welfare...

but then somebody mentions kevin phillips and it seems his comments were pretty intentional...but I also find out he wrote anti-bush books and isn't a real conservative...how should I respond?"

Free Republic responds:

"so therefore it was just a consequence that racists would choose the race neutral party [Republican] over the party of welfare..."

Huh? The racist are in the Democratic Party!

Why would anyone vote for the Democratic Party?

DEMOCRATS: Supported slavery
REPUBLICANS: Abolished slavery

DEMOCRATS: Created Jim Crow Laws
REPUBLICANS: Abolished Jim Crow Laws

DEMOCRATS: Voted barely 50% to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964
REPUBLICANS: Voted over 80% to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964

DEMOCRATS: Continue enslavement via the narcotic welfare plantation for votes
REPUBLICANS: Color blind and judge people by individual merit and effort.

The Democratic Party has a horrific history and continue
that record even today.

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according to them anything before 1964 doesn’t matter and they claim that the party platforms switched and reversed in the 60’s which is laughable...but i’m guessing its a myth created in pubic school

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The southern strategy was based on a legitimate dislike of forced school busing, high crime, runaway welfare state and affirmative action (quotas). Just because the KKK also complains about those things dos not make all souterners racist.

What on earth is racist about being opposed to the atrocity called forced busing? The liberals cannot answer that question. Instead they try to mind read southern voters and assume they are racist. They see evidence of racism where there is none.

It is a vile, despicable act to accuse someone of racism without proof.

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The only thing that switched in the 60s were the blacks from Republicans to Democrats once the Democrats became the Welfare caretakers, i.e. “free stuff.”

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In 1863, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt bought them back.

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Liberals call Nixon's original "southern strategy" - courting typical democrat southern strongholds in the 60's rascist because Nixon and the GOP appealed to their bigotry. That is a total lie. Basically, Nixon appealed to southern family values after the hippie, hate-America, hard left took over democrat party in 1968.

So over a period of time, these southern family value type voters gravitated to the GOP. The democrap party routinely runs on San Francisco values, anti-family, hate Christians, gays, anti-guns, high taxes and it just did not sit well with southerners who live the opposite.

Recently, the democrat party has gotten away with faking like they have conservative values, but they don't.

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This is just a variant on the "Were the Nazis on the Left or the Right?" The question here is "Which party has a stronger history of racism: Democrats or Republicans?"

Opinions are divided, and people see what they want to see so these discussions usually just result in spinning of wheels.

My own opinion is that the National Socialists had an exclusively Collectivist viewpoint (group identity politics) and cared nothing for Individual rights, so I have to place them on the Left.

Similarly, the Democrats were pushing to keep blacks in their place (through gun control, among other things) from the time before the Civil War, up through their identity as Copperheads (sabotaging the war effort -- gee that sounds familiar) during the war and creating Jim Crow laws and the KKK after the Civil War. George Wallace was a Democrat, Bull Connor was a Democrat. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, the NAACP gave a special war to one congressman for his hard work: he was a Republican. Martin Luther King was a Republican. Jackie Robinson was a Republican.

But some folks will never buy any of this. Hurricane Katrina happened because Republican George Bush hates black people -- didn't you get the memo?

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The Democratic Party has a horrific record on race, and its one they run away from every day. If I were Democrat I’d deny and run away from it too.

But once race was eliminated as a factor, many southernors simply joined the GOP because it was the stronger by far on national defense. If race is no longer an issue for you, and you’re anti-communist, and you’re strong on military defense, and you’re basically a constitutionalist, then there is little reason for you to remain in the Democratic Party.

Some of the old Dixie-crats left for the GOP, but most stayed behind. The Dems like to claim that the few crossed over because the GOP changed its position on race, but its the opposite. The GOP never changed, its right where it always was. The majority of the Dixiecrats stayed in the Democratic Party. The ones who left did so because they essentially adopted our view. Once race was no longer their defining issue, there were other much more important issues. Defense. Anti-communism. Constitutionalism.

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its so much more complicated than the race hustlers and the media have tried to paint it as, but if your in college you got these ponytail professors feeding you this garbage it just makes me angry

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1964 is the pivotal year in which Republicans provided the margin for the passage of the Civil Rights Act which many southern Democrats opposed - so if a lot of southerners transferred to the Republicans after that it's hard to see why they'd be labeled "racists" - in fact many of them changed parties because they saw Democrats supporting the worst elements of that Act - the quotas/special favors which it was leading toward - even Hubert Humphrey, sponsor of the bill, was so concerned that he promised that if it ever lead to special treatment for any minority he would "eat a copy of the bill" - he didn't live long enough to keep his promise......