Southern strategy
In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the focus of the Republican party on winning U.S. Presidential elections by securing the electoral votes of the U.S. Southern states.Although the phrase Southern strategy is often attributed to Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it, but merely popularized it. In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be short-sighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
While Phillips was concerned with polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just with winning the white South, this was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to state-wide offices, the Senate and House, as legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. The strategy suffered a brief apparent reversal following Watergate, with broad support for the racially progressive Southern Democrat, Jimmy Carter in 1976. But with Ronald Reagan kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign proclaiming support for "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964's Freedom Summer, the Southern Strategy was back to stay. Although another Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton, would twice be elected President, winning a handful of Southern states, he did better outside the South, and would have won without carrying any Southern State.
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, traditionally a stronghold for the Democrats, became key swing states, providing the popular vote margins in 1960, 1968 and 1976. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for states' rights, which was a signal of opposition to federal civil rights legislation for blacks.[4]
Recently, the term has been used in a more general sense, in which cultural themes are used in an election — primarily but not exclusively in the American South. In the past, phrases such as "bussing" or "law and order" or "states' rights" were used as code words. Today, appeals largely focus on cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and religion. Yet, the use of the term, and its meaning and implication, are still hotly disputed.