Ascent of the Republican Party
By Russell Cole
After reading the opinion piece by Rev. Marty Fields, entitled “Religion and Culture: Democrats and the ‘God gap’ (http://www.leadercall.com/),” I feel the need to bring attention to the fact that his assessment of Democratic Party failures in the South indicates a profound ignorance of the historical realities underlying the Republican rise to Southern political dominance, during the final decades of the 20th Century.
Rev. Fields suggests that it is religion that has alienated the American South from the platform of the Democratic Party. Historically, nothing could be further from the truth. The South had remained, to a large extent, in support of the Democratic Party even through the Kennedy Administration. Kennedy, of course, had campaigned as a secularist; a political strategy that was necessary at the time, due to America’s traditional apprehension of Catholicism, which Americans had interpreted to be at odds with values undergirding democracy.
The South became estranged from the Democratic Party following Johnson signing into law the civil rights legislation in the 1960s. It was at this pivotal movement that the New Deal coalition was broken; a system of alliances that was based upon shared class interests. Therefore, it was not religion that alienated the South from the Democratic Party; rather, it was white supremacy and the Democratic renunciation of it – a transformative speech act performed by Johnson – that disaffected Southern Whites from the Democratic Party.
Concurrently, the Republican Party, which had been a minority party for decades, seized upon the opportunity and adjusted its political rhetoric in order to appeal to Southern Whites. Goldwater, for instance, made the famous decision not to attempt to court African American voters. Reagan, when winning the Presidency, deployed the same tactic as Goldwater; only, Reagan went further in his attempt to appeal to Whites in the South. If you recall Reagan’s famous description of the “Cadillac driving welfare queen,” who apparently was going from welfare office to welfare office picking up checks, it is evident that Reagan was willing to go as far as possible – without using altogether explicit racial epitaphs – to appeal to the Jim Crow culture of the South.
Of course, there was no such thing as the mythic “Welfare Queen,” who drove “a Cadillac.” However, that is not the point. It was an encoded communication. White collar Northerners took the statement at face value. For them, Reagan’s complaint identified a convenient rationale to detest a progressive taxation system. After all, why should one have to pay taxes when the money is merely fueling corruption? For Southern Whites, however, the statement took on different significations. Reagan had designed his rhetoric to express a sympathetic commitment to Southern Whites, who felt resentment toward the Federal Government for forcibly contravening Southern provincial social practices when dismantling Jim Crow institutions.
If we analyze Reagan’s statement – keeping in mind that the expression can take on various semantic qualities, depending upon whom it is delivered – then the words are interpretable to mean something altogether different for Southern Whites. Obviously, “Cadillac,” and “Queen,” connoted “Black American.” The use of the word, “Welfare,” was a ploy to invoke an association with “Government.” To extrapolate, then, Reagan was translating his platform theme, consisting of the diminution of government, into terms that would resonate among Southern Whites. Reagan’s denunciation of welfare fraud was actually an indication that he would defer to States’ Rights, as opposed to federally intervening in order to ensure citizenship – along with its entailing privileges – for African Americans.
This was a brilliant rhetorical maneuver. It was designed to synergize the racial animosity of White Southerners with the underlying agenda that Reagan had in mind: The dismantling of the extensions of the welfare state, which was created by the New Deal and the Great Society. This governing principle – what amounted to a Neoliberal reform agenda – was at odds with the economic interests of Southerners. However, through his rhetoric, Reagan effectively presented his platform policies in a manner in which they failed to invoke economic apprehensions by Southern Whites; instead, inciting long held racial animosities toward African Americans, in addition to a contempt toward what was perceived as Northern intrusiveness.
Therefore, for people such as Rev. Fields to insist that it was religion that drove the South from the Democratic Party is self-delusional. It is time for Southerners to come to terms with their history. It might be unpleasant, but it will help to vanquish all of the obfuscation, clearing the way for informed and rational decision-making when planning for the future.
