Flash Forward: The Rethuglicans' "Southern Strategy"

The push for civil rights for African Americans began after World War II, accelerated through the 1950s with school integration, and reached a culmination in the 1960s with boycotts, civil disobedience and the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. During this period, the Democratic Party underwent a transformation from a party anchored in the South, and in control of major urban areas nationwide, to a party of the suburbs and East and West coast cities. The Rethuglicans, meanwhile, morphed into a party with its base in the South and Midwest rural communities. Along with their regional metamorphosis came the political and cultural baggage from the Jim Crow years. As Rethuglican strategist Lee Atwater put it:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"

That was the essence of the Rethuglicans' "Southern Strategy," which has locked up Dixie for them for several election cycles. It was cemented in 1980 during the presidential campaign between Jimmy Carter and St. Ronnie of Hollywood, when St. Ronnie opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of 3 civil rights workers in the '60s, and spoke glowingly of "states' rights." Rethuglican politicians go to great lengths to distance themselves from overtly racist appeals, but the fact remains that, as Atwater outlined it, they've refined their message to a "dog whistle" that can be clearly heard by reactionaries and racists who want to return to the good old days.

UPDATE: The dog whistle seems to be effective: Think Progress notes that 28 percent of Rethuglicans sympathize with the Confederacy, as do 4 in 10 white Southerners. By a majority, Rethugs don't believe slavery was the cause for war. Party of Lincoln indeed.