The great lie repeated again. Nixon's strategy was to let the race-baiters on one side (Dixiecrats) and the ultra-left anti-war kooks on the other take the extremes while he appealed to and captured the great majority in between.
I've always been mystified as to why the big lib media would think down-to-earth, socially conservative , patriotic Southerners would vote for a candidate like McGovern who wanted to change the country into the antithesis of everything they stood for.
Did they really believe Southerners (or conservative voters everywhere) were going to vote for a leftist agenda? That so-called evil "southern strategy" was just liberal furor at their favortite leftist pol McGovern not getting elected.