Southern politics, religion and Bush

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SignOnSanDiego.com

Southern politics, religion and Bush

By Jerome H. Garris
November 30, 2004

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For nearly 100 years after the Civil War, most Southern voters rejected the party of Lincoln and voted solidly Democratic in national elections. Following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Arkansas went 96 years before voting for its first Republican president in 1972. Florida waited 92 years, and Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina held off 88 years each. What finally prompted Southern voting changes was the national Democratic Party's position on civil rights; increasingly, white voters in the South found themselves cut off from a party that no longer seemed to espouse their social agenda.

Southern Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton temporarily broke up what has become a solid Southern majority for Republican candidates since 1980 as Republicans adopted a domestic social agenda far more palatable to Southerners. The effect was to change the balance of power in presidential elections from Democrat to Republican.

A similar realignment of voting behavior also occurred in congressional elections. From the end of Reconstruction until the mid-1970s, Southern Democrats held a majority of the chairmanships in Congress due to the seniority rule, where the longest serving committee members automatically became chairmen. Because the South was a one-party region with little Republican opposition, Southern Democrats generally served longer, controlled committees, defied the liberal leadership of their own party and regularly held up civil rights and social legislation.

When Democrats eliminated automatic seniority in the mid-70s, Southern Democrats no longer wielded power over liberal party initiatives, reducing the power of Southerners who needed a new means of holding back liberal Democratic programs. They found that bulwark in a party already capturing their presidential votes. Southerners could reason that voting for both Republican presidents and legislators would provide the same bulwark against liberalism that the seniority system had provided.

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Garris is director of research at Claremont McKenna College and a member of the government faculty.