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Beefcake wrote:

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I've always heard of Nixon being given credit for the "Southern Strategy" that brought the South into the Republican fold. And you have to put it in context to see how important it was. The "Solid South" always voted Democrat for 100 years, because the Republican party was so hated for starting the Civil War. So even when the Republican party became the conservative party in the 1920s, Southern politicians were solidly Democrat, which is why you had all these old Dixiecrat conservatives in the Democratic party (like Thurmond, Hollings, Byrd), even though their philosophy was inconsistent with the liberal views of their party.

(It's always fascinated me, too, how the Republican party dominated the presidency from 1860-1932. During that period, there were only TWO Democratic presidents: Cleveland (who was an outsider candidate and not really a Dem) and Wilson (who only won because TR and Taft split the Republican party). That's an amazing run, especially considering that they automatically lost all the electoral votes in the South).

Nixon's Southern Strategy was a landmark in American politics. Whatever you think of Nixon, he was a brilliant politician. (That doesn't mean he was a great statesman or an admirable man, but he certainly was a smart politician).

Nixon was also the first Republican to get a lot of working class people (like my parents) to vote for him. He laid the foundation for the coalition that put Reagan into office in 1980 and still forms the basic coalition of the Republican party. He deserves credit for that.