That's a very good point. I seem to remember reading somewhere that when LBJ signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he said: "This will cost us [the Democrats] the South for a generation." He was being optimistic, it seems.
ETA: From Wikipedia's page on the
Southern Strategy, here's Nixon's political strategist, Kevin Phillips (from a 1970
New York Times article):
Quote:
|
"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 shortsighted 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."
|