Harry Dent Jr., died last week from complications of Alzheimer's disease. Dent helped devise one of the most critical and infamous political tactics in the post-Civil Rights Movement era--the "Southern Strategy."
The Southern Strategy, refers to the Republican Party's overt appeals to white voters to the exclusion of blacks in the South. This strategy, on the heals of landmark civil rights legislation, should be viewed as the patriarch of America's current political divisiveness.
The "Southern Strategy" has proven so effective for Republicans that, except for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Democratic presidential nominees have all but written off the South as part of their electoral strategy.
History has well-documented the political courage of President Lyndon Johnson, who touted a segregationist voting record during his years in the senate, but would champion the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson's courage would open the door to decades of Republican opportunism.
Along with Dent, other Republican strategists saw the civil rights legislation as a potential windfall in the South, which traditionally voted Democratic. Playing on the fears of white voters, Republicans have developed a solid block in the Deep South.
Code words like "law and order" and "state's rights," were inducted into America's political lexicon, thereby appealing to white voters in one of the shrewdest misdirections in electoral politics.
Though it began in earnest with the Nixon presidential campaign in 1968, Ronald Reagan crystallized the Southern Strategy in 1980. Having just received the Republican nomination for president, Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign proclaiming support for "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.
In what would be tantamount to a white Afrikaner reviving the disbanded National Party in South Africa, standing on Robben Island and proclaiming a platform to take South Africa back to the "Good Ole Days," Reagan sent a unmistakable clarion call to white voters.
Through the Southern Strategy, Willie Horton became a household name. And who can forget Jesse Helms "hands" commercial on the eve of his hotly contested North Carolina senate race against challenger Harvey Gant in 1990?
Although Dent, during his lifetime, publicly conveyed remorse for his participation in such a debase practice, his passing does not signal an end to the Southern Strategy.
Southern GOP gubernatorial candidates have frequently ran on platforms to preserve the Confederate Flag on state property, hiding behind the paper-thin veneer of maintaining the Southern heritage, while seeking to cover its appeal to the worst of human impulses.
In Mississippi, "Democrat" has become a euphemism for the N-word. In 2003, then Republican challenger, Haley Barbour paid no political price for his unwillingness to disavow his association with the racist White Citizens Council. Barbour's photo adorned the council's website when the candidate attended one of their fundraisers.
During the campaign, lawn signs supporting Barbour featured the Confederate flag, which read: "Keep the flag, change the governor!" Mississippi politics were so polarized that had incumbent governor Ronnie Musgrove (D) reached the 25 percent threshold among white voters, he could have defeated Barbour. Barbour won in a landslide.
The Southern Strategy appeals emotionally to a mythical past that has low-income white voters supporting candidates that offer policies antithetical to their economic self-interest as they engage in a peculiar form of revisionist history that reenacts Sherman's "Atlanta Campaign."
Recently, the term has taken on a more generic tone focusing more on so-called cultural issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, and the rise of an evangelical conservatism that is unconcealed in its intent to blur the line that separates church and state. While such issues have wider appeal beyond the South, they do not entice the emotions like race.
Dent, like the late Lee Atwater, offered something akin to a bedside confession for engaging in racial politics. Too bad one must wait until the end to do the right thing. But to do so any sooner might weaken the Republicans hold on the South. That, of course, assumes there are Democrats willing to compete for their votes.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. E-mail byron@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at 510-208-6417.