The Southern Strategy Revisited

The Southern Strategy Revisited PDF Author: Joseph A. Aistrup
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813183928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
The 1994 elections represented a watershed year for southern Republicans. For the first time since Reconstruction, they gained control of a majority of national seats and governorships. Yet, despite these impressive gains, southern Republicans control only three of twenty-two state legislative chambers and 37 percent of state legislative seats. Joseph A. Aistrup addresses why this divergence between the national and subnational levels persists even after GOP national landslides in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1994. Explanations for this divergence lie in the interaction between the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" -a set of coherent ideological tactics designed to lure southern whites to support GOP candidates-and the Republicans' top-down party development efforts. Aistrup analyzes the historical evolution of the Republican Southern Strategy from Goldwater in 1961 to the "Contract with America" in 1994. Examining the roles of ideology, intra party politics, gerrymandering, and Democratic incumbency in Republican top-down advancement, he predicts the extent to which these will remain significant obstacles to GOP success in subnational elections after 1994. Aistrup reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Southern Strategy as it relates to candidate ideology and examines the influences of Republican victories in national and statewide offices on the party's subnational advancement. He shows a clear connection between Republican presidential success and southern Republican advancement in local elections.

The Southern Strategy Revisited

The Southern Strategy Revisited PDF Author: Joseph A. Aistrup
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813183928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book

Book Description
The 1994 elections represented a watershed year for southern Republicans. For the first time since Reconstruction, they gained control of a majority of national seats and governorships. Yet, despite these impressive gains, southern Republicans control only three of twenty-two state legislative chambers and 37 percent of state legislative seats. Joseph A. Aistrup addresses why this divergence between the national and subnational levels persists even after GOP national landslides in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1994. Explanations for this divergence lie in the interaction between the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" -a set of coherent ideological tactics designed to lure southern whites to support GOP candidates-and the Republicans' top-down party development efforts. Aistrup analyzes the historical evolution of the Republican Southern Strategy from Goldwater in 1961 to the "Contract with America" in 1994. Examining the roles of ideology, intra party politics, gerrymandering, and Democratic incumbency in Republican top-down advancement, he predicts the extent to which these will remain significant obstacles to GOP success in subnational elections after 1994. Aistrup reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Southern Strategy as it relates to candidate ideology and examines the influences of Republican victories in national and statewide offices on the party's subnational advancement. He shows a clear connection between Republican presidential success and southern Republican advancement in local elections.

The Long Southern Strategy

The Long Southern Strategy PDF Author: Angie Maxwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190265965
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
In The Long Southern Strategy, Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields trace the consequences of the GOP's decision to court white voters in the South. Over time, Republicans adopted racially coded, anti-feminist, and evangelical Christian rhetoric and policies, making its platform more southern and more partisan, and the remodel paid off. This strategy has helped the party reach new voters and secure electoral victories, up to and including the 2016 election. Now,in any Republican primary, the most southern-presenting candidate wins, regardless of whether that identity is real or performed. Using an original and wide-ranging data set of voter opinions, Maxwell and Shields examine what southerners believe and show how Republicans such as Donald Trump stoke support inthe South and among southern-identified voters across the nation.

The Long Southern Strategy

The Long Southern Strategy PDF Author: Angie Maxwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190265973
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. However, that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the "Long Southern Strategy." In the wake of Second-Wave Feminism, the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, particularly women. And when the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention became increasingly fundamentalist and politically active, the GOP tied its fate to the Christian Right. With original, extensive data on national and regional opinions and voting behavior, Maxwell and Shields show why all three of those decisions were necessary for the South to turn from blue to red. To make inroads in the South, however, GOP politicians not only had to take these positions, but they also had to sell them with a southern "accent." Republicans embodied southern white culture by emphasizing an "us vs. them" outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, encouraging defensiveness, and championing a politics of retribution. In doing so, the GOP nationalized southern white identity, rebranded itself to the country at large, and fundamentally altered the vision and tone of American politics.

The Origins of the Southern Strategy

The Origins of the Southern Strategy PDF Author: Bruce H. Kalk
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739102428
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The Origins of the Southern Strategy is a detailed study of the rise of two-party competition in South Carolina during the mid-twentieth century. In 1950, when the study begins, there was for all practical purposes no functioning Republican party in that state, nor was there much of one anywhere in the deep South. During the two decades covered by this study, the interplay between two clear factions--economic and racial conservatives--shaped the growth of the party. Bruce H. Kalk amply demonstrates the implications of these developments for the rightward shift in national politics and charts their effect on the resurgence of assertive economic conservativism, as a new southern base became the core of the Republican party's presidential strategies after 1968.

New Left Revisited

New Left Revisited PDF Author: John Campbell McMillian
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592137978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Starting with the premise that it is possible to say something significantly new about the 1960s and the New Left, the contributors to this volume trace the social roots, the various paths, and the legacies of the movement that set out to change America. As members of a younger generation of scholars, none of them (apart from Paul Buhle) has first-hand knowledge of the era. Their perspective as non-participants enables them to offer fresh interpretations of the regional and ideological differences that have been obscured in the standard histories and memoirs of the period. Reflecting the diversity of goals, the clashes of opinions, and the tumult of the time, these essays will engage seasoned scholars as well as students of the '60s.

Votes for Women

Votes for Women PDF Author: Jean H. Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190284730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In Votes For Women, Jean H. Baker has assembled an impressive collection of new scholarship on the struggle of American women for the suffrage. Each of the eleven essays illuminates some aspect of the long battle that lasted from the 1850s to the passage of the suffrage amendment in 1920. From the movement's antecedents in the minds of women like Mary Wollstonecraft and Frances Wright, to the historic gathering at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the civil disobedience during World War I orchestrated by the National Woman's Party, the essential elements of this tumultuous story emerge in these finely-tuned chapters. So too do the themes and historical controversies about suffrage and its leaders, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and Alice Paul. Contributors focus on how the suffrage battle was interwoven with constitutional issues at the federal and state level and how the suffrage struggle played out in different regions, especially the West and the South, as well as the activities of opponents to women's voting. Baker's introductory essay sets the stage for revisiting suffrage by making explicit the similarities and differences in interpretations of suffrage and shows how the movement intersected with other events in American history and cannot be studied in isolation from them. This volume is essential reading for those interested in American politics and women's formal participation in it.

The Persuadable Voter

The Persuadable Voter PDF Author: D. Sunshine Hillygus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831598
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The use of wedge issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration has become standard political strategy in contemporary presidential campaigns. Why do candidates use such divisive appeals? Who in the electorate is persuaded by these controversial issues? And what are the consequences for American democracy? In this provocative and engaging analysis of presidential campaigns, Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields identify the types of citizens responsive to campaign information, the reasons they are responsive, and the tactics candidates use to sway these pivotal voters. The Persuadable Voter shows how emerging information technologies have changed the way candidates communicate, who they target, and what issues they talk about. As Hillygus and Shields explore the complex relationships between candidates, voters, and technology, they reveal potentially troubling results for political equality and democratic governance. The Persuadable Voter examines recent and historical campaigns using a wealth of data from national surveys, experimental research, campaign advertising, archival work, and interviews with campaign practitioners. With its rigorous multimethod approach and broad theoretical perspective, the book offers a timely and thorough understanding of voter decision making, candidate strategy, and the dynamics of presidential campaigns.

The Electoral Origins Of Divided Government

The Electoral Origins Of Divided Government PDF Author: Gary Jacobson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000316335
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
Is divided government—a Republican president and a Democratic Congress—the product of diminished competition for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives? In this groundbreaking study, Gary C. Jacobson uses a detailed analysis of the evolution of competition in postwar House elections to argue that the problems Republicans face in seeking House seats are political rather than structural. With abundant graphic illustration, he shows that divided government is only one piece of a much broader electoral pattern that is creating new opportunities as well as new barriers to partisan change in the House, He examines shifts in the incumbency advantage, campaign finance practices, the "swing ratio," and other related phenomena, but he turns up little evidence that they are to blame for divided government. More important, he argues, are trends in partisan opposition: the quality of candidates, campaigns, issues, and career strategies. As individual candidates and campaigns have become more important in winning elections, the weakness of Republican House candidacies has prevented the party from taking more seats away from the Democrats. Jacobson contends that the House is not nearly as insulated from electoral change as recent elections might suggest. The notion that House elections are no longer capable of reflecting popular preferences is, he concludes, simply wrong.

Politics and Religion in the White South

Politics and Religion in the White South PDF Author: Glenn Feldman
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Politics, while always an integral part of the daily life in the South, took on a new level of importance after the Civil War. Today, political strategists view the South as an essential region to cultivate if political hopefuls are to have a chance of winning elections at the national level. Although operating within the context of a secular government, American politics is decidedly marked by a Christian influence. In the mostly Protestant South, religion and politics have long been nearly inextricable. Politics and Religion in the White South skillfully examines the powerful role that religious considerations and influence have played in American political discourse. This collection of thirteen essays from prominent historians and political scientists explores the intersection in the South of religion, politics, race relations, and southern culture from post–Civil War America to the present, when the Religious Right has exercised a profound impact on the course of politics in the region as well as the nation. The authors examine issues such as religious attitudes about race on the Jim Crow South; Billy Graham’s influence on the civil rights movement; political activism and the Southern Baptist Convention; and Dorothy Tilly, a white Methodist woman, and her contributions as a civil rights reformer during the 1940s and 1950s. The volume also considers the issue of whether southerners felt it was their sacred duty to prevent American society from moving away from its Christian origins toward a new, secular identity and how this perceived God-given responsibility was reflected in the work of southern political and church leaders. By analyzing the vital relationship between religion and politics in the region where their connection is strongest and most evident, Politics and Religion in the White South offers insight into the conservatism of the South and the role that religion has played in maintaining its social and cultural traditionalism.

Nikki Haley's Lessons from the New South

Nikki Haley's Lessons from the New South PDF Author: Wanda Little Fenimore
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666923524
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
In Nikki Haley's Lessons from the New South, Wanda Little Fenimore traces the resurrection of the phrase “New South” with South Carolina’s former governor, Nikki Haley. Through analyzing speeches, Fenimore demonstrates how politicians use historical terms in new ways that obscure their roots but remain oppressive in the twenty-first century. This book reveals how Nikki Haley manufactured her “New South” as progressive, and forward-thinking, yet the term functions as a form of inferential racism, ultimately, reproducing traditional conservatism rooted in white supremacy. Scholars of rhetoric, communication, political science, and women’s studies will find this book of particular interest.