A 'Southern strategy' for Democrats
Winning without the religious right
By Curtis Wilkie, 2/8/2004
OXFORD, Miss.
When Howard Dean made his crack about appealing to "guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks," he invoked a stereotype of the South that sounded as irrelevant as it was politically incorrect. Some good ol' boys still roam the back roads in clapped-out Fords brandishing a bumper plate with the stars and bars and, for good measure, a gun rack in the cab. But as the presidential campaign moves into the South, any strategist who thinks the voting rolls are heavily populated with members of the cast of "Deliverance" will be going into battle woefully misinformed. No part of the country has experienced greater social, economic, and political change in the four decades since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Equity has not been completely achieved, but racial relations in places such as Mississippi -- which has more black elected officials than any other state -- are no worse than those in Massachusetts. From the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to the bayous of Louisiana, rural poverty has been beaten back by decent jobs. And the old, one-party "Solid South" that once elected Democratic presidents and ensured Democratic majorities in Congress no longer exists. In presidential contests, the region is becoming reliably Republican.
Senator John Kerry's heretical observation that his party can win the White House in 2004 without the South may be more valuable to consider than Dean's notion. It's questionable whether any Democratic candidate can reach beyond a constituency of black voters and moderate-to-liberal whites who are badly outnumbered there. And it's a waste of time for Democrats to court anyone flaunting the Confederate flag.
In the years since Dixie was represented in Congress by powerful conservative Democrats, a critical disconnect has developed between the South and the national Democratic Party. That disconnect can be traced to religion, and the Republican Party has been successfully exploiting the breach.
Dean's anachronistic Southern "guy" -- who might have dropped out of school 50 years ago to scratch a livelihood from farming while marching to the political cadence of demagogues and moonlighting at Klan rallies -- has been replaced by the businessman with at least two years of college who goes to the Baptist Church on Sunday, eats lunch with the Rotary Club every Tuesday, and drives an SUV. He tends to vote Republican because he is comfortable with the party's policies on social issues. Besides, it makes him feel as though he's joined the establishment.
The prevailing winds in the South have always been conservative, but Southern conservatism no longer reflects an allegiance to the Confederacy or a red-necked, know-nothing opposition to racial integration. Southern politics is now dominated by a faith-based devotion to the values taught in the fundamentalist Protestant churches that occupy important street corners in every town. In the ministry of these white Southern churches, gay rights are abhorrent and no woman is entitled to the right of abortion. The death penalty is an Old Testament-proven means of punishment. The Constitution's Second Amendment, which speaks of the right to bear arms, is preferable to the First, which guarantees freedom of speech. Drinking is forbidden, and dancing skirts close to the sins of the flesh. Biblical injunctions against race-mixing are occasionally cited to justify private church schools that enable local whites to circumvent integration in the public schools. At the same time, separating the affairs of church and state is thought of as a Godless device designed to deny schoolchildren prayer. The fundamentalist doctrine is strong and sometimes administered by angry preachers as fevered as Middle East mullahs.
Southern blacks worship at their own evangelical churches. They, too, hold to a Christian value system, yet their faith seems more joyful and forgiving. Their politics remain loyal to the Democratic Party because black people were enfranchised and empowered by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiatives. As Johnson predicted when he signed the historic civil rights legislation, he was handing the South over to the Republican Party. The increasing influence of blacks in Democratic Party affairs helped push conservative whites into the GOP.
Mass conversion of this bloc of voters was, of course, Richard Nixon's goal when he adopted the Republican's "Southern Strategy." Nixon cultivated restive whites with denunciations of integration orders handed down by federal courts and efforts to salt the judiciary with segregation-friendly judges.
Race, as always, is a factor in Southern politics, but religion has played a growing role in tilting votes to the right. On Sunday mornings in Dixie, it can be difficult to find a secular radio or TV program. In some locales, network affiliates preempt political interview shows from Washington to carry telecasts from the First Baptist Church. This is not good news for Democrats. The failure of Al Gore, though a Southern Baptist from Tennessee, to carry a single Southern state prevented the Democrats from victory in 2000. The specter of another shutout haunts the Democrats again this year, especially if the ticket is led by Kerry, a Catholic from Massachusetts, where the high court just sanctioned gay marriages. But Kerry has pointed out that Gore could have won without the South had he carried just one other state -- New Hampshire, for example.
Florida, the most fiercely contested state in 2000, should still be in play for the Democrats in 2004 because Florida is "Southern" only in the sense of geography. Its population has been swelled over the years by Cubans, heat-seeking Northerners, and other transplants. The president's brother, Jeb Bush, moved to Miami in 1981 and within 17 years was elected governor, a feat that would be unthinkable in other Southern states where he might be considered a carpetbagger.
But as a Republican, Jeb Bush fits in with the majority of Southern governors, who now reign in seven of the original 11 states of the Confederacy. Last year, when Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi was running for reelection, he made a desperate bid to win over the religious right. After a federal court ruled that a marble slab containing the Ten Commandments was inappropriate in the Alabama Supreme Court building, Musgrove offered to display the controversial monument at the state capitol in Jackson. His Republican opponent, Haley Barbour, countered by saying that the Ten Commandments would be welcome in his hometown. Barbour won the election.
When the Democrats convene this summer in Boston, providing a comfort zone for advocates of abortion rights, parity for women, gay rights, gun control, and public schools, the Republicans will continue to consolidate power in the South by reaching out to the religious right. While the Democrats have entertained the candidacies of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Republicans have showcased leading televangelists. The Rev. Pat Robertson ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988; the Rev. Jerry Falwell, has been a conspicuous guest at GOP conventions. Ralph Reed, a leader of the Christian Coalition, went on to become Republican chairman in Georgia and now directs President Bush's campaign in the South.
In the Democratic battle, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina won in South Carolina. Retired General Wesley Clark, an Arkansan, finished just ahead of Edwards in Oklahoma, a state with some Southern characteristics. Kerry is winless so far in the South, but this year there is no blockbuster collection of Southern primaries, such as the old "Super Tuesday," to stop Kerry's momentum.
As the remnants of the Democratic field pass through the primaries this year, it is worth remembering that the South is littered with the bones of failed campaigns that labored under misconceptions about the region.
Not all of the victims have been Democrats. Four years ago, Senator John McCain tried to expand on his intoxicating triumph in New Hampshire's Republican primary by challenging Bush in the South Carolina primary. Because of his long service as a Navy officer and a POW in Vietnam, there was an assumption that McCain would prove popular in "militaristic" South Carolina. The South honors military tradition. Over the years, its sons -- and now daughters -- have gone off to wars without objection. Southerners who led congressional armed services committees invariably loaded their home states with military installations, arguing that sites such as Columbia, S.C., were more conducive to year-round basic training than a location near, say, Camden, Maine. But in South Carolina, spiritual values outweigh such corporeal concerns as military preparedness. Confronted by a McCain surge, Bush played the religious card. In a speech at Bob Jones University, a venue that has frowned upon interracial dating and serves as a center for evangelical conservatism in Greenville, S.C., Bush embraced the religious right. McCain, on the other hand, met in Columbia with a predominantly Jewish audience -- a rare event in Southern Republican circles -- and later delivered a blistering attack on the religious right. Riding on his campaign bus afterward, he flippantly called Robertson and Falwell "forces of evil." McCain's tactic triggered an adverse reaction among South Carolina voters that effectively ended his campaign.
If the South is not fertile territory for a man like McCain, it appears demonstrably hostile for the Democrats in 2004. Rather than try to stroke the religious passions of the South, the Democrats' best strategy may be to stand back and let the Republicans bind themselves to their ecclesiastical allies. When the first President George Bush allowed his party to do so at their national convention in Houston in 1992 -- evangelists were given the podium, and Patrick Buchanan was allowed to declare a cultural war on the Democrats -- it provoked indignation across much of the country and contributed to a Republican defeat.
Curtis Wilkie, who covered seven presidential campaigns for The Boston Globe, is the author of "Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events that Shaped the Modern South." He holds the Kelly Cook Chair in Journalism at the University of Mississippi.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
