The 'Southern Strategy' Has Come Full Circle

The infamous "southern strategy" has now come full circle and has defeated national Republicans. This is a fascinating subject for those of us who grew up in the 'Jim Crow' south and watched and experienced it happening. It is highlighted nicely in this Washington Post piece.

The writer says: "Lyndon Johnson knew when he pushed through civil rights legislation that the Jim Crow South he’d grown up in would reject the Democratic Party for decades to come as a result. But somewhere, L.B.J. is smiling today, because the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy to capitalize on racial animus has now worked so completely that it’s turned back to bite Republicans, with Romney overwhelmingly losing the growing share of America’s minority voters. President Obama captured 93 percent of the African-American vote and 71 percent of the Latino vote."

Those numbers, and the insufficient number of white votes for Romney, were decisive for Barack Obama........44 years after Strom Thurmond went on TV across the South to encourage white southerners to vote for Nixon in '68, as Strom put it (speak through your nose with your best South Carolina accent) "because he can win, and he thinks just like George Wallace" (the Third Party candidate).......32 years after Ronald Reagan kicked off his '80 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, where 4 'freedom riders' were murdered in the 1960s (a state, ironically, where riots are occurring today at the state university over the election of Barack Obama).

We're getting there.  That 'arc of the moral universe' which Dr. King talked about, the one that Barack Obama acknowledges, but says WE have to bend, was bent a little further towards justice on November 6.  Yes, we're getting there. As well as LBJ, my guess is Dr. King is smiling too.