Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields - The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics — in conversation with Bill Press — at Politics and Prose at Union Market
In this analysis of the Republican Party’s 1970s Southern Strategy, Maxwell and Shields show that the GOP’s move to appeal to Democrats in the South was based not only on racial issues but also on feminism and religion. Just as they had abandoned civil rights, Republicans dropped support for the Equal Rights Amendment, while at the same time joining forces with an increasingly fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention. Writers and scholars based at the University of Arkansas, the authors show how the GOP used a language of absolutes, encouraged defensiveness, and accused the media of bias—all of which had national ramifications. Maxwell and Shields will be in conversation with Bill Press, author most recently of Trump Must Go.