Hunting Where the Ducks Are : Barry Goldwater's Contribution to the Republican Takeover to the Solidly Democratic South in Presidential Elections

Abstract

The Republican Party's capture of the previously Democratic southern states in presidential elections has been considered one of most important factors in the transformation of American politics after World War II. This thesis assesses the magnitude of 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater's contribution to the remarkable realignment of the southern electorate. First, this thesis examines the Arizona senator's emergence as the leading conservative politician in the Unites States. We analyze his political manifesto, "the Conscience of a Conservative" (1960), which provided conservative southerners with constitutional justification for retaining a segregated school system. Goldwater believed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was unconstitutional. Second, even though Senator Goldwater claimed that he was no segregationist himself, he opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and consequently attracted many reactionary, anti-black voters in the Deep South in his bid for the presidency that year. This was a new phenomenon because the five race-consoious states of the Deep South - South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana - had been solidly Democratic since Resconstruction. Goldwater suggested that the Republicans go "hunting where the ducks are" becuase the party could not expect to "get the Negro vote as a block in 1964 and 1968." This statement initiated the Grand Old Party's "southern strategy" of courting white voters and neglecting the black vote. Arguably, Goldwater can take a considerable amount of credit for the subsequent presidential election triumphs of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I and II in the South due to his path-breaking emphasis on racial conservatism. Like Goldwater, Nixon opposed forced busing of school children as a method to enhance desegregation. In 1972, Nixon was the first Republican ever to win all the eleven ex-Confederate states. Ronald Reagan adopted Goldwater's focus on the importance of constitutional states' rights and virtually swept the South twice.