Nope.
The Voting Rights Act, proposed by members of both parties and signed into law by a Democratic President in 1965. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, proposed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by a Democratic President. Also Executive Orders 9981 and 8802, issued by Democratic Presidents.
Both parties helped push through much of the legislation in the 60's but President's Kennedy and Johnson were critical in their passage, built on work of their 3 predecessors.
Sure, and the Nixon advisor who helped originate the strategy and popularize the phrase was just talking extemporaneously when he said this:
"From now on, Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote, and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Or Lee Atwater, who after saying this in an interview (which was anonymous at the time) ran Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign and subsequently became the Republican National Chairman.
"Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
If you want it in a book, h
ere's one. Then there is Reagan's "states rights" speech in Mississippi in 1980 a mere 7 miles from where 3 civil rights workers were murdered just 16 years before without a mention of their sacrifice or civil rights at all? Yeah, just a coincidence.
Or maybe one of Atwater's successors as RNC Chairman:
"For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South."
But sure, all a lie.
But only 18% of the black vote, a high water mark for Republican presidential candidates since then. I wonder why that is?
www.wbur.org
