Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy

“If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics and find another business,” declared George Will on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

By J.M. Hamilton  (11-6-12)

Yesterday marked the 44^th anniversary of former President Nixon’s defeat of Mr. Hubert Humphrey.  Mr. Nixon won that election’s popular vote by the slenderest of margins (the complete inverse of the thorough stomping Mr. McGovern endured four short years later at the hands of then President Nixon).  More important than the result itself, the 1968 election achieved a built in GOP electoral hedge, in modern presidential campaigning, that was to last to the present day.  That hedge came to be known as the Southern strategy and counted on a white southern electorate to vote Republican and against the Democratic Party.  The Southern strategy, with the Bible belt superimposed in the same geographic region, has been a boon to the GOP and the bane of the DNC ever since.  To such an extent that even conservative Democrats need not apply for office, in nearly all southern districts.

Up until ’68, white southern voters were deeply committed to the Democratic Party, as the Republicans were associated with Mr. Lincoln, carpetbaggers, and the awesome power of the Federal government, versus state’s rights.  For approximately a hundred years, post-civil war, white southern constituents voted largely as a block with the Democratic Party.  The Kennedys and President Johnson changed all that with the passage of 1960’s civil rights legislation.

Sensing an opportunity and a wedge issue, the Nixon campaign swung in to embrace disaffected southern whites.  This voting block helped to cement every Republican President’s ascent and hold on power ever since, starting with Mr. Nixon.

But this year, this block’s power and the Southern strategy seems to be on the wane.  Mr. Romney’s showing in the polls, despite a still struggling economy and high unemployment figures, appears to illustrate that the strategy is doomed – if not now then certainly longer term.  Two generations later, demographic shifts account for much of the strategy’s failure; but seemingly the RNC’s endless ability to alienate nearly every other political group/stratification in society, other than the white male, plays an equally large role.

As an older generation of Americans fades, the RNC and future Republican candidates are going to have to broaden their horizons, if this party is to remain viable for executive office.  Pundits assertions that the GOP is an insurgency party, and really doesn’t govern well, are not without merit (see Mr. Bush – W).

There are many characteristic by which we can measure the rise and fall of political parties… but in my opinion, one particular measure is key.  That measure, call it the hypocrisy factor, is the number of revolutions a presidential candidate must turn to distance himself from his base, once he’s received the nomination, in order to be accepted by the mainstream (that is, to become electable).

Compare both presidential candidates – this season – on the basis of the hypocrisy factor, and judge for yourself.  If you are honest with yourself, Mr. Obama – although far from perfect – had to do very little to become acceptable to the mainstream, since his party’s nomination; while Mr. Romney has all but turned himself inside out, repeatedly, on nearly every issue, since obtaining his party’s prize.

What this tells us is not that Mr. Romney is a bad man, but rather, the thoughts and beliefs of the Republican core are a much greater distance from today’s mainstream then the thoughts and values of the Democratic base.  Factor in the very shrinking of that GOP base as time takes its toll, add in demographic trends, and you have a party that is facing marginalization if not extinction.

That is to say, that while the GOP has swung hard right, the values – particularly the social mores of the nation – have moderated or become left of center, vis a vis the GOP base.

The bottom line:  Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, no matter what one feels about it, has been highly successful for over forty years.  If this election represents a turning point in the efficacy of Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, then J.M.H. would argue that the GOP may have to risk jettisoning some extremist groups within their own party in order to remain viable and ultimately, electable to the presidency.

My guess is the GOP will fare much better without these elements.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013