Conclusion

The Long Southern Strategy was “long” because all three components of the strategy—choosing to exploit white racial angst, fear of feminism, and evangelical righteousness—were necessary to build a solid red base in the states of the old Confederacy. The stark polarization that resulted from these partisan choices unraveled the New Deal coalition. It also redivided white Americans not just along the Mason-Dixon line, but across the imagined fault line of southern identity. Thus, conservatism was redefined on the basis of white southern identity, and that definition became the baseline ideology of the Republican brand nationwide. A partisan sorting and realignment followed. As a result, the distribution of white Americans who harbor Racial Resentment or Modern Sexist attitudes or who identify as Christian fundamentalists is no longer even across the parties, and now, within the GOP, there is not enough opposition to fully suppress such prejudice or religiosity.

The Not-So-New Southern Religion

In an effort to win southern white voters, the GOP embraced the old southern religion turning the church faithful into the party loyal. They did so because in many parts of the South, the church remains the central institution defining, organizing, and politicizing its surrounding community. A “sacred canopy” drapes over the region, where there is a common cosmology that is intractable from southern white identity, including its reverence for white supremacy and patriarchy. In general, as a block, white southerners were more evangelical, Protestant, fundamentalist, and moralist than the rest of the country. The not-so-new southern religiosity satisfies an appetite for certainty, conformity, and even social status. As a means to solidify southern white support, the Long Southern Strategy framed southern white Christianity as under attack and cast the GOP as its protector, the price of which is increased cultural defensiveness, anxiety, fear, and distrust.

The Not-So-New Southern Sexism

The stereotype of southern white womanhood is anything but new, and manipulating it for political gain became a critical part of the Long Southern Strategy. The stereotype strips women of their power, intelligence, and strength, casting them as delicate and in need of constant protection. Antebellum southern white men manufactured that vulnerability to justify the strict laws segregating the races that would protect white women from predatory black men. This notion of southern white womanhood clashed with Second-Wave Feminism and the ultimately failed effort to secure an Equal Rights Amendment. The feminist loss, however, was a major GOP gain, as the Republican establishment realized that traditional gender roles could be the next way to appeal to southern white voters. In due course, the GOP’s messaging tapped into and perpetuated a Modern Sexism, characterized by a distrust of ambitious women, a demonization of feminism, and a growing resentment toward working women.

Introduction

The GOP’s Southern Strategy initiated the realignment of the South with the Republican Party by exploiting white racial anxiety about social changes to the southern racial hierarchy. However, the GOP’s success was not solely the result of its policy position on civil rights. Rather, that decision was part of a series of decisions the party made on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” White resentment toward a more level racial playing field, for example, was intensified by the threat of a level gender playing field, and the promotion of “family values” by anti-feminists paved the way for the Christian Right. Moreover, Republican candidates did not just campaign down South, they became “southern.” Throughout realignment, the power of southern identity was rarely taken into consideration, but for whites who proclaim themselves to be southern, that has been the only party that really mattered.

The Myth of the Social Conservative

The relationship between the GOP and the Christian Right became so fundamental to the party’s success that Republicans constantly had to maintain a sense of urgency regarding the country’s moral compass. Moreover, to retain the loyalty of southern white religious voters, the GOP not only prioritized social conservative policy issues like gay marriage, but it also repackaged “secular” issues regarding the environment, the economy, and even war as issues of religious-political concern. By doing so, the GOP created a religious-partisan brand that dissolved denominational differences, overcame third-party challenges from Christian Right leaders, and softened the Christian authenticity litmus test for candidates. To that end, the religiosity of the contemporary GOP is not solely a reflection of the rising saliency of moral issues; rather, via the Long Southern Strategy, almost every issue became part of the evangelical cosmology in a spirit of Christian nationalism inherent in southern white identity.

Southern White Fundamentalism

The fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that began in 1979 provided the GOP the opportunity to close the deal with white southern voters. Fundamentalist members, anxious over social changes, successfully executed a decades-long plan to seize control of reshape the SBC to reflect their extremist views. They exiled moderates from the denomination almost entirely and re-codified the inferior status of women in the church; biblical inerrancy and absolutism triumphed over interpretation and compromise. The absolutism in terms of religious doctrine gave way to an absolutism in public policy, hyper-partisanship, and demand for political action. In order to court southern evangelical voters, the Republican Party took increasingly hardline stances on issues like gay marriage and abortion under the banner of family values, a slogan cribbed from the anti-feminists who had been propping up white supremacy in the South for generations.

The Myth of the Gender Gap

Taking their cue from anti-feminist leader Phyllis Schlafly, the GOP celebrated traditional gender roles and demonized feminism as part of a Long Southern Strategy. The Republican Party dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform in 1980, which many feminists believed would cost the party women voters. When the gender gap emerged during the next election cycle with more women than men voting for Democrats, a myth took hold. However, the gender gap is not universal because anti-feminism and Modern Sexism remain deeply burrowed into southern white identity where they have been reinforced religiously and politicized continually by the GOP. When geography and identity are brought to bear on the myth of the gender gap, it looks remarkably different. Where it does not disappear completely, it is reversed, with southern white women proving more conservative than southern white men and dramatically more so than white American women as a whole.

Southern White Patriarchy

The pedestal upon which southern white womanhood stands is buttressed by an equally sacred southern white masculinity characterized by a distorted notion of honor, a penchant for violence, and male righteousness and superiority. Thus, Second-Wave Feminism spurred not only a defiant anti-feminism with which many white southern men and women identified, but also a men’s rights campaign that portrayed men as victims of reverse discrimination and promoted a dominant and defensive masculinity that was very familiar to southern white audiences. This misogyny, along with a religious assertion of manhood that was popular in southern evangelical churches, provided Republicans with an opportunity to build their partisan brand among white southerners. Often masked by romanticized notions of chivalry, southern white masculinity depends upon a patriarchal system and the traditional gender roles inherent in that system. The GOP would appeal to both as it chased southern white voters throughout the Long Southern Strategy.

The Not-So-New Southern Racism

During and after the Civil Rights Movement, GOP leaders capitalized on white racial angst to attract southern white voters. However, in order to do so without alienating Republicans nationwide, the GOP utilized coded language as an end-around of public displays of prejudice and championed an “us vs. them” cosmology. The decline of overt, Old-Fashioned Racism seemed positive, but the decline masked the persistence of white supremacist attitudes so dominant in the South. Since whiteness functions as a vantage point, supremacy can be maintained as long as the gap between whites and an “other” is also maintained. When denigrating minorities publicly was no longer socially acceptable, the GOP manufactured a host of increasingly threatening “others.” These common enemies catalyzed both an elevation of and a clinging to whiteness, which, in turn, preserved the “not-so-new” racial hierarchy key to southern white voters that only relative measures of racial animus can expose.

The Myth of Post-Racial America

Beyond portraying race relations as a zero-sum economic game, GOP contenders courted southern white voters by championing “colorblindness.” The color-blind message gave white Americans and, particularly, white southerners a way to move past race, while rendering federal programs to counteract institutional racism unnecessary. Replacing race-baiting with race-burying, the Long Southern Strategy catalyzed a political muteness on race that endured and gave rise to a myth of post-racialism. This myth, while attractive to white southern voters, not only misconstrues the degree and nature of racial animus still present in the hearts and minds of many white Americans, but it also fuels Racial Resentment at continued efforts to protect minority civil rights, at politically correct speech, or at efforts to address structural racial inequities.