White Democrats Lose More Ground in South
...Republicans now hold at least 93 of the 131 House seats from the states of the old Confederacy. Less than 20 years ago they did not even hold half. With the defeat of long-serving fiscally conservative Blue Dogs like Representatives Gene Taylor of Mississippi and John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, Southern white Democrats in Congress have become as rare as a Dixie blizzard....
Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University and a co-author of “The Rise of Southern Republicans,” said that white conservatives first fled the Democratic Party in large numbers in the 1960s, turned off by the civil rights legislation and social programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. But it was not until the Reagan years that they felt comfortable identifying as Republicans.
A similar pattern is unfolding now with white Southern moderates, Mr. Black said, who are repelled by President Obama’s policies but have not fully embraced the other side....
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Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University and a co-author of “The Rise of Southern Republicans,” said that white conservatives first fled the Democratic Party in large numbers in the 1960s, turned off by the civil rights legislation and social programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. But it was not until the Reagan years that they felt comfortable identifying as Republicans.
A similar pattern is unfolding now with white Southern moderates, Mr. Black said, who are repelled by President Obama’s policies but have not fully embraced the other side....