Thread by @ashtonpittman

Not only was the Southern Strategy real, but in 1984, one of its architects, future RNC chair Lee Atwater, explained how the GOP moved from direct racist appeals to abstract ones:

“‘We want to cut this (social program) is...a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N**ger, n**ger.”

This audio recording from 1984 was 1st published by The Nation in 2012. Lee Atwater was working in the Reagan White House at the time, and later became the chairman of the Republican National Committee. The photo in the video shows him with Roger Stone & Paul Manafort.

Lee Atwater was behind the infamously racist “Willie Horton ad” that helped George H. W. Bush win the presidency in 1988.
google.com/amp/s/www.hist…

I have a recording you ought to listen to @RealCandaceO. It’s short but really enlightening re: The Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy began in the 60s, but Lee Atwater was building & refining it in the 70s and 80s.

Atwater was a protégé of segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, and called Nixon’s Southern strategy “a blue print for everything I’ve done.”
salon.com/2014/01/11/the…

In the late 80s, Lee Atwater joined forces with future Fox News chief Roger Ailes to work on the George H.W. Bush campaign, and together they produced one of the most notoriously racist ads in political history—the Willie Horton ad. google.com/amp/s/www.roll…

These maps also tell the story of the Southern Strategy:

https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1116058062941507584?s=21

The GOP Southern Strategy, as Lee Atwater said, used “bussing” as a coded racist appeal.

Richard Nixon, Oct. 21 1970:

“We do not believe the constitutional mandate that schools be desegregated requires compulsory bussing for the sole purpose of...arbitrary racial balance.”