>>You're slightly off in your timing.
>>The "Southern Strategy" was an artifact of Nixon's 1968 and 1972 campaigns.
>>The gradual shift of the south to the repubs began with that strategy.
Fair enough, but its birth is attributed to Goldwater who in 1964 broke the Democratic "Solid South" by sweeping the Southern states by opposing the Civil Rights Bill. Apart from his home state of Arizona, those were the only states who voted for him.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
