ajc.com The GOP's Southern exposure by Kevin Phillips

A good analysis of GOP political history in the South as it applies to Presidential elections except for ignoring the Civil Rights Act.

The GOP is dependent on carrying nearly all of the South to get the Presidency now and caters to white, rural, Southern voters.

The South is now the Republicans' core region. Lott, with his foolish fantasizing over Strom Thurmond -- and before that, his rhapsodies over Jefferson Davis -- didn't build the coalition and his departure won't undercut it. If anything, Lott's willingness to be a sacrificial lamb and step aside has spared the White House and the rest of the congressional GOP from examinations of their own positions on race.

Republican transformation over the past two decades has led from political acceptance of the South to what amounts to Southern GOP domination and a politics of over-Southernization. First George H.W. Bush and then his son George W. worked hard to woo the religious right, where Ronald Reagan really hadn't needed to. Then both in turn successfully relied on the presidential primaries of their home region as Dixie firewalls against nomination rivals Bob Dole in 1988 and John McCain in 2000.

...The Republicans have become much more focused on economic policies that, in the name of business and the markets, have favored the top 1 percent income group. Second, use of the race issue by GOP presidential nominees has had less to do with real racial policy (as in the '60s and '70s) and more to do with gratuitously raising convenient themes and prejudices -- Willie Horton in 1988, the visit to Bob Jones University in 2000 and the various flag incidents.

The importance of the second circumstance lies in the political requirement of a third. During the Bush Era, the Republican presidential nominee got 53 percent of the popular vote in 1988 but won less than a majority in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Non-white voters are becoming more numerous, pro-rich economic policies are a poor draw and in the Northern states so is the GOP's increasing over-Southernization.