Bobby Jindal and the 'Southern Strategy'

American Thinker ^ | October 29, 2007 | Andrew Walden

[neverdem]

A narrative has been constructed by Democrats and their media allies castigating Republicans as purveyors of a racist "Southern strategy" to explain the transition of the South from solidly Democrat to solidly Republican. If a tree can be judged by its fruit, this narrative is backwards.

Bobby Jindal, a second generation Indian-American, is going to be the new Republican Governor of Louisiana.  Although governors who are black have been elected in Virginia and Massachusetts, this election marks the first time the support of white Southern voters has propelled a non-white governor into office.  Jindal's election is evidence that the much-reviled Republican "Southern Strategy" has actually produced one of the greatest advances for civil rights in the history of the United States.

In 1872-73, almost one hundred thirty five years before Bobby Jindal, a black Union Army Captain, P. B. S. Pinchback, served for 35 days as Governor of Louisiana.  He was not elected, rising to the office after his predecessor had been impeached, but Pinchback and his Reconstruction-era Republican colleagues ruled over the South with the support of freed slaves and so-called ‘carpetbaggers'.  By the time Reconstruction was defeated as part of a dirty deal to settle the 1876 Presidential elections, Democrats had organized white Southerners to build what became known as the "Jim Crow" system of segregation. 

Black Republicans were disenfranchised, the carpetbaggers were driven out and Southern whites -- the Democrat Party base -- re-took political power.  The Democrats enforced their Jim Crow system through the Ku Klux Klan.  Segregation was not simply a policy of government, it was a policy carried out personally by millions of Southern whites.  The Republican Party simply did not exist in many Southern counties.  From 1876 until 1964, Republican presidential candidates won only a handful of electoral votes from the South.

During the Presidential election campaigns of 1964, 1968, and 1972 this all changed.  Civil Rights laws were enacted in 1964 and 1965 (albeit with a higher percentage of Republican than Democrat congressional support).  Leftists sealed their takeover at the Democrats' 1968 Chicago convention.  Segregation-minded Southern whites felt abandoned by the national party which had represented them not only through 90 years of Jim Crow, but also through the Democrat founding of the Confederacy and Democrat defense of slavery prior to secession.  Segregationists staged a last-ditch effort to re-take their party with the 1972 George Wallace Presidential campaign, but to no avail.  Their days as part of the Democrat "solid South" were over.

Spotting political opportunity, Richard Nixon's 1968 Presidential campaign made a concerted effort to win over Southern voters.  It paid off.  Goldwater had only scratched the surface in 1964 carrying five southern states.  Nixon in 1968 carried six with another five going to the segregationist Wallace-Lemay ticket of the American Independent Party.  By 1972, Republicans swept all 15 Southern states.  Excepting Carter's 1976 southern win, the South has been strong GOP Presidential territory ever since.

Liberals have excoriated Republicans for the ‘southern strategy.'  Republican Linwood Holton employed a strategy of winning black votes to win election in 1970 as the first GOP governor of Virginia since Reconstruction.  Holton in 2002 called the southern strategy "not only morally bankrupt but short-sighted."  A Google search for the exact phrase "racist southern strategy" brings up 1,130 links.  By 2005, Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman was apologizing for the southern strategy saying some Republicans were "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization."

In a 1970 New York Times interview, Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips was blunt in describing the strategy he perfected,

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. 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. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Segregation under 90 years of Democrat rule was the ultimate big government exercise -- controlling where individuals ate, slept and even where they used the toilet.  White southerners were expected to enforce Jim Crow.  But forty-three years after Goldwater, southern whites have been transformed into small government, low tax, "leave me alone" voters.  De jure segregation is dead, killed in part by the fact that for the first time in American history, southern whites now follow a political leadership which is not based on physically enforcing the color bar. 

Black representation in Congress has never been larger -- exactly as Phillips said would be necessary to make sure southern white Democrats don't "backslide".  By "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization" Republicans have defeated 200 years of pro-slavery and then pro-segregation Democrat politics.  In order "to benefit politically from racial polarization" Republicans have worked to maximize black congressional representation by creating black-majority congressional districts.  These efforts transform the Democratic Party, keep segregationist Democrat politicians neutered, and drive southern whites away from the Democrat organizations.  The Republicans in 43 years have produced results that are precisely opposite the Democrats' results from their nearly 200 years of "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization."   

Racial hatred does not arise spontaneously.  It is cultivated by political leaders seeking to use it for their own purposes.  The divorce of white Southerners from the political leaders who kept them dependent on Democrats to continue segregation has changed an ugly socio-political dynamic dating back to the foundations of the United States.  This does not mean that racism has been eliminated-far from it.  But Bobby Jindal's election is the latest evidence of the transformation -- in a single generation -- of what had been the voting block of reaction and racism through all preceding American history. The Republican southern strategy has produced one of the greatest victories ever won for the cause of civil rights in America.    

[padre35]

I don’t know what to make of the article neverdem, are they saying that Jindal’s victory is a repudiation of the “Southern Strategy” or that the Republican Party has abandoned that strategy or what?

[John Jorsett]

The usual strategy for the Dems in these situations is to accuse the minority of being a race traitor or not a "real ________" (fill in the blank).

[neverdem]

I don’t know what to make of the article neverdem, are they saying that Jindal’s victory is a repudiation of the “Southern Strategy” or that the Republican Party has abandoned that strategy or what?

Read the last paragraph again, please.

Notice when Wikipedia changed the color scheme indicating which party in which state got the electoral votes. If you didn't know better you would think it was 1980 that the drive by media made the switch from traditional GOP blue to the red of traditional pinkos in the Cold War. The drive by media made actually made the switch in 2000. Don't trust Wikipedia on anything political.

Excepting Carter's 1976 southern win, the South has been strong GOP Presidential territory ever since.

The first bolded string means the link in the article to the 1976 electoral map in which Georgia was colored red.

The bolded GOP means the link to the 1980 electoral map in which Georgia was colored blue.

[Huck]

I don’t get this article at all. You can’t compare someone from India to an American negro. It’s apples and oranges, unless you see them all as “darkies.” And if anything, it seems that greater representation was a cynical byproduct of a cynical strategy. Are we supposed to celebrate this? Seems like politics at its most vile to me. Brings to mind that unfortunate scar on Reagan’s record...opening his campaign with wink and a nod to the racists.

[sinanju]

I also find the article incoherent. Bobby Jindal was a serious candidate in the ‘03 gubernatorial election. Blanco defeated him through a blatant tribal rather than racial appeal per se. Her campaign spots always gave her full name—Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and dropped dark hints as to his religion. He only fell short by a few and easily won a congressional seat shortly thereafter.

Well, we all know what happened in the summer of ‘05. Blanco had a meltdown, Nagin threw tantrums and Louisianans got their noses rubbed in their shortcomings with all the world watching. Jindal, on the other hand, rose to the occasion in spades and did everything a mere congressman could for his state.

Louisiana decided that after sixty-odd years they could no longer afford “colorful” characters in Baton Rouge and decided to go against tradition.

Here’s hoping Bobby’s the face of a new Republican leadership. Lord knows we could use one.

[neverdem]

I don’t get this article at all. You can’t compare someone from India to an American negro. It’s apples and oranges, unless you see them all as “darkies.”

Start again with the first paragraph. One of the Justice Brothers likes to use the term people of color in distinction to just Caucasians.

And if anything, it seems that greater representation was a cynical byproduct of a cynical strategy. Are we supposed to celebrate this? Seems like politics at its most vile to me.

Malaise on the Right

Nixon and Reagan brought their Democrats into camp on social and security issues. First was anti-Communism and opposition to the antiwar movement tearing Democrats apart. Second was law-and-order, which meant standing up to urban rioters and campus radicals. Third was social conservatism, defending traditional values in the moral and cultural revolution of the 1960s.

On civil rights, the Nixon position was desegregation, yes, social engineering, no. Nixon integrated the Southern schools that had been 90 percent segregated when LBJ went home. While opposing busing for racial balance, Nixon grudgingly obeyed the court orders.

Robert Putnam: Diversity Is Our Destruction

Robert Putnam's paper, "E Pluribus Unum..." which I linked, is quite instructive, and he's a liberal from Harvard.

[padre35]

Gov Jindal was on Fox News Sunday, he seems well informed, not the lightening rod type, reform minded.

He mentioned School Vouchers, low taxes stimulating economic growth etc. I liked him, he is a tad by the book though.

Gov Jindal will be a featured speaker at the RNC convention in Minneapolis in 2008, he is a rising star to be sure.

[neverdem]

Check the first link in comment# 7 and the text below it for a description of what was in the Southern Strategy.

[Huck]

lol. Buchanan and Rev. Jackson are the support for your arguments? Come on. I reject the term "people of color." I have freckles. Does that make me a person of splotchy color? It's an offensive, meaningless term. Don't you agree? An American black and an Indian American are apples and oranges. It's not even debatable.

As for PJB, he's just wrong. He worked for Nixon, didn't he? So maybe that's his motive for lying. But the words of the actual Nixon campaign guy speak for themselves.

Again, the article is very strange. It seems to be celebrating and rationalizing what was a cynical, sick ploy.

[neverdem]

Again, the article is very strange. It seems to be celebrating and rationalizing what was a cynical, sick ploy.

Were you aware of what was going on in the 1960's, or did you read about it after the fact?

[Huck]

Is this a misquote?

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. 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. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”[3]

[neverdem]

Like I said earlier on the thread, don't trust Wikipedia for political references.

Reference 3. ^ Boyd, James (May 17, 1970) "Nixon's Southern strategy: 'It's All in the Charts'". New York Times. p. 215.

Page 215 of the NY Times makes no sense to me. How old are you, if I may ask?

[neverdem]

Some folks may have trouble with this Jindal article. At least some comments on the thread show why using Wikipedia to discuss politics is problematic.

Are Senate Offices Lying To You? - -- Some are claiming there is no Veterans Disarmament Act! Check the links in the excerpt at least. It's scary.

Malaise on the Right

Health Sector Puts Its Money on Democrats

From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

This article wasn’t what I expected by the title... But I will promise this: Bobby Jindal will be a very formidable presidential candidate in 8 years. If he can transform Louisiana the way I expect him to, there may be no stopping him.

[Delacon]

“Republicans have worked to maximize black congressional representation by creating black-majority congressional districts.”

Bull. Its called gerrymandering and it was never done to “maximize black congressional representation”. Say you have 4 congressional districts with blacks comprising a large minority in each district. In order to avoid having to answer to this minority constituency in each district, the politicos redefine the districts so that they have one solid black district and 3 solid white districts. 3 votes to 1 beats 4 maybe votes in any legislature. Same goes for electoral politics. 3 solid white votes out of 4 beats 4 votes that have to appeal to black issues come election time in any election. Its not just a race based strategy though. Anytime you know the voting patterns of a given area, you can redefine the districts so you “maximize” the amount of districts that vote in your party’s favor. Both parties do this but to say that anyone has ever done this to “maximise black congressional representation” is selling you a load of crap.

[RobbyS]

...he is a rising star to be sure.

If he had won in 'o3" and had been in charge with Katrina, he might be contending for the VP spot on the Republican ticket. As it is, at age 36 he has twenty years to make his mark on the national consciousness. As it is, his person record is far more impressive than Obama's and he is far more authentically American.

[RobbyS]

The effect, of course, to do this. The natural result of concentrating people of a certain type in a district is to produce congressmen with the same background. Historically, Catholic congressmen come from Catholic districts; ditto, Mormons and Jews. Generally, the representative is representative of the voters.

[padre35]

In a way I’m glad he didn’t win in 03, too much success to fast can cause problems like locking thinking into one pattern that is repeated over and over again.

He has a really hard job just making LA a functioning govt, and dealing with Katrina’s damage.

But now, if he is successful, the narrative will be “Young Minority GOPer cleans up a Democratic Mess in LA”

And that is one heck of a great narrative!

[RobbyS]

The Katrina cleanup he can manage, because that means working more efficiently a system that ought to be working better. Cleaning up LA politics on the other hand, is a job for Heracles. Rats and Dims are equally culpable.