Mississippi 1964?

[Fuzzy Bear]

Mississippi also elected Republican Prentiss Walker to Congress.  Had they put up Republican candidates in all 5 districts, they may have won them all.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Mississippi also elected Republican Prentiss Walker to Congress.  Had they put up Republican candidates in all 5 districts, they may have won them all.

That is complete and baseless speculation.  There is zero evidence that White Southerners felt an urgent need to throw their Democratic politicians out of office (politicians that voted against the CRA, while most Republicans in Congress voted for it, so even with a Goldwater nomination, that whole theory just never held up) after 1964.  The Civil Rights Act opened up politics in the South, there's no question about that; however, it didn't even kind of usher in an era of Republican dominance.  Not even close.

The 1964 gains in the Deep South would have been greater than they were if (A) Republicans had contested every Southern district and (B) provided funding for such candidates.

In 1964, the GOP elected a Congressman in MS.  Two (2) of its incumbent Democratic Reps, John Bell Williams and William Colmer, openly endorsed Goldwater. 

Alabama elected three (3) Republican Congressmen (out of , and they, too, would have swept the other Democrats out of office had they put up candidates and funded them.  Georgia elected its first Republican Congressman since Reconstruction in 1964 (Bo Callaway).  In SC, not just Strom Thurmond, but Rep. Albert Watson endorsed Goldwater and switched parties (although Watson's party switch didn't come until after the new Congress was sat.  In LA, David Treen won 49% against Hale Boggs.

The GOP didn't really try to field candidates in many Southern states because the GOP was not a functional party.  There were many Southerners who voted Republican for President by 1964, but almost all of them voted in the Democratic Primary for state and local offices, and their Democratic Congressmen had seniority which made them powerful.  But the results in MS and AL showed that in the Deep South, voters were angry enough with the national Democratic Party that they would have thrown out the baby with the bath water. 

I very much believe that if the 1964 election were close, and where the GOP didn't get blown out outside the South, there may have been enough momentum for House Republicans and Southern Conservatives to join together to form a new majority.  Perhaps the Southerners would have been folded into the GOP; the time was right for it.  It didn't happen because of the HUGE majority of seats the Democrats won nationwide. 

[Fuzzy Bear]

The Southern Republican Party has changed significantly over the years.  It's "mountain Republicans" (mainly in East Tennessee and Western NC) were somewhat moderate.  Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt (R-AR) was a moderate Arkansas Republican, as was Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller.  Gov. Linwood Holton (R-VA) was a moderate, pro-integration Republican who is Tim Kaine's father-in-law.  Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) was a pretty moderate Republican, as was TX Rep. Alan Steelman.  Former FL Sen. Paula Hawkins (R) was a moderate Republican, pro-consumer Republican in the Senate.  There have been a number of moderate Republican officeholders from the South over the years. 

This is certainly not the case today.  From 1994 on, the GOP in every Southern state has worked to become uniformily conservative.  There are no moderate Republicans in FL anymore.  There is less difference between Mountain Republicans and the rest of the Southern Republicans in their voting records than ever before.  And the result is that the white electorate has now become overwhelmingly Republican at all levels.  Politics in the South from 1968 to 2010 was a contest to see if the Democrats could form a coalition between blacks and working class whites to win at least its local and state elections.  The result of this politics was blacks having more leverage in Southern politics than in any other region in the country. 

That leverage is gone now.  Blacks in the South are reapportioned into safe districts where they can elect other blacks to represent them, but they will always be in the minority.  Indeed, the Democratic Party in the South is being looked upon as the "black party" with few viable white officeholders at any meaningful level. 

Is this about racism that never really died?  Some of it, yes.  Most of it, however, comes from the radically different experiences that blacks and whites in the South have that go to the heart of the current differences between the national parties.  Michael Barone talked about this in a previous issue of The Almanac of American Politics.  Whites in the Southern states have seen their standards of living raised, in their eyes, because of the workings of unfettered capitalism, of industries coming to the South and providing good paying jobs that afforded folks real prosperity.  Blacks in the South have experienced such prosperity as well, but blacks view this as the result of an activist, and even an intrusive, Federal Government.  This is where the real differences are today, because most Southern whites have accepted integration as a fait accompli and are not actively seeking to turn back the racial clock.