The Southern Strategy is still alive

Here's how Kevin Phillips described the Southern Strategy in 1970.

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. 

And here's Brit Hume's revised version.



Benjy Sarlin lays it out for us.

After November’s stunning loss, an array of influential Republicans argued that immigration reform was the party’s best chance to claim Latino voters before they become permanent Democrats. But in a mere eight months, a counter-narrative has taken hold in conservative circles, nurtured by a shrewd group of anti-immigration lobbyists and Tea Party enthusiasts. The new argument sees immigration reform at best as a divisive distraction from the GOP’s real problem of countering “white flight” from the polls.

And BooMan brings it home.

What Mr. Sarlin doesn't broach is the subject of how conservatives might be able to grab a higher percentage of whites and how they might go about driving up white turnout. The most obvious way is to pursue an us vs. them approach that alternatively praises whites as the true, patriotic Americans, and that demonizes non-whites as a drain on the nation's resources.

But as BooMan goes on to point out - they've already tried this...twice. And it didn't work. Their fantasy is all based on the 2010 midterms when overall turnout was lower and fueled by the fear the tea party financiers rustled up based on a bad economy and the passage of Obamacare.

This time they're trying to gin up the racist/misogynist white vote by going after abortion, voting rights and immigration reform. Its a play based on desperation. I'm hoping it backfires enormously!