Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger
I think our modern GOP really owes its existence to Reagan the racist backlash to the Civil Rights Act. It was Reagan the fact that the federal government enforced anti-segregation laws and rulings, after all, [that] popularized [among racist white people] the notion that "Government is the problem" and [the GOP] used that mantra to aggressively push programs that directed government services away from helping the poor and middle class and toward making the rich ever richer.
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I don't think Reagan deserves the credit. Nixon started the Southern Strategy, and Reagan's approach just was the natural continuation.
Before the stretch of Truman*-LBJ, the federal government was a willing enforcer/abettor of Southern white supremacy. After the Warren Court and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government began dismantling the Southern system of white supremacy (it did, however, largely leave the Northern-style system of white supremacy intact). It's natural that they would turn against "government".
*With the racial progress obviously largely backloaded in that stretch