The final death of the "Southern Strategy"

“I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning” – Adlai E. Stevenson, 1900 – 1965. Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956.

The year 1968 witnessed the improbable political resurrection of one of America’s most controversial and divisive public figures, that of Richard M. Nixon. Having served eight years as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president, Nixon entered the campaign of 1960 confident that he had built enough of a track record, both nationally and internationally, to enable him assume the office that he felt was rightly his, that of President. His defeat to the debonair and charismatic Senator Kennedy left Nixon depressed and deeply resentful of the national media, who he felt had treated Kennedy with kid gloves during the campaign. Two years later, Nixon lost badly to Pat Brown in the race for Governor of California. Feeling humiliated and that he again had been shafted by the press, he rounded on the media during his last press conference, announcing that he was retiring from public life and that “the media won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around” anymore. Nixon went into exile, becoming a partner in a New York law firm and a consultant to some of the biggest companies in America.

As 1968 dawned America was in upheaval. As the year would progress the combination of a hugely unpopular war, an almost equally unpopular president, student protests across the country, the assassinations of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy, the never ending strife and division caused by the debate over civil rights and a Democratic Party in turmoil created an opening for the return of Richard Nixon to the national stage. Recognizing that a majority of average Americans were tired of what they saw as the collapse of societal rules and law and order, Nixon ran on an agenda of ending the war in Vietnam and a return to the rule of law at home. Appealing to what the Republican Party termed ‘The Silent Majority’ (a term coined by a then 30 year old speech writing assistant to Nixon, and later a two time candidate for President himself, Pat Buchanan), the GOP of 1968 put into overdrive what it called its ‘Southern Strategy’, a campaign of playing on the racial prejudices and fears of middle of the road white Americans camouflaged as a return to law and order.

The strategy worked brilliantly. Traditional Democratic stronghold states, some of which had voted Democratic since the civil war, flipped from the blue to the red column on the electoral map. Across the country, white Americans, especially men, in the 30-50 age bracket turned out to vote as part of the silent majority and elected Richard Nixon. Most political commentators and historians agree that the ‘Southern Strategy’ of 1968 gave birth to the modern Republican party. Forty years later, states like Texas, North Carolina and Indiana still vote overwhelmingly Republican in national elections. In 2000 and 2004 in particular, Karl Rove expertly re-implemented the ‘Southern Strategy’ in the hope of establishing what he called a “permanent Republican majority’, only this time replacing racial fear with fears over national security and substituting communist with terrorist.

With less than three weeks to go to election day, the ‘Southern Strategy’ is analogous to a dying soldier, having received his last rites, waiting for the end to come. The irony is that the modern Republican Party, that was established forty years ago with the election of Richard Nixon, has come full circle and is now a victim of its own policies of division, racial prejudice, war mongering and top down economics and market deregulation. The Republican brand is so badly damaged that, as one Republican congressman eloquently put it earlier this summer, “if it were a dog food, it would be taken off the shelf”. The utterly discredited policies of two George Bush administrations, most symbolically characterized by the war in Iraq and the collapse of the nation’s financial institutions and stock market, coupled with the arrival on the national scene of a truly transformational candidate in Barack Obama, will in my opinion, result in a crushing defeat for the Republican party this November, at both a national and statewide level.

The appeal of the Obama brand, as well as dissatisfaction with the GOP, is being dramatically reflected in national and state polls. States that have consistently voted Republican are now very real opportunities for Barack Obama on election day. A majority of white males across the heartland of America, who traditionally have been fiscally conservative and Republican leaning in their voting patterns, are now switching their allegiance to the Democratic Party. States like Virginia, Wisconsin, Montana, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri and Colorado now show Obama with either small leads or have him neck and neck with John McCain. Earlier in October, in an unprecedented move before election day, John McCain pulled his campaign out of Michigan, essentially conceding the state to Barack Obama.

The states that are now being categorized as battleground states are those that have traditionally voted Republican for 40 years. Voters like my mother and father in law, Jim and Jennie Lombard of Ann Arbor, Michigan were exactly the type of folks who voted as part of Nixon’s silent majority in 1968. Now in their ‘70’s, Jim and Jennie, who were life-long Republicans, got sick and tired of the slash and burn policies of the GOP and became Democrats a couple of elections ago. This trend continued throughout the two Bush terms but now the Republican chickens are coming home to roost. It is not good news for the McCain campaign when they have to devote the majority of their resources to holding on to states that in any other election would be safe bets for them.

Remember after the bitter primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, many were predicting that a significant percentage of the disaffected Clinton voters would leave the Democratic Party and vote for John McCain? Remember how when John McCain announced that Sarah Palin was to be his VP running mate, those same commentators were effusive in their opinion that Palin would steal a large percentage of women votes from Obama? Well, it hasn’t transpired and it won’t happen at the ballot box. The latest poll of women voters that cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton in the primary show that by a margin of 88%-7% they will turn out for Barack Obama in November. In addition, the addition of a clearly under-qualified and tone deaf Palin has enraged millions of women across the country. College educated women, who have been successful in their careers, whether they be teachers, nurses, public servants or active in the private sector, across the board they see Sarah Palin as a insult to working women.

While all the national trends and polls clearly favor Obama at this point, there is a chance that we will experience was is termed “the Bradley effect”. This phenomenon, where voters who currently say that are willing to vote for a black candidate but at the last minute change their minds at the polls, is one that has been given much less credence during this election cycle due to the crossover appeal of Barack Obama. It is something to watch for however as the results come in on election day. Whatever happens, the ‘Southern Strategy’ that helped elect Republican presidents like Nixon and Bush 41 and the concept of the ‘permanent Republican majority’ espoused by Karl Rove that elected Bush 43, twice, is dead forever.

Stay tuned.