Prof. Blanchard notes the race factor in the so-called "Southern strategy" by Republicans of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The dominance of race in the strategy's success was refuted with some success by Gerald Alexander some time ago in the Claremont Review of Books. Alexander's argument is essentially that if race was the primary reason the South drifted Republican in the 1970s and 80s, then why was it that the least segregationist areas were the first to switch Republican and the most segregationist the last to switch? Let's not be naive. Surely race had something to do with the rise of Republicans in the South. But Alexander's evidence suggests that other factors, such as the political arousal of evangelical Christians concerned with cultural matters, were more at play in this phenomenon.
Recent Comments