Authors Meet Critics: The Long Southern Strategy by Angie Maxwell & Todd Shields

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This authors meet critics panel includes distinguished scholars in political science who will discuss the new book, The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing Voters in the White South Changed American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019) by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields.

The following is a description of the book: Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s Operation Dixie in 1964, the Republican Party targeted disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party capitalized on white racial angst that threatened southern white control. However—and this is critical—that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” In the wake of Second-Wave Feminism, the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, and it politicized evangelical fundamentalist Christianity represented by the Southern Baptist Convention. All three of those decisions were necessary for the South to turn from blue to red. To make inroads in the South, however, GOP politicians not only had to take these positions, but they also had to sell them with a southern “accent.” Republicans had to mirror southern white culture by emphasizing an “us vs. them” outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, depicting one’s way of life as under attack, encouraging defensiveness toward social changes, and championing a politics of vengeance. Over time, that made the party southern, not in terms of place, but in its vision, in its demands, in its rhetoric, and in its spirit. In doing so, it nationalized southern white identity, and that has changed American politics.

Dr. Joe Aistrup, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Auburn University, as well as the author of The Southern Strategy Revisited (Kentucky, 1996) will chair the session. He will be joined by (1) former APSA President Dr. Dianne Pinderhughes, who is a Notre Dame Presidential Faculty Fellow, and Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Political Science; Professor Pinderhughes also holds a concurrent faculty appointment in American Studies, is a Faculty Fellow at the Kellogg Institute, and is a Research Faculty member in Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame; (2) Dr. Wayne Parent, who is the Russell B. Long Chair of Political Science at Louisiana State University; (3) Dr. Susan J. Carroll who is Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University as well as Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, and (4) Dr. Keith Gaddie, President's Associates Presidential Professor and Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 32: Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Chair

• Joseph A. Aistrup Auburn University

Presenters

• Dianne M. Pinderhughes University of Notre Dame

• T. Wayne Parent Louisiana State University

• Susan J. Carroll Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• Keith Gaddie University of Oklahoma

• Angie Maxwell University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

• Todd G. Shields University of Arkansas, Fayetteville