Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s Operation Dixie in 1964, the Republican Party targeted disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party capitalized on white racial angst that threatened southern white control. However—and this is critical—that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” In the wake of Second-Wave Feminism, the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, and it politicized evangelical fundamentalist Christianity as represented by the Southern Baptist Convention. All three of those decisions were necessary for the South to turn from blue to red. To make inroads in the South, however, GOP politicians not only had to take these positions, but they also had to sell them with a southern “accent.” Republicans had to mirror southern white culture by emphasizing an “us vs. them” outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, depicting one’s way of life as under attack, encouraging defensiveness toward social changes, and championing a politics of vengeance. Over time, that made the party southern, not in terms of place, but in its vision, in its demands, in its rhetoric, and in its spirit. In doing so, it nationalized southern white identity, and that has changed American politics.
Amateur surfing on the south coast of São Paulo: lifestyle and work as factors of adherence to practice
