Time now to re-read Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields on the long game the Republican party has played for years now to win voters

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

Time now to re-read Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields on the long game the Republican party has played for years now to win voters:

“In its quest to win over white voters in the American South, the GOP played a full house of racial cards, but these were not the only cards they played."

#Republicans #race #gender #SouthernStrategy
/1

~ Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields, The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics (NY: Oxford UP, 2019), p. 125

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"They could not secure the region for their party on white racial resentment alone. Realignment from solidly blue to solidly red requires tectonic shifts. The Civil Rights Movement was, indeed, a cultural earthquake for white southerners, but so too was the Women's Movement that followed."

Ibid.

#Republicans #race #gender #SouthernStrategy
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(global.oup.com)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

“It is more than ‘backlash politics.’ It is orchestrated backlash politics. Campaigns made choices, set fires, and even poured on the gasoline if accelerant was needed, which is why the passage of time has not, in fact extinguished, such prejudice. It is kept aflame as long as it is stoked.”

~ Ibid., p. 31

#Republicans #race #gender #SouthernStrategy
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[wdlindsy@toad.social]

“The combination of bait the GOP used to catch southern whites was tailored to the region, but it is still bait to all who are hungry. So calls for states' rights, law and order, fiscal conservatism, colorblindness, anti-feminism, men's rights, and Christian nationalism can summon a Southern white majority, but other Americans are beckoned too."

~ Ibid., p. 336

#Republicans #race #gender #SouthernStrategy
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[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"That explains why, over time, at the national level, Republican candidates had no choice but to echo all three of those dog whistles in order to win. Those who did not or could not lost."

~ Ibid.

Maxwell and Shields are describing something that has been building a long time now. Blaming "the Democrats" and Biden and Harris for what has been building a long time now is not only misleading: it's outright dumb.

#Republicans #race #gender #SouthernStrategy
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[joblakely@mastodon.social]

@wdlindsy all those prosperity preachers and evangelicals made everyone feel entitled to wealth they didn’t work for, or need to do the things Jesus asked of us if people were to actually believe and follow him. Worse, they removed & are removing the things people who were actually doing the work bring. They are antichrist.
They taught people to look away from others. They taught greed, pride, vanity, supremacy, division, hate, ignorance, injustice, entitlement.

[joblakely@mastodon.social]

@wdlindsy it’s not enough that they didn’t want to do the work. They need to empoverish others while they profit. It is only in denial of others are they happy.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@JoBlakely I think we're right on the cusp of seeing a colossal transfer of wealth to the very top people on the economic ladder. I think religious figures have been a willing tool in setting this drama in motion, in many cases. But it's emanating from the very top of the economic ladder, with pliant media playing a major role in helping it to happen.

[xenodangerevil@dpw.social]

@wdlindsy gutting public education and epa standards and actual health care leads directly to poor critical thinking to a majority of regular people in those states. Poor critical thinking skills lead to falling for basic fallacies in logic. These policies are pure self interest for politicians there

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@XenoDangerEvil Absolutely. You're putting your finger on the heart of the problem.