The truth is one doesn't even have to read droopy's links to know his response. He, like other people ignorant of history, claim that since Nixon himself did not stake out opposition to the civil rights movement, the Southern Strategy is all a lie. All this shows is that they do not really understand the strategy.
Kevin Phillips, who was as important to the Southern Strategy as Lee Atwater, revealed some of this in his interview "It's All in the Charts". I can only find a pdf of the article which makes it difficult to quote using copy and paste, so I'm using another article that have cited him as reference.
http://suite101.com/article/the-souther ... on-a269466The 'Southern Strategy' is a term used to describe the Republican's method of winning previously unattainable votes of white Americans in the formerly Democrat South, during the early 20th century. The term is attributed (although he really just popularised it) to Kevin Phillips, a former Richard Nixon campaign adviser. Phillips stated to the Republican Party that there was an opportunity to polarise the Southern voting, after seeing the Democrat Party fill with black votes. By standing for the idea of 'state-rights,' without being totally against integration, Phillips hoped to attract anti-black whites to vote Republican.
During a 1970 New York Times interview, Phillips said: "The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are".
Richard Nixon’s Implementation Of The Southern Strategy
The Southern Strategy was implemented in the 1968 Richard Nixon-Hubert Humphrey election. In the Southern states, voters were concerned about state order and law enforcement. There were frequent reports of rioting young Americans burning army draft cards and US flags in response to the Vietnam War, African-American students rioting and the 'hippy movement', drugs, and 'free love'.
All of these factors concerned the Southern white population, a deeply Christian and patriotic part of America: the reports scandalized many and created a concern about law and order. After the assassination of Martian Luther King, the Civil Rights movement became a more freely violent movement with the relationship between whites and blacks becoming more fractious. Other causes of unrest were the long and unpopular Vietnam War, and the notion of Black Power.
The Nixon campaign spotted the problems and disruption amongst Democrat supporters and sought to exploit and tap into previously unreachable votes. Nixon began his 1968 campaign on the message of 'state rights' and 'law and order' and it proved popular; he picked up Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Whilst Humphrey the Democrat candidate managed to hold Texas, the other Southern states were won by an independent candidate George Wallace, who did slightly negate Nixon's Southern Strategy by being almost explicitly opposed to integration and black Civil Rights.
1972 Election Campaign Policy
The Southern Strategy proved itself an effective tool in the Republican campaign arsenal in the 1968 election; it was to be even more influential in the 1972 presidential campaign. Nixon managed to win every state in the Union except Massachusetts, taking over 70% of the popular vote in the Southern states, with an overall percentage of 61% of the national vote.
Even though he appealed strongly to white Southerners, Richard Nixon portrayed himself as a moderate, not an anti civil rights candidate, which allowed him to maintain the Republican wins in other states. He gained a cemented majority in the Electoral College because he was able to appear reasonable to many Americans. The Southern Strategy talked about integration and Civil Rights subtly through 'states' rights' and 'law and order', amongst other smaller issues that were relevant for voters in the South.
Cultural Change Across America
The evolution of the Southern Strategy was a much debated topic, however, once civil rights became accepted across America it was obviously detrimental and resulted in a huge backlash for a party that based its campaign strategy on opposition to it. Since the 1972 election, state rights have been maintained as an issue but under different titles and on a smaller scale. Larger concerns of voters, such as terrorism and the economy, have played integral roles in more recent campaigns.
The Republicans have continued to modify the Southern Strategy, as race issues have receded and been replaced by a division based on other cultural issues like abortion and religion in school. Many American political commentators feel that this progression and modernisation of the Southern Strategy that has maintained the cultural differences in voting has come to an end.
Source: Boyd, James (May 17, 1970). "Nixon's Southern Strategy: 'It's All in the Charts'". The New York Times. pp. 215.
Nixon could not take a stand against civil rights and integration. That would alienate liberal and moderate republicans, which were still allowed in the party at that point. But they still wanted to be able to exploit new opportunities in the south. Hence, the Southern Strategy relied primarily on code words - words that Southerners understood in a way that the rest of the country did not. In the South, words such as "states rights" and "nullification" ring a historical bell that the rest of the country is not in tune with, due to the south's unique history.
When conservatives opposed the civil rights act of 1964, part of their reasoning was based on states' rights. That means that states should have the right to determine these issues without interference from the federal government. Whatever philosophical justifications there may be for that stance, the reality is that the states in the South had long been using their power to continue oppressive actions against African Americans. Conservative opposition to the civil rights act would have allowed them to continue to do so.
I have lived in the South my entire adult life, with the minor exceptions of my mission and time at BYU. I am not saying that all Southerners are racist. I am saying that the South still has a higher degree of racial tension between whites and blacks than most other parts of the country. Perhaps it is not politically correct to say that aloud, but it is the truth. There are other parts of the country who have higher degrees of racial tension between Latinos and whites, or Native Americans and whites. The tendency towards racism is not limited to the South, but its expression there is largely towards African Americans. This is due to the high concentration of African Americans in the South (although some southern states, like Florida and Texas, likely also have Latino resentments). So although some may twist my words to say Southerners are a bunch of racists and are unique in that way, that is not what I am saying.
When I was a missionary in France, I noticed that the French people were very judgmental of Americans due to our racism towards African Americans, which they did not share. At the same time, I noticed some French people were racist towards people of mid-eastern descent. I think the reality is that racism infects most groups of people - it just has different targets, depending upon which "invader" one perceives as threatening the welfare of your own tribe.
So since the African-American population is higher in the south than in other parts of the country, it is natural that they become the "other" to blame for your own group's difficulties. It's not that there are more racists in the South than in other parts of the country. It's that the target of racists in the South are black, and we, as a country, notice that more readily than racism against Latinos due to our history.
What the Southern Strategy did was to find a way to appeal to those racists, while still being able to appeal to traditional republicans in other states. They found ways to "speak" to Southern racists that were hidden from others because they did not share the Southern history.
The problem for the republican party is that the African American population, better than any other group, is expert at detecting those code words.
