In 1968, Richard Nixon committed the Republican Party to the Southern Strategy. This has worked brilliantly on the electoral college level. In both 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush received every electoral vote from the 13 southern states (Kentucky, West Virginia, and the 11 states of the Confederacy), 162 in 2004. The Nixonian ploy,was to use coded or veiled racism to induce the south's traditionally conservative white voters to abandon their traditional allegiance to the Dwemocratic Party and join a center-right coalition of national Republicans. This conversion took longer on the legislative level. The region's House delegation didn't swing Republican until 1994 (moving the House nationally into the Republican column). In 2004, five southern Senate seats swung Republican giving the GOP firm control of that body for a brief time.
Nixon's southern strategy was far different (and more subtle) than George W. Bush's and Karl Rove's version. Republicans remained competitive in the northeast and Great Lakes states and ran strongly in California. The South was not running the show. Party power brokers generally came from the Midwest (like Gerald Ford, Bob Michel, Everett Dirksen and Bob Dole). The "religion" was Billy Graham and not Jerry Falwell. Even Southern Republicans like Howard Baker fit more neatly into a national mold.
Nixon's aim to add southern white voters, traditional conservatives, to the center rightgroup of traditional Republicans succeeded. That success has done more than give a temporary edge in the electoral college to national Republicans. It has transformed the face and nature of Republicanism at the gain of only a partial payout.
Republicans secured control of the south through redistricting. That gave them a majority but also limited their hold because of majority minority districts. After the 2006 election, the largest bloc of Republicans (82) came from the south. But the south also elected 58 Democrats. Every southern state has at least two House Democrats. There is no Massachusetts (10-0, Democratic plus 2 Senators) and no New England (21-1 in the House). Southern cities like Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas, and San Antonio are Democratic enclaves. Southern suburbs, unlike the rest of the nation's suburbs, have not yet turned Blue but that time is surely going to come leaving only the exurbs and rural areas.
Of course, many of the Southern Democrats, particularly black and Hispanic representatives enjoy very safe seats. And a GOP edge of 82-58 is impressive but nowhere near the 112-2 margin that Democrats enjoyed in the region following FDR's election in 1932 (the 2 Republican seats were in East Tennessee). This was up from 108-12 in 1930 and represented a long term domination not a one election anomaly. The faces of southerners like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, and George W. Bush have also proven toxic to Republican hopes in much of the rest of the nation. In 1994, Republicans held 26 of 52 California House seats and 15 of 31 New York House seats. By 2006, that had declined to 19 of 53 in California and 6 of 29 in New York (and dropping fast). The southern face has tranformed the GOP in a way that seems likely to change the national environment by aiding the election of liberal/progressive Democrats in the rest of the country.
Just as the Republicans consolidated power by adding seats in the South post-1994, Democrats have a real chance of consolidating power by adding seats in the Northeast and Great Lakes states. This may not give them a larger margin than in the recent past but it will give Democrats a more consistent and cohesive ideological base that should prove more effective in governing the country.
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