No Southern Strategy in 1968

Calgacus

Electric Monk said:
Actually the primary reason for the South drifting away from the Democrats is that the Old Confederacy was basically conservative, and the Democratic Party was basically liberal. The Civil War and the New Deal obscured this reality (as did the conservative Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party) but Civil Rights pretty much finished off the weakening Democratic hold on the South.

Therefore Humphrey was certainly not assured of the South, especially given his own liberalness.
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What you mean is that the Democratic party moved to the liberal wing, while the South stayed conservative.
 

Michael E Johnson

Banned
Dean_the_Young said:
The word conservative in this context means something entirely different than in the modern political usage.
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I disagree completely. If the broad defintion of being conservative means being against change or if the more "modern political usage" of being conservative means being for limited government ( which is why Barry Goldwater and others in the GOP said they were against Civil Rights :rolleyes:) the South was conservative in every sense of the word and it did oppose Civil Rights-which the GOP pandered too and which is why the GOP is now dominant in the South.
 
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Wendell

Michael E Johnson said:
I disagree completely. If the broad defintion of being conservative means being against change or if the more "modern political usage" of being conservative means being for limited government ( which is why Barry Goldwater and others in the GOP said they were against Civil Rights :rolleyes:) the South was conservative in every sense of the word and it did oppose Civil Rights-which the GOP pandered too and which is why the GOP is now dominant in the South.
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Look at Goldwater's record on civil rights, and then roll your eyes;)
 

Dave Howery

Michael E Johnson said:
If the broad defintion of being conservative means being against change or if the more "modern political usage" of being conservative means being for limited government ( which is why Barry Goldwater and others in the GOP said they were against Civil Rights :rolleyes:.
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'Conservative' outside of politics does mean being against change. When referring to politics, it means a POV that favors smaller government, fewer foreign entanglements, fiscal responisibility (i.e., lower federal debt)... it does NOT mean 'against civil rights'... Don't start up that nonsense again of equating Conservative with racist...
 

Michael E Johnson

Banned
Many conservatives are quite fond of profiling. One of their favorites is that not all Muslims are terrorists but most terrorists are Muslim. Well I have learned one of my own- not all conservatives are racist but most racists are conservatives. Opposition to the civil rights movement and moves against racism didnt(and still dont) come from liberals .
 

Amerigo Vespucci

To get back on topic here, I rather like Beck's solution to the POD. It's elegant and seems to play relatively realistically.

My personal view about the end result of that situation is that you'll see a third "Southern" party stick around for much longer than OTL -- possibly into the mid-1980s. By that time, the segregation issue will have faded to the point that the issues dividing the three parties will be much less polarized -- unless you posit the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights to step right in and replace segregation as the leading controversy splitting the three parties.

If that's the case, I could see the "Southern" party as the reactionary/strong conservative party, the Republicans as the moderate/light conservative party, and the Democrats as the liberal/moderate party. It'd be an interesting situation.
 
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