I agree with the concept but not the facts. I don’t think anyone would argue that any population or faction is untouchable. Appealing Trump voters with welfare state liberalism is precisely what a lot of Dems propose, though mainly I think they’re fooling themselves.
2/ But I don’t think this is what the transition from Nixon to Reagan was about. Anti-busing, anti-affirmative action, tough on crime politics, these were not only central elements of Reagan’s politics in the South in the 80s, they were just as much in the 90s and in many ways...
3/ into today. It is true that these were hybridized into a small government, anti-tax politics with a broader ideological import. Reorganizing a lot of politics around political Christianity and sexual traditionalism also played a big role which wasn’t as clearly tied to race.
4/ But in the interests of Twitter brevity, I would simply disagree with the premise that Nixon courted Wallace voters with cynical racial appeals and Reagan summoned them to a higher purpose. Race seems to me the clear throughline, though I agree that at the ...
5/ national level there’s a broader menu of national defense, cultural/sexual traditionalism etc that anchors that anchors the message nationwide.
6/ Of course, as a coda to this, "Wallace voters" are just a proxy. They were just a relatively small group. What we're talking about is a movement of a much broader group of voters - really the overwhelming bulk of the segregationist era Democratic party into the GOP.
7/ We've structured the question here as one of what did Republicans offer to these voters. But over time, those voters became the anchor of the national Republican party. The GOP is anchored in the South, much less so now the South and the West.
