Top conservatives fund White supremacist super PAC!!!

[noname2200]

GameOver22 said:

noname2200 said:

Crom said:

 

I already explained that the whole Democrat becoming Republicans nonsense was simple not true.

It'd be more accurate to say that you "stated" that the widely-agreed upon perception is not true. You then cited to a handful of data as proof of a general movement. One of those data points was akin to saying that the West Coast was staunchly Republican in the 80's because all the states twice went for Reagan.

I'm willing to be persuaded, but I need more than what you've offered so far to become convinced that the story agreed upon by most historians is incorrect.

It really depends on what you mean by Democrats becoming Republcans. I'm going to have to resort to textbook definitions here:

The Democratic party in the electorate (voters), both in terms of party identification and presidential voting behavior, became less Democratic, especially among white voters in the South, which was the stronghold for racists policies. Now, I think its safe to say that most of them switched towards the Republican party, but some might have become independent (I actually haven't seen data on this point).

However, in terms Congressional election, this trend is not as pronounced and seemed to lag behind presidential trends.

Its important to make the distinction between presidential elections and congressional elections. The truth is...the parties did start to take substantially different stances on racial issues, but these stances did not necessarily effect how politicians at the local level labeled themselves in terms of party identification, so you still saw a lot of racially conservative Democrats in the south, even though the national party platform supported the civil rights movement. Its really a problem of the decentralized American party strcuture.

Good point, and it does fit with some of what I know of that era.