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Censorship of the editorial cartoon?

http://ww.littleafrica.com/incredibleart/58.htm

You can see the black guy's face on this version.

Was this thing written by the DNC? One sided, near slander and any editor who tries to add something that resembles objectivity is suppressed! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.133.75.162 (talk) 12:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Reagan/Neshoba nonsense

This part doesn't read like an encyclopedia. It reads like an opinion piece, is full of weasel words, and intentionally distorts the facts. Reagan did not "launch" his campaign with this speech, but it makes the propaganda sound more damning. It's also stated that civil rights workers were slain in the same county 14 years earlier as a potential motivation for location choice, yet leads out the ACTUAL reason for the location...it was a long standing tradition for politicians to give speeches at the Neshoba County Fair. So again, this reads like propaganda. Furthermore, the very phrase "His dog-whistle politics" is pretty much solid proof that whoever wrote this passage is a biased hack trying to force an opinion in spite of the facts. Clean this crap up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.184.85.85 (talk) 13:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Please provide reliable sources so support your claims. I count zero sources in your comment, while there are 6-8 sources for the material you've discussed in the article. I'm not saying that all of those sources in the article are the most reliable/strongest of sources, but until a source of equal/greater reliability directly contends with the material in the article, I see no reason to change it. Also, the dog-whistle phrase you referenced is directly quoted and attributed to the author that wrote it and it is not in WP's voice. After that comment, the article talks about how others contend that position. So both sides are represented in regards to that statement.Scoobydunk (talk) 06:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I would strongly agree with the IP poster. That section of the article is very questionable. I've added a few citation needed tags but really that section needs to be cleaned up. Far too many statements from things like opinion articles are taken as fact. Other claims are simply unsupported. However, I it would be best to focus on the Nixon era part of the article first in order to get more scholarship into the article. Getoverpops (talk) 02:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Can we add some source balance to this article?

When reviewing the references in this article it becomes clear that there is very little of actual substance behind many of the claims. First, I will start with an admission that having done more research on the topic it is clear that at least at some level some national GOP politicians tried to at some level appeal to southern voters based on the issue of race. They saw the cracks in the Democratic strangle hold of the south and wanted to appeal to those voters. That said, the extend and impact of these appeals and even the notion to which we should call them racists is questionable.

There are of course many, many sources that talk about the SS as a given. Melvin Small suggests this is because the first tellings of the events was the "Southern Strategy/ racial retreat" versions as described by Evens and Novak in 1971 . As is often the case the first telling is the one that sticks. Once it sticks you have many people who see anti-civil rights reform in many of his actions and future GOP actions. So with that backdrop it's understandable that many sources will mention the SS but most mention it as a given or as some recent edits, mention it in context of "the GOP is falling back on the SS again".

However, looking at the current list of references for this wiki page there are actually very few original sources discussing the scope and impact of the Southern Strategy other than stating it happened. To present a balanced view of the subject the Wiki should present sources that discuss the origin, scope and impact. I have found several peer reviewed sources that suggest the scope of the strategy was small and was rather innocuous. More importantly, a number of them state the transformation of the south from blue to red was not due to any appeals to inherent racism (regardless of scope or extent) but started with the civil rights movement breaking the long strangle hold the Democrats had on the south. Once that was cracked it is claimed many southerners voted GOP for reasons other than racism. Given the extensive background lead in that is part of this article it is reasonable to add a section that reviews various views on the impact and scope of the southern strategy. In addition to the references I added in May (which were quickly removed) I have several others below. Unless noted otherwise, all of these sources are from either peer reviewed journals or books published by academic publishers. I understand that some feel the views I'm attempting to get out are a minority view. That is fine. I'm not trying to prove these are the only valid articles, only that there is enough weight of research suggesting that the SS, as it is popularly understood, is incorrect at least in impact, that we should include these as a balance in the article.

While I understand that some found my eagerness to edit off putting, I was trying to adhere to Misplaced Pages's BOLD editing policy. Let's get this sorted out in talk and go from there.

From my previous entry Several political researchers have make the argument that Southern whites' move to the Republican Party had more to do with economic interests than racism. In The End of Southern Exceptionalism, political scientists Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer argued that Republican dominance in the South was driven by increasing numbers of wealthy suburbanites.

Gerard Alexander, a University of Virginia Professor of Politics, argues that a southern voters turned to the GOP's national platform more than the GOP moved to support the views of the south.

Wallace voters ended up supporting Nixon, Reagan and other Republicans, but much more on the national GOP's terms than their own. The Republican Party proved to be the mountain to which the Deep South had to come, not the other way around. This explains why the second assumption is also wrong. Nixon made more symbolic than substantive accommodations to white Southerners. He enforced the Civil Rights Act and extended the Voting Rights Act. On school desegregation, he had to be prodded by the courts in some ways but went further than them in others: He supervised a desegregation of Deep South schools that had eluded his predecessors and then denied tax-exempt status to many private "desegregation academies" to which white Southerners tried to flee. Nixon also institutionalized affirmative action and set-asides for minorities in federal contracting.

Alexander, also argues that the GOP's primary strategy in the South was to work with rather than against the "grain of Southern opinion". However, he argues against claims that the GOP crafted its core message to accommodate Southern racists and that GOP gains in the Souther were not due to such a strategy:

The mythmakers typically draw on two types of evidence. First, they argue that the GOP deliberately crafted its core messages to accommodate Southern racists. Second, they find proof in the electoral pudding: the GOP captured the core of the Southern white backlash vote. But neither type of evidence is very persuasive. It is not at all clear that the GOP's policy positions are sugar-coated racist appeals. And election results show that the GOP became the South's dominant party in the least racist phase of the region's history, and got—and stays—that way as the party of the upwardly mobile, more socially conservative, openly patriotic middle-class, not of white solidarity.

Matthew Lassiter also argues that the Southern move to the GOP was not about race but other factors of common interest:

The three-way contest allowed Nixon to stake out the political center, by design and by default, as the respectable choice for middle-class voters who rejected the Great Society liberalism of Hubert Humphrey and the reactionary racial populism of George Wallace. In the first national election in which suburban residents constituted a plurality of the electorate, the Nixon campaign reached out to disaffected blue-collar Democrats but aimed primarily at white-collar Republicans and moderate swing voters in the metropolitan centers of the Sunbelt South and West and the upwardly mobile suburbs of the Midwest and Northeast. Nixon forfeited the African-American vote to the Democratic party and conceded the Deep South to the Wallace insurgency, in recognition that the Goldwater debacle of 1964 had reversed Republican trends in the high-growth states of the Outer South.

In Reviews in American History David Chappell reviews Matthew Lassiter's book mentioned above.

In an original analysis of national politics, Lassiter carefully rejects “racereductionist narratives” (pp. 4, 303). Cliches like “white backlash” and “southern strategy” are inadequate to explain the conservative turn in post-l960s

politics.5 ... Lassiter scrupulously denies suburbanites their racial innocence. The suburbs are disproportionately white and the poor are disproportionately black. But he rejects “white backlash” partly because the term exempts from responsibility those voters, North and South, who have racially liberal roots. Their egalitarianism may be genuine. But unless liberals are lucky enough to live in secession-proof metro areas, whose judges have a strong commitment to comprehensive integration, they behave the same way as people who act frankly on their fear of large concentrations of black people. ... Racism has not been overcome. One might say rather that it has become redundant. One of Lassiter’s many fascinating demonstrations of racism’s superfluousness is his recounting of the actual use of the “southern strategy.” The strategy obviously failed the Dixiecrats in l948 and the GOP in l964. The only time Nixon seriously tried to appeal to southern racism, in the l970 midterm elections, the South rejected his party and elected Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Dale Bumpers instead (pp. 264–74). To win a nationwide majority, Republicans and Democrats alike had to appeal to the broad middle-class privileges that most people believed they had earned. Lassiter suggests that the first step on the way out of hypersegregation and resegregation is to stop indulging in comforting narratives. The most comforting narratives attribute the whole problem to racists and the Republicans who appease them. {Footnote 5:These clichés come in for further, long-overdue scrutiny in Byron Shafer and Richard

Johnston, The End of Southern Exceptionalism (2006).}

Thus we have a university published review of Lassitter's book (also university published) backing the idea that the SS was a non-issue in terms of impact but has proven to be a comfortable way to accuse one party of being racist.

I've found a few other book reviews that I think add weight to the SS was a minor/non-factor POV. Daniel Aldridge reviews Kotlowski's book Nixon's Civil Rights: Politics, Principle and Policy.

Kotlowski argues that Richard Nixon was, on the whole, a responsible leader who did not simply jettison civil rights in order to court a white backlash and pursue a southern strategy. In general, Nixon sought a middle ground by moving very slowly on matters that would have compelled racial integration in public schools and housing while being more willing to support initiatives that would enhance individual black's ability to enter the middle class

... Kotlowski believes historians have also been somewhat misled by Nixon's rhetorical and symbolic "southern strategy," which he maintains had a relatively limited influence on Nixon's civil rights policies. ... Nixon's Civil Rights is a solid and well-researched effort that succeeds in creating a more nuanced appraisal of Nixon-era civil rights.

Lassiter and Kruse coauthored a journal article that touched on the subject as well

A suburban-centered vision reveals that demographic changes played a more important role than racial demagoguery in the emergence of a two-pary system in the American South. This analysis runs contrary to both the conventional wisdom and the popular strain in the scholarly literature: the claim that the GOP came to dominate the new Solid South by repackaging the segregationist platform of George C. Wallace and capitalizing on a racial backlash that originated in the Deep South and the countryside. According to Whistling Past Dixie (2006), a widely cited book by political scientist Thomas F. Schaller, Republican presidential candidates from Barry Goldwater through Ronald Reagan implemented a "southern strategy" with "initial appeal to rural southerners has expanded to the suburbs and exurbs, and to states outside the South." This interpretation essentially reverses the actual process of realignment in the South and misleadingly attributes racial backlash nationwide to the effects of "sothernization" rather than to the dynamics of suburbanization itself.

There certainly are authors who are dismissive of some of the sources above. Dan Carter, already cited in the article, reviews a few books in Dissent. He is quite critical of Lassiter, Shafer & Johnston and others. The fact that Carter felt the need to review those works at all should be proof that the dissenting view I am advocating for the article is valid and that academia has not settled on a single narrative.

I think it is clear that there is a significant volume of work suggesting or even stating that any appeals to latent racism were non-issues for Nixon's elections and even after that. Several of the sources also state that the "racist" things done as part of the southern strategy were not as extensive or egregious as often claimed. With that said I would like suggestions for ways to integrate this material into the article. Clearly there is enough here to warrant inclusion.

I have no problem with the article mentioning Lassiter's viewpoint as a contradictory and minority point of view. My concerns arise when you talk about "balancing the article" because the work you've referenced above does not supercede the widely held view of scholars, historians, and academics and only acts as a breif mention of dissent. When you make claims like "academia has not settled on a single narrative." I believe this is disingenuous and ignores the fact that even your dissenting sources admit to an academic consensus held by most historians. Nothing is ever "settled" in Science and History, but that doesn't mean we can write the article portraying some huge hotly contested debate among historians and scholars. Similar to the last time we addressed this, it's not any others' responsibility to include information you want into the article. I recommend that you suggest a specific change and then we can address whether that change merits inclusion. Something along the lines of "Contrary to the view held by most historians, Matthew Lassiter believes the Southern Strategy had little to do with the changing political landscape of the South and that its transformation was mostly due to changing economic needs." <--Something along those lines would be a perfectly acceptable addition in my opinion.Scoobydunk (talk) 15:31, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

If you recall I previously did exactly that and included much of what I posted here in the article. You didn't comment on it in this talk page the day I added it but I'm encouraged to see that you are admitting that there are academic sources that don't agree with what Melvin Small considered the first telling of the events. I mentioned that in the opening of this section with the needed reference. Anyway, the problem with what you are saying is there actually isn't that much real evidence that there was a wide spread SS. If you look at original sources they are few. Many cite it as something that happened or, in the case of the Reagan references, cast actions or policies that may be perfectly rational as SS. One of the big issues with the later part of the article is the use of accusations as proof of a long term strategy without taking the time to ask if the accusations are reasonable nor if an alternative explanation is reasonable. Basically, as the later part of the article presents the SS it might as well be describing a conspiracy theory.

Incidentally, I would hope, given the way you are a stickler for academic references, that you would support fixing many of the issues in the article where low quality sources are used to support a view. That is largely the post Nixon era section.Getoverpops (talk) 20:29, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

What's relevant is what scholars say, not what we consider to be "much real evidence". Again, it is not our privilege to interpret evidence ourselves and write the article to reflect our interpretations. This is precisely why WP policy shies away from the use of primary sources and why secondary sources take priority. Unfortunately, I do not recall you suggesting a specific part of the article that you wanted to change like I just did in my previous comment. I'd like to stay away from long drawn out replies in this regard, and just stick to one change at a time. Suffice to say, it's not a requirement that I or others approve of the changes you want to make, but if you want to avoid conflict and work together on improving the article, then it's easiest to address one claim/change at a time. I'm not going to rewrite the entire article, but if there are any specific sentences from the article that you have an issue with, then I'll see if I can discover where the claims originated. I'll start with the citation's you've requested in the article, and I'm happy to help you with these. Regarding academic sources, I'm only a stickler about it when non-academic sources, like opinion articles, are used to try and counter scholarly sources. So, I don't have a problem using less reliable sources, so long as they aren't in contention with scholarly consensus. However, I do try and stick to using scholarly articles on WP so we can avoid slinging biased political articles at each other for months at a time, and can just immediately filter out all of the rift raft. So, let's go ahead and start with the post Nixon era section, if that's okay with you? I'll be out running errands today, so I won't have much time to look into the requested citations today, but I'll get started on it as soon as I can.Scoobydunk (talk) 13:49, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Well a significant number of scholars say the SS was not a factor in the shift of the south to the GOP vote. We have no scholarly work claiming the SS was extended into the time of Reagan and beyond. So if you think we should only accept scholarly work then it's time to cut some sections from the article. Again, I did make a change to the article and you quickly referenced it on a report page. Regardless, I agree that we should be careful about using politically motivated or biased articles. That again is a big issue in the later sections of the article. The primary sources are people who are building a case for "continuation of SS" based on flaky evidence. If Reagan wanted busing reform (something that has since come to pass and is generally thought to be a good thing) then why was it "SS" vs simply a desire to fix a broken system? A very big part of the problem with this article is the conspiracy theory like nature of the claims. As soon as you accept that there is a conspiracy then even truly innocent events/actions can be seen as proof of the conspiracy.

Anyway, with your help I will point out other parts of the article I found troubling and then we can discuss changes. I'm wary of using the BOLD tactic that is promoted here since a number of people took my BOLD edits the wrong way.Getoverpops (talk) 14:04, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I still don't see any specific suggestions in this most recent response of yours. Also, you clearly didn't read my previous comment because I said less reliable sources are okay, so long as they're not in contention with stronger academic consensus. Also, please refrain from trying to present your own OR arguments, because I'm not going to respond to them. I'm not concerned with your rational about how SS should be defined and what counts as evidence for it. I'm all concerned with is what reliable sources say. So, make a specific suggestion backed with a reliable source, and then we can get started.Scoobydunk (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, like you I had a busy weekend that kept me from editing. Given that this is a talk page I think it is perfectly reasonable to present my own arguments. The biggest is how can you decide if an action is really "southern strategy" or not. First, we have to assume there is some over arching coordination here. Second you have to be able to reasonably tell if an action that could be motivated by race really is. Take affirmative action in college admission. One might be against it because they are racist but they also could reasonably be against it because it means an applicant from a non-protected group with better marks gets passed over in favor of a lesser applicant. If you are the applicant who was passed over by someone with a lesser record it would be reasonable to be anti-affirmative action without being racist. Many of the sources DON'T address that critical issue.

Anyway, I will have to take a look at your sources and see how well they support the claims in question.

I think the two sections should be combined and it should be more clear that some pundits (and presumably academics) see evidence that some GOP actions after the Nixon era were attempts to appeal to racism. I think the Atwater statements should actually be removed from the section because they don't support the claims that Reagan was trying to appeal to racism. In fact they do the opposite. They could be used to support the idea that some GOP candidates did appeal to racism in the past. I think it would be good if you included specific quotes from your sources. In my previously reversed edit I did just that because I didn't want people to accuse me of spinning the contents of the articles. Beyond the above change I think it should be clear what the sources credentials are and what they are claiming. Some of the quotes seem to meld into their associated paragraphs. I will see if I can make small changes to the sections but really I feel like they need a total rewrite. I did that last time and my troubles were far from rewarded. Getoverpops (talk) 00:19, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

The way we decide if an action is really southern strategy is we report what sources say. It is not up to us to re-invent the wheel. TFD (talk) 01:23, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Then we should be highly suspect of any opinion articles and we should provide exact quotes for other articles that are "reliable". Seriously, what you are talking about is yes, I guess Wiki but let's use our heads here. If a Dem political pundit says an appeal to end say affirmative action is "southern strategy" are we going to just blindly say yes? Do you actually believe that? Do you personally think that if say the gov of GA says he is against affirmative action he is doing it because he is racist? Isn't it at least reasonable that he feels it isn't fair to non-minority students who get passed over by minority students with lesser records? Sure we can view affirmative action as a net public good but that doesn't mean those who are against it are racist. That is the BIG problem with the claims here. The article really gives a lot of weight to those who see things that COULD be racist but very reasonably COULD be for no-racist reasons and assigns them to the racist camp.

(SD) Your second edit is stronger but the source, in the section from pg 47-48 doesn't support it's claims. Both Dems and GOPs (noted as white in the text) liked the idea of moving control back to the states. Perhaps it was racist thinking but perhaps it was part of Reagan's larger "smaller federal gov" promise. Again, we should make it clear that this was an opinion of events, not a proven fact.

The paragraph started "In 1980" seems to be supported almost entirely with opinion articles. Look at the last sentence that claims to be supported by Aistrup's book. The claim is that Reagan's calls for welfare reform used racist "welfare queen" examples. He did state that opinion poling at the time said that southern whites (no mention if northern whites thought the same or even if blacks thought the same) mentally pictured blacks when their was talk of welfare queens. However, and I would have to re-find my source for this, Reagan's welfare and other messages were largely unchanged from his California days. So either he was looking to appeal to racist in California - in which case this wasn't a "southern strategy" or he was really worried about welfare reform and wanted a motivating example ie the welfare queen.

It is interesting to note that page 44 of Aistrup actually supports the view that southern white voters were motivated by economics. According to text quoted by Aistrup the southern white working class saw they weren't moving up and the government wasn't helping them. The saw the government helping others (blacks). They were against things like affirmative action because it meant they might lose a job to someone who wasn't better qualified but instead was black. Well that might be appealing to race but it's also could be just people looking out for their own. That was the point of one of the authors I mentioned who was talking about Nixon era "racism". Some of Nixon's "anti-civil rights" such as being anti-busing was not based on racism but on a sense that it was unfair. Here too we have an example were the "proof of racism" could reasonably be an sense that affirmative action was unfair to those that weren't black.

Really I think that section would be best if it were shortened, change the title and then simply say that some writers have seen things they view as continued racism. At the same time those accusations should include examples (such as the welfare reform/queen examples). I also think the next section should get the same treatment. I also think the counter views, the authors I have previously quoted should be given more space in the article. This is especially true when we are talking about claims that the south went to the GOP "because of" racist appeals but we should also not give quite so much "benefit of the doubt" to sources that say something is racist when it is very reasonable to see it as non-racist (hence the comments above). If we want to use things like Reagan and the welfare queen as proof then the supporting source text should be quoted so readers can decide if the source makes it's case.Getoverpops (talk) 01:47, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

SD-

Take a look at these two articles in context of the claims that the Reagan era campaign was based on racism. I think both have some weight since they are in response to the claims of racism by some of the authors cited in the Wiki article. Perhaps we can start with just looking at the claims that revolve around the Reagan era. We can state something like "Accusations of 'Southern Strategy' during the Reagan years. That would allow us to clearly state the views of those who say "yes" and "no" without making the section too long or making it read like the Wiki editors view this as a proven fact/all but given theory.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/222886/reagan-no-racist-deroy-murdock http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071110/news_lz1e10brooks.html

The more I write about this the more I think, would it be better to simply have a single "opposing view" type section? It could talk about the views that say the Nixon era "ss" was limited in size and impact. It could also provide views that say the GOP has not had a "ss" since. That would be a point to talk about the Reagan and later elections and offer articles which refute later claims. It seems that might be cleaner and I have to admit I fear that if I try to make any larger changes they will be just undone. Look at how quickly my addition to the Atwater quote was removed (later added back by an third editor).

Getoverpops (talk) 01:58, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

The first problem I see with your proposal is the title. This is called "editorializing" because you use the word "accusations" to trivialize what academia recognizes as an historical occurrence. The next issue I have is with the idea behind the section. This suggestion would be making a false equivalency by presenting the article as a matter of opinion by having X number of "yes" and X number of "no" responses. The strongest sources recognize Reagan's Southern Strategy as racist and the 2 articles you've listed above don't meet equivalent reliability standards. That being said, the strongest sources also recognize that Reagan appealed to religion and other topics that were important to different segmented groups in the south. So, I don't mind including information about Reagan's transformation of the Southern Strategy to address more than simply racism, but that doesn't mean the importance of race gets marginalized. Lastly, every section in the article presents or should present the mainstream viewpoint on the Southern Strategy, its components, and its evolution. There is no reason to have an entire section devoted to an "opposition view" because that, in essence, would be giving undue weight to minority viewpoints. Minority viewpoints can be represented, but they can't be represented with the same importance/weight that the mainstream viewpoint is given. In every article about "Earth" we don't carve out a section for people who think it's flat.

The way you identified areas that needed citations was a good step in addressing issues with the article. With you identifying those areas, we were able to quickly find sources that supported the material and now we have a better article for it. I'd like to continue with this type of approach since it seems to yield relatively quick results and fixes. I'm not saying we can't discuss more intricate problems here, I'm just saying that identifying specific sentences and statement within the article that need to be examined/reviewed is much more productive, and I'd like to continue that. Scoobydunk (talk) 08:13, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I disagree that the title is any more editorializing that the current method of presentation. The word "accusations" is correct given that these are claims made by sources but not proven as fact. I don't think you can rightly say academia recognizes this as "fact". They certainly don't agree that the south was won by the GOP using such a method. There is a strong body of evidence that says otherwise. Also, do accusations of racism, true or not, actually constitute a "southern" strategy or a national strategy? Given how quickly and easily many sources cry racism over things that are quite rationally explained as something else we should be careful about just accepting one source over the other. A better way to present this would be to offer the counter arguments and let the reader decide.

What if on the section on Reagan we change it to say what his message was (he appealed to points X,Y and Z). Then we can offer sources that say those appeals were coded racism and sources that say otherwise. What's important in that method is the reader can see not just that people claimed this was racism but what constituted "racism" and then they can decide if, say welfare reform, was actually a racist appeal or simply a small government appeal. This way we can still have the stronger sources make their case but the other sources can offer their view as well.

Note, I think it's a bit of a goose chase to find sources that will refute the racism claims. If you don't think the appeals were racist why would you even mention it other than to refute charges you think are false. It again is the conspiracy theory charge. If we talk about people faking the moon landing and say "NASA doesn't address the issue but this academic paper does" we wouldn't logically conclude that NASA faked it because no papers came out refuting the faking claims.

Also, every section should not present the "main stream" view. First, it is not clear that we have a main stream view. WE have a number of academics who say that the Southern Strategy was a non-issue and short term. They are the ones who would agree with Atwater that Reagan (and later Republicans) weren't appealing to racism even if some people feel their policies would disproportionately impact black people. Second, what about cases where the mainstream view is wrong? Take the Ford Pinto case where the mainstream view is Ford wrote a memo that it was cheaper to pay off the lawsuits vs fix the car. Academics have shown that view of events is not true. Anyway, I think each section should have a clear theme and narrative (the later sections fail in this regard) and it should be very clear where things are opinions or interpretations of things vs proven fact. I think a very good way of doing this is presenting the evidence used to make a claim of racism and allow the reader to decide if that evidence is sufficient as well as offering opposing views. Getoverpops (talk) 15:25, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Academic consensus doesn't have to be unanimous, and there is academic consensus. Of the sources you've listed previously, you only have 2 peer reviewed published viewpoints that I'd consider strong reliable sources. One is the viewpoint of Lassiter and the other is Kotlowski and both of them recognize the mainstream viewpoint held by historians and academia and that their viewpoints differ. So there is consensus. 2 of your sources were magazines that didn't go through an apparent peer review process, 1 of them was a book that wasn't published through peer review, 2 of them were reviews on Lassiter's work and aren't independent works which means they don't add any weight, and another one was just another work by Lassiter, who's viewpoint we already know and, again, this doesn't add more weight to a minority viewpoint.

It's clear you're seeking to try and rewrite the article to show a "debate" and this is the same type of rhetoric that climate deniers use to try and argue climate change or creationists use to argue against evolution. Misplaced Pages presents what the strongest and most reliable sources say on the matter. Trying to trivialize those sources by labeling them as simply "opinions" or "accusations" is an example of editorializing. Also, it's not our responsibility to try and determine "interpretations" from "fact". We let strong secondary sources do that for us, and that's how Misplaced Pages functions.

Instead of trying to rewrite the article to take on an apologist's point of view, I suggest we continue to work on what we have. If there is something that's obviously wrong or unsupported, we can address it, just like I did with your 2 previous examples. This is what's working. Sitting here and trying to argue about the veracity of academia, or facts vs. opinions didn't get us anywhere last time, nor will it this time. Instead of saying generalized things like "each section should have a clear theme and narrative (the later sections fail in this regard)", how about you actually express a specific section title you take issue with, why it's a problem, and a proposed change to it. Please also refrain from editorializing titles.Scoobydunk (talk) 17:16, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Academic consensus simply hasn't been reached here. How many strong academic articles support the claim that the south switched to the GOP based on appealing to racism vs other causes? Carter and Airstrup? We have at least three that say the "SS" was a non-issue in the conversion (Lassiter, Kotlowski, Johnston-Shafer). If you look at Black and Black they aren't really strongly supporting the idea that Nixon was trying to appeal to racism. Starting around page 210 of The Rise of Southern Republicans they talk about Nixon not going after the hard core racists but instead going after voters who were upset by some of the integration rules. Note that bussing in particular was opposed by many not for racist reasons but for other reasons.

When Black and Black talk about Reagan later in the above section it's talking about appealing to the economic and religious interests of white southern voters. Some claim that is an appeal to racism. However, the Wiki article should make it clear on what those who claim racism base their charges. That allows counter views to be included. If one says Reagan's campaign was racist how can we come up with a counter point. If we say Reagan's campaign was racist because... then we can see if other writers mention the same thing but don't see it as racist. I would also note that Black and Black cite other authors (Carter?) when specifically stating the SS was an appeal to racism etc. So I guess we can say they buy the claim but they aren't the source. Conversely then, academics who cite Lassiter and kotlowski are buying their view that the SS was largely a non-issue.

One more thing, I think the term apologist is unfair and suggests a bias on the part of the user. If we have good sources that say the SS wasn't the reason the South went to the GOP then it's not apologizing to want to give those sources proper weight. The same is true if we have sources that question the idea that Reagan's message was racist vs simply based on conservative principles he had already used in CA (even Carter says Reagan's message was carried over from his CA days. If so how does that make it a southern strategy, vs one that was already national?Getoverpops (talk) 19:34, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

There is consensus in academia and the 2 strong reliable sources that you have both speak to this viewpoint and recognize its existence. One of them says "This analysis runs contrary to both the conventional wisdom and the popular strain in the scholarly literature" and another one says "Kotlowski believes historians have also been somewhat misled by Nixon's rhetorical and symbolic 'southern strategy'". Both of these admit that their views are contrary to the views held by scholarly literature and held by historians. That means there is consensus, and they diverge from it as minority opinions in scholarship. Johnston-Shafer is not a peer-reviewed publication and doesn't have equal weight. Furthermore, neither of these sources say that race was a "non-issue", they merely say that racial backlash wasn't "simply" the cause and discuss other causes as well.Scoobydunk (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

1. Small, Melvin (2013). A Companion to Richard Nixon. John Wiley & Sons.
2. Note John Wiley & Sons is an academic publisher
3. Risen, Clay (December 10, 2006). "The Myth of 'the Southern Strategy'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 22, 2012. Retrieved 2008-08-02. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. Alexander, Gerard (Sept 12, 2010). "Conservatism does not equal racism. So why do many liberals assume it does?". Washington Post. Retrieved March 25, 2015. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. Alexander, Gerard (March 20, 2004). "The Myth of the Racist Republicans". The Claremont Review of Books. 4 (2). Retrieved March 25, 2015.
6. Lassiter, Matthew (2007). The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton University Press. p. 232. ISBN 9780691133898.
7. Chappell, David (March 2007). "Did Racists Create the Suburban Nation?". Reviews in American History. V 35: 89-97.
8. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
9. Kotlowski's book published by Harvard University Press
10. Aldridge, Daniel (Summer 2002). "Review". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 86.
11. Lassiter, Matthew; Kruse, Kevin (Aug 2009). "The Bulldozer Revolution: Suburbs and Southern History since World War II". The Journal of Southern History. 75: 691–706.
12. Carter, Dan (Summer 2007). "Is There Still a South?: And Does it Matter?". Dissent. 54: 92–96.

Arbitrary break

It seems like all that has been accomplished is that the same arguments are being made by Getoverpops that failed to achieve consensus (or even agreement by another editor) before. The fact that his first entry in this thread (after a voluntary absence in lieu of a block) was 14,000 bytes indicates to me that this style of discussion will not be productive. I now noticed that he has tried to take this POV and add it to two related articles -- this is extremely bad form. Aim for small changes with short, concise proposals -- if your arguments are unreadable because of their size and digressions you are not going to get anyone to agree with you about changes. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 03:01, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

That is a very rude thing to say and claim. First, though SD and I aren't seeing eye to eye we are having a reasonably productive discussion. Second, as you can see I've provided at least two academic sources that SD feels are up to his standards. I also have several other references that are stronger than many of the references in this Wiki. As for the first entry, part of why I put so much into the entries was because it's too easy for people to claim the sources don't claim what I say they do. The easy way around that is to quote the text so people can read it themselves.

The short, concise proposal is we should add a section that offers the academic disenting view on the impact of the SS on shift of the south to the GOP. We have three strong sources that say it was NOT because of appeals to racism. The second proposal is any time we have a post Nixon claim of GOP racism, the basis for that claim should be included so readers can know what was considered to be racism (ie if a GOP position is anti-affirmative action the reader can decide if that really is racism or some other motivation.Getoverpops (talk) 13:52, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome of this debate, it should be understood that these are small minority views. If they can be supported by high-quality academic sources, they still stand against a much greater number of high-quality academic sources which take the position currently represented in the article. Because of this, it's inappropriate to place these views in the lede section of this article or Southernization. They belong in a more marginal position if they are to be included at all. --Sammy1339 (talk) 22:01, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Sammy, it is not true that these views are small/minority views. Furthermore, once you start looking into most of the academic sources you find that many are simply citing Carter. The comments about the Southernization article are not directly related to this topic and should be covered in that article's talk page. I strongly disagree that they are a marginal position. If you think so please show the evidence. So far I count as many strong sources claiming the SS was not the reason for GOP success in the South as not.Getoverpops (talk) 05:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

As a small minority view, there is no demonstrated need or appropriateness for a separate section on these views. This article is about a specific political program of the GOP and this should remain the focus of the article. This article is NOT about the total political history of the South during this era -- for that we have another article with a broader scope. As far as writing about "post Nixon claims", we follow the reliable sources and give proper weight to the information the sources provide. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 04:16, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

On what grounds do you base the claim that it is a "small minority view"? If you want the article to be ONLY about the GOP "SS" then the sections talking about things prior to the 1960s need to be removed. It also makes the later sections questionable given the evidence presented in the supporting sources. Conversely, if this article is going to claim the GOP and Nixon won the south BECAUSE of this strategy then it makes total sense to bring in sources that say otherwise GIVEN then are from reputable academic sources. Which do you want? Do you want the narrow scope in which case we remove information from the article or do you want the broad scope in which case the article should be open for more information.Getoverpops (talk) 05:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Opinion Pieces

@Getoverpops: You added two fairly weak sources to the Evolution section. There is an argument for including something from the peer-reviewed academic sources you provided, but not from these, because they are grossly outweighed by the numerous sources that say the exact opposite. There is someone with every opinion - it doesn't mean these opinions belong in the article; for the same reason we don't include creationist opinions in biology articles. --Sammy1339 (talk) 20:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem. It would be one thing if he were "balancing" Mother Jones or MSNBC or ThinkProgress articles with National Review opinions, but he's "balancing" NYT pieces with the National Review, which is going to tilt the article. — goethean 20:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Which ones are the low quality articles? The Brooks article was in the NYTs. Drum is hardly a GOP apologist and has a number of articles in Mother Jones. Herbert is an opinion article that ran in the NYTs. Well why shouldn't both be included? At the same time you say the articles I include are grossly outweighed but is that really true? Look at the other sources in that section? IN the paragraph that starts "In 1980" we have Herbert (op-ed), Jack White (also an op-ed article), Cannon is simply stating that the speech was seen by some after the fact as racist. In that regard he is restating the obvious. What he isn't doing is making a case that Reagan was trying to appeal to race. I can't access the Goldfield book so we can't tell if he is reporting the reactions (like Cannon) or making the claims (like Herbert). The same is true of the Walton book. Basically we have strong proof that some saw this as racism but that is a far cry from proof that Reagan intended it to be as much. If nothing else, if you look at Cannon's book it would suggest that Reagan was blind to the potential racial uproar his comments would cause since his advisors were suggesting he take the non-racial path. It also undercuts some of the "Reagan's campaign was planning to appeal to racism" claims when we have at least two sources that say his campaign advisors recommended against this speech. Getoverpops (talk) 22:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I have restored the text that was added without any other editor agreeing to it. You need to cut out the edit warring. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 23:10, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be more reasonable if you would actually engage in conversation about the contents of the article rather than just revert my changes. Please justify the exclusion of the changes I've made based on their content. Getoverpops (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I have commented in the numerous threads you started before your hiatus. My comments there stand. Just because you want to start completely over doesn't mean everybody else has to follow. The bottom line -- you continue to add material before you obtain any agreement, let alone consensus. Then when you're reverted, you simply revert back. You've made your case, such as it is -- now is the time for you to sit back and wait to see if anyone will agree with you. It should be clear to you that your current tactics are not working.Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually what you have previously commented on and the changes you just reverted aren't at all the same thing. I would ask that you actually read the changes I made and the comments in THIS section in good faith. Getoverpops (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems like the conversation has gone on long enough, and it is time to move on. TFD (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean move on to neutrality resolution? Really, where are the posts that actually address the concerns here? At least SD and Sammy are addressing the content of my changes. NS is engaging in edit warring by simply reverting without justification. Getoverpops (talk) 00:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

And what are the results of "SD and Sammy" addressing your proposals? You go ahead and make them without any agreement. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sammy is raising specific objections which is a good place to start a conversation. SD suggested working on the article in chunks based on the suggestions I had made so we would have a starting point for discussion. I would like you to join in that discussion rather than just revert and claim edit war. Remember, part of the cycle is discuss. If you are going to revert changes you should be willing to discuss why. Also, at the beginning of this talk section I admitted I was wrong with some of my original edits. By your own admission you are confusing the edits I previously made with the current edits. That is why I would ask that you read what changes I've made, review the sources I've used and discuss the changes. Getoverpops (talk) 00:43, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I was made aware of this editing issue by Getoverpops on my talk page. The evolution section suffers from two things, when I first arrived: WP:QUOTEFARM & WP:BOMBARD. Therefore, I have tagged the section appropriately, and have bundled the references per WP:CITEBUNDLE.
Everyone please see WP:AVOIDYOU.
IMHO the long quotes do not help the topic. While the section does utilize WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, whether certain things should be given the weight that they are given in this section appears to be a matter of debate; hopefully one that we can discuss civilly and reach a consensus.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The issue is weight. Five sources, three of which are books reviewed positively (with criticisms) by scholarly journals, that support the statement "The "I believe in states' rights" speech he gave there was cited as evidence that the Republican Party was building upon the Southern strategy again. Getoverpops wants to balance this with two political commentators, one of which (Drum) does not really support his position. If there is a counterbalance to be added, it has to be better sourced. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 02:19, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

PS There is an interesting and effective rebuttal to the other article (Brooks) by historian Joseph Crespino at . Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 02:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I have addressed those sources in this section. Per what I said before, we have Herbert (op-ed), Jack White (also an op-ed article), Cannon is simply stating that the speech was seen by some after the fact as racist. In that regard he is restating the obvious. What he isn't doing is making a case that Reagan was trying to appeal to race. I can't access the Goldfield book so we can't tell if he is reporting the reactions (like Cannon) or making the claims (like Herbert). The same is true of the Walton book. One of the books, Cannon, doesn't say the speech was racist. It says some accuse the speech of being racist. I can not readily search the Goldfield book but it is not from a university press but the author is an academic in the field. But we don't know if that book says "some saw the speech as racist" or says the speech "was racist". See the issue? The sources I was trying to add don't claim no one felt the speech was racist. Instead they offer an the view that Reagan's intent was not racist and the mention of states rights was consistent with his conservative message, not a racist code word. This is why I feel this is a balanced entry. Getoverpops (talk) 02:46, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with RCLC in that the section in question is long and rambling with out a coherent theme. I think it and the sections afterwards should probably be condensed down two about 3-4 paragraphs. What about something like:

• Intro paragraph similar to the current section intro.
• Description of the charges against the Reagan and Bush campaigns. Footnotes could be used for the longer quotes and to clean up the whole section.
• Description of Clinton era stuff
• GOP apologies and current issues.

This would largely remove the content I've been trying to add about Reagan and the fair speech. It would also clean up a section that largely reads like a dumping ground for various articles people found that talk about more recent events. Getoverpops (talk) 14:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Last paragraph in the Roots of the Southern strategy section

Scoobydunk, I wanted to address your reason for editing the intro to the last sentence. You are correct that Lassiter describes the view as not with, "conventional wisdom" and "scholarly literature". However, the complete sentence is, "A suburban-centerd vision reveals that demographic change played a more important role than racial demagoguery in the emergence of a two-party system in the American South. This analysis runs contrary to both the conventional wisdom an a popular strain in the scholarly literature: the claim that the GOP came to dominate a new Solid South by repackaging the segregationist platform of George C. Wallace and capitalizing on a racial backlash that originated in the Dee South and the countryside." Note that the sentence does not claim the scholarly liturature was previously in agreement on this point. It only acknowledges that some scholars agree on the point. Thus it is better to leave the opening sentence so that it doesn't imply a weight to either POV. As a separate mater, I have added the Alexander references back to the section. While the sources are not as strong as the ones you left in, his articles support the other authors who don't see the SS as a critical factor. Alexander is also a scholar in the field and thus should be seen as more credible than someone like Herbert who is quoted widely in the Wiki article. Getoverpops (talk) 14:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC) Addressing the recent changes. Scoobydunk justified the change as: "The source says "capitalized on racial backlash", this proves scholarly consensus and that Lassiter's view diverge from that consensus. Stop trying to introduce doubt/debate, which isn't supported by the source." Again, Lassiter doesn't say his view diverges from an agreed scholarly view point. He only says it diverges from a popular strain in the scholarly literature. Thus I would like the more neutral intro stating that scholars don't agree on the impact. Saying "some scholars" disagree can be seen as using weasel words to add or diminish weight. Getoverpops (talk) 16:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

As I said above, both of your reliable sources admit to there being a consensus generally held by academia. I know exactly what the full quote says and it explicitly explains that the conventional wisdom/popular strain in scholarly literature attribute GOP dominance in the South due to capitalizing on racial backlash by repackaging a segregationist narrative. That means there is a scholarly consensus or majority viewpoint and Lassiter's opinion is a minority viewpoint, and the article should represent that.Scoobydunk (talk) 16:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Scoobydunk. If there is a large body of scholarly work dissenting from this view, where is it? Why do we only have a couple of sources? --Sammy1339 (talk) 16:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

First, SD, why would you open an edit warring notice based on this?

Second, the source SD uses to justify a "some" claim does not say "some". "Some" can be taken as a weasel word to downplay the significance of a counter view. What Lassiter says is "a popular strain in the scholarly literature". It does not say it is the majority view or that those who have really researched the subject largely agree. This is why I think the more neutral version we refined is better. Sammy, I would take your question and turn it around, where is the scholarly work, work that actually looked to address that topic, that says the GOP turn in the south was because of appeals to racism? Most of the work that mentions it (as I showed above) mentions it as a given, as popular understanding. Previously I mentioned the work of Melvin Small. His book makes it clear that at least when we talk about the impact of the SS (and even it's make up), the record does not show clear agreement among scholars. This is why the more neutral sentence is in orderGetoverpops (talk) 17:53, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, I have on line access to Small's book and it's citations. The below is from chapter 12 of the previously cited book. The chapter is by Dean Kotlowski (an author we have agreed is produced at least two reliable works on the subject).

This “Southern Strategy/civil-rights retreat” thesis became the first, and thus the orthodox, interpretation of the administration's policies. It would be sustained, in the years immediately after Nixon left office, by two groups of writers. The first were those who used the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal as their points of reference for understanding Nixon's presidency. ...

There also was a connect-the-dots tone to the orthodox accounts that wrapped individual events – the 1968 election, Phillips’ book (which actually opposed an “abandonment” of civil rights as “self-defeating”), and delays in desegregation for Mississippi's schools – into a tidy, all-policy-is-politics thesis (Phillips 1969: 464). Evans and Novak, who began their study by proclaiming the president inscrutable, had, by the time they discussed the issue of race, made him one-dimensional. ...

Several writers challenged the orthodox interpretation, starting with Nixon himself. .... Whatever their weaknesses, the Nixonian accounts presaged a scholarly revision of the president's civil-rights record that began with A. James Reichley's Conservatives in an Age of Change. ...

Melvin Small's The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1999) was a case in point. Small, not unlike his subject, cast himself as middle-of-the-road, between “the legion of unreconstructed Nixon haters” and “the growing number of Nixon revisionists who view Watergate and other dark deeds as aberrations” – a reference to Parmet, Wicker, and Hoff. ...

Scholars wishing to write on Nixon and civil rights would be wise to keep two realities in mind. First, this topic, by its nature, has been one of the most debated, and contentious, aspects of Nixon's domestic policies. As such, it demands equanimity rather than polemics – by authors and by reviewers of their books. Second, whatever aspect of Nixon's policy is studied, this president's own complexity ought to be recognized. William Safire, a sympathetic but not uncritical observer, once compared Nixon to a cake, that is, consisting of a variety of layers – “progressive politician,” “self-made” man, “realist,” “hater,” “loner” – and covered by a “conservative” icing. “When you take a bite of the cake that is Nixon,” he warned readers, “you must get a mouthful of all the layers; nibbling along one level is not permitted”

The entire chapter continues much like that and covers different views and interpretations of Nixon, his actions and related outcomes. That should clearly show that there is not a single school of thought on the subject as viewed by scholars. Getoverpops (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

You keep trying to present a scholarly consensus as a debate, and that is directly contrary to what we've been discussing. You also need an equivalently strong reliable source to assert that there is disagreement among the academic field or is a debate, for that language to remain in the article. The Lassiter quote directly contradicts this and admits that there is a conventional knowledge held by scholarly sources and that his views are contrary to that conventional viewpoint. This is how we define majority vs. minority opinion. My use of "Some" is generous and actually gives the minority viewpoint of Lassiter more weight than it deserves. Though it can be considered a weasel word, it's not when I have sources that speak to the majority viewpoint conventionally held by scholarship. I'm happy to remove a statement speaking to "some" but it can not be replaced with an affirmative statement pertaining to debate/disagreement among scholars. Lastly, the quote from Wiley & Sons is not a peer reviewed work and is not of equivalent reliability. So it's irrelevant when being used to contradict the narrative held by stronger sources.Scoobydunk (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Scoobydunk and Sammy. I do not see that there is an active, academic debate. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 21:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The fact that I have shown that scholars disagree doesn't prove the point? What about the fact that a peer reviewed author says there is disagreement? What more needs to be shown? Getoverpops (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

But you have not shown there is a consensus among scholars. I would like to see the sources you claim show the GOP's success in the south was due to the racist message. So far there aren't actually that many and it's far from a consensus. I agree with the "conventional wisdom" claim but Lassiter does not support your claim that there is a whole sale agreement among scholars. What he and Small argue is that the view point wasn't the first thus it is not conventional wisdom. Your use of "some" makes for a weasel word suggesting the view is insignificant or dismissed by most researchers. You haven't shown that to be the case. You are claiming a majority vs minority opinion but have not shown it. As for your claim that the Small edited book is not peer reviewed, I would suggest you look at Wiley-Blackwell's business. It is a publisher of peer reviewed, academic books and journals. It should be seen as at least as reliable as the U Kentucky press. https://en.wikipedia.org/Wiley-Blackwell So how should we show that there was not a consensus view (at any point according the Kotlowski). How do we make the entry not read as if the view that appeals to racism were the key to GOP success in the South?Getoverpops (talk) 21:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Consensus, majority opinion, conventional wisdom, and popular viewpoint of scholarly literature are synonymous. Furthermore, Wiley-Blackwell is a separate parent company of Wiley & Sons publishing. Wiley-Blackwell is known for its peer reviewed publications, but this language isn't used for Wiley & Sons which is also known as the publisher of the "for Dummies" series of books. Just like Gap Inc. owns Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy, doesn't mean that something you buy from Old Navy is equivalent to something bought at Banana Republic. Your link suggests a false equivalency and Wiley & Sons is not equivalent to the University Press of Kentucky which belongs to the Association of American University Presses. It's just an academic book, which is certainly stronger than most non-academic sources, but not stronger than peer reviewed sources.Scoobydunk (talk) 00:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:BALANCE, Misplaced Pages should neutrally present the subject, and should not favor a POV that a Southern Strategy was driven by racism within GOP voters, at the same time presenting that certain reliable sources have written that it has. Misplaced Pages should not favor the POV that the Southern Strategy was not driven by racism, at the same time present that certain reliable sources have written as such.
Present both POVs, let the reader sort out which is the truth.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:29, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Scoobydunk, no, they are not synonymous. Note that Lassiter clearly states them as two separate things. Conventional wisdom does not imply the consensus view among scholars and that is where your argument falls apart. The fact that scholars like Carter feel the need to mention and write dissent articles in reply to Shafer and Johnson or Alexander at all is a strong indication that there is debate. You are really working hard to discredit the Small compilation book. Sorry, just look at the contributing authors. The quotes that I posted were from the section contributed by Kotlowski whom we have already agreed produced a reputable work on the subject. I think you are working really hard to dismiss this source for an unjust cause. It is clearly a compilation work by noted scholars in the field. If you still disagree perhaps we should take this to the reputable source noticeboard.

I agree with RightCowLeftCoast that we should simply state that there is a debate among scholars and present both sides of the debate without a subject sentence that favors one or the other. I don't believe we have that now.Getoverpops (talk) 01:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@RightCowLeftCoast: There is no debate about whether "a Southern Strategy was driven by racism." Reliable sources all agree on that, and it's a fact. The objections here have more to do with nuances about the scope of the appeals to racism.

@Getoverpops: Putting aside the issue that this book is not peer-reviewed, the quote you provided does not even seem to offer a clear alternative to the orthodox view. It says that the interpretation of Nixon's civil rights record is contested by a minority of scholars - that's not directly pertinent to understanding the scope of the Southern strategy. It's not clear to me that the book makes the claims you claim it makes. --Sammy1339 (talk) 01:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Sammy, you are mistating the objection. The objection is the claim that, in effect, the SS had an impact on the shift of the south from Democrat to GOP dominated. Some like Carter claim yes. Others say no, it was based on other factors. They aren't saying racial plays weren't made but that those racial plays don't explain the changes. Currently we don't actually know if the Small book was or was not peer reviewed. Scoobydunk has made that claim without proof. Certainly the author's list shows it to be a major complication of reputable historians. I suspect if we put that up to the reputable sources noticeboard it would be considered quite reliable. The book, and specifically the section by Kotlowski, point out that you have an early group of writers who attacked Nixon on civil rights and claim there was racist southern strategy used to win over the south. That was what he called the orthodox view because it was the first one. He is illustrating the point that there are a wide range of views on Nixon, civil rights etc. It gets back to the core issue which is that there is lots of debate about all sorts of aspects of Nixon. Given that the "common wisdom" is the SS converted the south to the GOP, the fact that we have a lot of debate on the subject should make it clear that there is not a consensus view and thus the Wiki entry should not favor either position.Getoverpops (talk) 02:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Alright, this is getting silly. You're conceding that there was a strategy to appeal to racism, but contesting that the scholarly consensus is that the South shifted to the GOP after the Civil Rights Act because of racism? It was a stretch when you seemed to be saying "Okay, the South went to GOP side because the Dems embraced civil rights, but the Republicans didn't deliberately exploit this to their advantage." But now, you're saying that it was coincidence that the Dems lost their dominance of the South right at that time? Gimme a break. You need to show some very explicit statements from some very strong sources to convince anybody of that idea. I highly doubt any reliable source makes such a claim. --Sammy1339 (talk) 02:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Sammy, it is very discouraging that we might have been discussing different topics. I hope this is just a case of you getting confused by the long chain of replies. Here is what I . I said the degree to which any GOP appeals to racism (ie the SS) affected the shift of the south to the GOP were subject to debate. I proceeded to given sources that said it was a significant factor and others that said it wasn't. So what we have done since is try to refine the content of that paragraph. Critically, this is why I said my neutrality reviews were obsolete. I'm not asking the same question I put forth in the neutrality request. That question was "did it really exist". Enough scholars say yes. The second question (the current one) is did it really have any impact? Scholars debate that. Getoverpops (talk) 03:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

WP:BALANCE DOES NOT require that all views be given equal play. What it says is "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both approaches and work for balance." In this case, the reliable sources ARE NOT "relatively equal in prominence". If a small minority present one view and the majority largely ignore it, there is no debate. What reliable sources speak of this raging debate that you claim exists? Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

NS, in that case I think it is up to you to prove that such a balance doesn't exist. The default assumption when prominent sources on both sides have been presented would be to give balanced weight. How many sources do we have that say the SS is why the GOP was able to turn the south into a reliable voter base? I've given at least four that argue against (Scoobydunk will argue about Alexander but he is a published academic). I can also add Michelle Brattain (academic but in a lesser journal). So that is 5 in favor. We also have Dan Carter, one of the key advocates of the SS being significant writing in Dissent in reply to the idea. I believe you have cited that one in the past. So if we have Carter discussing the works of Schafer and Johnson, Alexander and Lassiter all in a single article are you going to claim there is no debate?Getoverpops (talk) 02:24, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Just so I can understand what is going on in this article, as I am largely uninvolved, given the total number of edits in this article, and the number of my edits in this article. What editors want to advance the POV that Republicans are racist?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The overall picture is more complex but in this particular section the core question to what extend (if any) did the appeals to racism associated with the Southern Strategy result in the South moving to the GOP. Some academics clearly feel the SS was not responsible for the GOP transmission. I think enough feel that way to justify a weight neutral presentation. Others argue the view is a minority view. I don't believe anyone has put together a list of academics who think the south would have stayed blue without the SS.

If by editors you mean Wiki editors I don't believe any here are simply trying to claim the Republicans are racist. That said, I don't think this article is even close to well balanced in it's overall presentation. Getoverpops (talk) 04:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

1. Small, Melvin, ed. (2013). A Companion to Richard M. Nixon. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781444340938. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
2. Melvin Small - Wayne State University; Iwan Morgan - Professor of US Studies and Head of US Programs at the Institute of the Americas, University College London.; Joseph Dmohowski - Whittier Historical Society; Gil Troy - Professor of History at McGill University; Anthony Rama Maravillas - History Professor College of DuPage; Athan G. Theoharis - Marquette University; Irwin F. Gellman; W.J. Rorabaugh University of Washington; Rick Perlstein; Karen M. Hult -Virginia Polytechnic; Romain Huret -University of Lyon 2 in France; Dean J. Kotlowski - Salisbury University; Nigel Bowles - University of Oxford; Robert Mason; Paul Charles Milazzo; Tim Kiska; Katherine Scott; Justin P. Coffey; Jussi M. Hanhimäki; Robert D. Schulzinger; Jeffrey P. Kimball; Keith L. Nelson; Evelyn Goh; Luke A. Nichter; Mark Attwood Lawrence; Keith W. Olson; John Robert Greene; David Greenberg; Sahr Conway-Lanz. The publisher is Wiley Blackwell.
3. Brattain, Michelle (2011). "Forgetting the South and the Southern Strategy". Miranda.
4. Carter, Dan (Summer 2007). "Is There Still a South and Does it Mater". Dissent. 54 (3): 92-96. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

Cutting down of the Atwater quote

Sammy1339, your cutting out of the larger Atwater quote is problematic. Herbert's article is an op-ed article and thus a poor source for any claims. Yes, he is quoting a section of the Atwater interview but he has taken it out of context. The longer quote you removed and the other source put context back around the actual conversation. Furthermore by placing that quote, coming from an inflammatory op-ed article by Herbert, right before the Reagan discussion it implies something that Atwater specifically said wasn't true. If you want to use it as historical proof of how the SS worked then it should be in the previous section. If you aren't going to use the full quote (you can add the quote to a footnote while keeping the full context in the text) then I would remove the whole thing. Alternatively, you can use this link rather than the Herbert op-ed link. If the only intent is to quote Atwater, both links contain the same text. I added this quote a while back and Scott Illini replaced with justification when another editor removed it. I would suggest we figure out how to include the full quote using footnotes. Getoverpops (talk) 02:55, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:BRD I have reverted the reduction. It appears to advance the narrative that the Republicans are racist. While I believe it is done in good faith, a more balanced pruning of the quote, while giving part of the rebuttal, gives a more balanced presentation of the interview. Please, let us try better next time. Perhaps we should discuss what part of the quotes, if any should be kept in block quote form.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Your version is misleading. In particular, the claim that Atwater said Reagan did not use a Southern strategy is just not true. If you read the source, the whole thing was about Reagan. The mitigating factor claimed by Atwater is that the abstraction itself is an improvement over the bald racism of the previous era. This is a bit of a tangent, and is not included in the source Getoverpops wants to use for this (highly relevant and famous) quote. --Sammy1339 (talk) 03:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

My version? I only tagged, and merged references per WP:CITEBUNDLE to avoid WP:BOMBARD. The quotes were untouched.

IMHO it would be better to summarize the current quotes (all of them in the section), thus summarizing the racist claim, and summarizing the it was not racist claim. This presents both views neutrally. The trimming only provided the racist claim.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 04:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I would propose the Herbert reference to the Atwater quote be removed and replaced at least with the Lamis if not the Powerline version. Here is my reasoning. If you look at the Powerline source (and it contains links to the complete audio of the interview) it becomes clear that Atwater felt that Reagan's campaign was not trying to craft an appeal to racism. While I agree that the Powerline blog is a lower weight source vs Lamis, it does include more of the interview and critically a link to the complete interview. That said, Lamis's interpretation of the meaning of the quote is questionable if it's taken to imply Reagan was using coded racism. What it does is provide evidence that prior to 1966 Atwater felt race was a critical factor but he felt it was not by 1980. It also shows that Atwater was NOT saying the GOP used coded racism during Reagan's campaign. The full Lamis version of the quote is footnoted.. When you listen to the whole interview it's clear that Atwater saw the appeal to racist instincts as a non-winner for the campaign and thus not something to bother with. He also noted that as the "code words" become more obscure the intended audience doesn't actually understand the potential racist message. He said the real divide would be class, not race and it would be across the nation.

Anyway, Herbert has cut the quote in a way to make it suggest something Atwater didn't intend. Furthermore, the Herbert citation is used only as a source for the text. As such the other two sources Lamis or Powerline are more complete. The quote as it appears in the Wiki article is neither representative of Lamis or Powerline.

Also, I think the clean up tag should be returned to the article. There is still plenty in that section that needs to be cleaned up.Getoverpops (talk) 03:13, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

1. Rick Perlstein (November 13, 2012). "Exclusive: Lee Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy". The Nation. Retrieved April 11, 2014.
   http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/what-did-lee-atwater-really-say.php
2. Atwater: As to the whole Southern Strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964... and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster... Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps? Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.",

What are we talking about?

@Getoverpops: In your initial complaints earlier this month you made the following statements.

That said, the extend and impact of these appeals and even the notion to which we should call them racists is questionable.

...

I have found several peer reviewed sources that suggest the scope of the strategy was small and was rather innocuous.

More recently, you disagreed with my assertion that your objections consisted of nuanced questions about the scope of the Southern strategy's appeals to racism, and characterized your argument as follows.

I said the degree to which any GOP appeals to racism (ie the SS) affected the shift of the south to the GOP were subject to debate. I proceeded to given sources that said it was a significant factor and others that said it wasn't. So what we have done since is try to refine the content of that paragraph. Critically, this is why I said my neutrality reviews were obsolete. I'm not asking the same question I put forth in the neutrality request. That question was "did it really exist". Enough scholars say yes. The second question (the current one) is did it really have any impact? Scholars debate that.

If I understand correctly (and I probably don't) you are contending that academic consensus does not have it that the political shift of the South toward the GOP from 1964 onwards was primarily the result of race issues. This is a strong (indeed, unbelievable) claim. I am reluctant to accept that any reputable scholars have taken such a position, and none of what you quoted above indicates to me that they have done anything other than make nuanced points about the extent of the Southern strategy, without contesting the common wisdom that the Democrats' loss of control of the South was caused by race politics. It's true I am a little lost in the vast amount you have written. If you are indeed arguing that the political shift in the South was not the result of racism, please briefly list the strongest academic sources (and no others) which take this position, and indicate exactly what they say that supports such a claim. --Sammy1339 (talk) 21:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Sammy, yes I'm afraid you have missed a critical distinction. The articles I have cited state that the Southern Strategy was not a significant factor. Given this article is about the Southern Strategy the academic view of the impact of the strategy is a relevant discussion point. None of the sources claim race based issues weren't a factor, they claim that the Southern Strategy wasn't a factor. Incidentally Atwater seems to say something similar. I wanted to further discuss his quote in that section of the talk page. Anyway, I hope this clears up your question and thank you for asking for clarification. It certainly would explain some of the disagreement! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Getoverpops (talk • contribs) 22:33, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Undue weight from primary source

The Atwater interview that currently exists in the article is given significance and weight by both of the sources that are used to merit its inclusion. One of them is a peer reviewed book that focuses on this part of the interview, specifically. The inclusion of the quote by Rightcowleftcoast is not given any weight or discussed in either of these sources. This inclusion is actually against WP weight policies, as the editor is giving weight to a specific line from an interview/primary source that isn't given any weight by a reliable secondary source. This is why I reverted the inclusion of the quote. WP represents what the most reliable scholarly sources say about a subject, it doesn't represent the arguments that editors want to include because they think they are significant especially when they are not given importance by equally strong sources.Scoobydunk (talk) 21:02, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The inclusion of only one part of the interview creates a lack of balance in the article. Also including the entirety of only one part of the interview, creates a non-neutral perception of the GOP. Better to summarize what the quote says to give that part of the interview undue weight in the section.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:39, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

It seems your conception of "balance" hinges on left vs. right ideologies, which is not what balance speaks to. Balance speaks to representation of reliable sources. Here we have 2 reliable sources, one of them being peer reviewed, that specifically quote this passage from Atwater's speech. This gives significance to this passage and if it's important enough for those sources to directly quote it, then there is no reason why WP can't directly quote it as well. Note, we aren't including "one part of the interview" we're including what strong secondary sources say and our citation directly references those sources, not the interview itself. To make an argument of "balance" you'd have to demonstrate that there is an equally strong reliable source with an opposing view regarding the Atwater's speech or the passage itself that is not being fairly represented in this article. Your previous reversion didn't demonstrate this.Scoobydunk (talk) 20:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Please then attribute what sources only give that one part of the lengthy interview weight, and provide a link to the entirity of the interview, so that a reader can watch the full interview if they so wish.

Also, I will include information from the following reliable source, which gives weight to the other part of the interview: Joseph A. Aistrup (5 February 2015). The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South. University Press of Kentucky. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-8131-4792-5.

--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:29, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

We don't explain the policies of establishing weight or reliability within the actual articles themselves. It would actually be "original research" to put in the article "This quote from Atwater has weight because it was published in this book by XYZ". Establishing weight and reliability are mechanics that exist behind the scenes of encyclopedia articles. The quote is directly attributed to Atwater which is from his interview. That interview is a "primary source" and when citing sources we are discouraged from using primary sources over reliable secondary sources. Everything is in order with that quote, along with the context presented within the article. This context represents what the reliable sources say about the transition/evolution of the Southern Strategy. The only POV pushing I'm seeing here is your attempts to trivialize what scholarly sources say as "opinions" and trying to present a false "balance" argument when you haven't demonstrated a misrepresentation of "balance" regarding this quote or the interview. This is further exemplified by the fact that your last edit was a completely dishonest representation of what Airstrup said in his book. No where did Airstrup say "There was no 'Southern strategy' used in the Reagan campaign" and, as a matter of fact, Airstrup speaks directly to the Southern Strategy used by Reagan and how Reagan redefined the Southern Strategy. Scoobydunk (talk) 08:54, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Removal of verified content

@Sammy1339: I am not interested in getting into an edit war.
There appears to be a concerted effort to continue to deny balance in the article, and continuing to have this article portray the Republican Party as racist by utilizing a southern strategy. If there is an effort of active editors here to continue this perception, a single editor, such as myself cannot remedy the current imbalance, and this article will continue to have the imbalance it began with in the early days.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:45, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

@RightCowLeftCoast: Oh, I'm quite aware of that phenomenon. You should take a look at what's happening at Mattress Performance and Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol. It's very frustrating how some editors vigorously defend every detail of an obviously and severely biased narrative.

This is not quite like that, though. This is not an attempt to make the Republicans look racist - the Southern strategy is a fact, it happened, and even the source you cited (which takes a very unusual position) is highly nuanced, saying that what Reagan did shouldn't be called a "Southern strategy," but that he incorporated race politics into a broader set of economic policies. This is consistent with what Atwater says about race politics becoming more coded. Nobody says Republicans in 1980 were no longer appealing to white Southerners by exploiting racial tensions, so a statement like the one I just reverted demands a lot of qualification. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the recent addition is that it misrepresented what the source is saying. While Aistrup does write that Reagan "did not have a Southern Strategy per se", he is employing a particular definition of the Southern strategy and he describes how Reagan's strategy was both a product and refinement of the southern strategy used by Nixon and Goldwater. Aistrup also referred to Reagan's southern coalition as "the reincarnation of the Wallace movement of 1968". So I think twisting that into "There was no "Southern strategy" used in the Reagan campaign, instead appealing to populist messages that appealed to nationwide audiences." (and placing that at the lead of a paragraph detailing Reagan's use of the strategy) says something about the credibility of any claim to balance. gobonobo 20:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, the Southern strategy was enacted by Republicans, for Republicans, for the sake of consciously and intentionally gaining the "black vote". It's not the Democratic Party's fault that they did this, and the Democratic Party doesn't need to defend anything. If you feel that Misplaced Pages has a Liberal bias, it might be because Misplaced Pages has a "truth bias". "Reality has a well-known Liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert. Liberal does not, and has not, always represented the Democratic Party - the switch primarily came after the Southern strategy. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party even fails to be Liberal on some issues. The truthful, Liberal bias will always remain - no matter who it comes from - because people want the facts. Today's Republicans and Tea Party, being represented mainly by Conservatives (who prefer Tradition, by nature, even when it means creating and enacting their own traditions, even when they're built upon falsehoods), often (but not always) choose to "muddy the water" by claiming to desire that "all sides are represented", as long as that means getting their own voices heard, even when their conjectures are false. This is a good concept, when the opinion is merely a matter of opinion, but when you're dealing with the facts, only the truth should be presented, not opinionated conjecture that refuses to acknowledge the facts. Knowledgebattle (talk) 18:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

The material you removed came from a peer reviewed, scholarly, secondary source which is the strongest type of source available. These sources can be as biased as they want to be, it's us editors that don't reserve that right when building Misplaced Pages articles. Furthermore, it is directly related to the southern strategy and your remarks/characterizations show a lack of comprehension of the material. The other is explaining how elements of the Southern Strategy is still used today by Republican's in fear mongering conservatives against an elected black president. It talks about a narrative that claims his election marks the end of the need for more civil rights initiatives, while at the same time threatening that more civil rights would oppress white conservative voters. You talk about "truth" being presented, but it's not our responsibility as editors to establish what's true and what's not. We simply convey what the strongest sources have to say about a subject and then we present those sources with the appropriate weight. If you have a position contrary to the one you removed that comes from an equally reliable source, then we can discuss altering the passage to appropriately reflect academia.Scoobydunk (talk) 03:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I undid your undo, but after reading your explanation, then re-reading it, I undid my undo of your undo of my deletion. Lol. You were right, and I misunderstood the perspective it was coming from. It seemed as if a Conservative was trying to turn this around into a "Northern Strategy", in which I was thinking, "Then call it something different, because it's not the same thing," but after removing my preconception and re-reading it with a more open mind, I see what you mean by it being exactly the same tactic, revisited. Knowledgebattle (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

---

The Great Betrayal

In the "World War II and Population Changes" section, the sentence about "The Great Betrayal," for which is a "citation needed," appears to originate with an article on US politicain Allen Webb's blog at:

http://allenwestrepublic.com/2013/02/11/angela-west-why-the-democrats-virtually-own-the-african-american-voting-block-and-how-deep-the-reasons-run/

The piece in the blog is actually by Angela West; the "betrayal" here is that supposedly felt by Republican politicians in response to black voters abandoning them despite Republican support fo the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. The sentence that uses the term is actually reproduced word-for-word (pretty much plagiarized), and the following sentences are very lightly modified.

Here's the Angela West paragraph:

"In some Republican circles, the election after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was termed, “The Great Betrayal”. Even though some Republicans paid a price with white voters — in some cases losing seats — black voters did not return to the Republican fold. Indeed, in some cases, notably the re-election of Senator Al Gore Sr., a majority of black voters cast their votes for a man who voted against the Civil Rights Act."

Compare the wikipedia paragraph:

"In some Republican circles, the election after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was termed, "The Great Betrayal". Although some Republicans were defeated in the election, national party support for this important law did not attract black voters to the Republican fold in the North. In the South, most black voters were still disenfranchised. When Democratic Senator Al Gore Sr. was re-elected from Middle Tennessee; a majority of the still limited number of black voters in the region cast their votes for him as a Democrat, although he personally had voted against the Civil Rights Act."

Interestingly, the term "Great Betrayal" also shows up in Race and Redistricting in the 1990s, by Bernard Grofman (2003), p. 63 (footnote):

"The solid South was an historical anomaly; once the Democratic party began to change its stance on civil rights after WWII, and especially after Lyndon Johnson's "great betrayal" in supporting passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, no one would ever be able to put Humpty-Dumpty together again."

Here, the term refers to southern Democrats' feeling of betrayal elicited by L. Johnson's abandonment of the southern Democratic Party's segregationist traditions, pretty much the opposite of West's usage.

I haven't yet found a contemporary (1960's) usage. I believe that "The Great Betrayal" or "The Grand Betrayal" is long and well known as a reference to the presidential election compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and African-Americans' opportunity to enter American society. The use of this term to refer to civil rights events of the 1960's is obviously an echo (ironic or not) of the earlier usage.

Until actual 1960's usage of the "Great Betrayal" can be found, I recommend either removing the sentences under question, or rewriting them to better avoid plagiarism and providing proper citation, thereby indicating that West's use of the term is just her own, or re-writing it in a way to avoid the term altogether - this would be the most informative thing to do, as it would be simply including a citable point of view about the Southern Strategy. The question would then be whether it is even a notable opinion.

43hellokitty21 (talk) 17:28, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Took a sharp eye to spot that – good work, and I agree with you. Neither version ( betrayal of GOP or betrayal of LBJ) involves a scholarly analysis and I don't see any reason it should be included at all. Rjensen (talk) 17:39, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I will look to removing it. 43hellokitty21 (talk) 23:14, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Issue with Scholarly Debate

I think the inclusion of a "scholarly debate" sub-section is a good addition. However, I feel Lassiter is given too much weight. Lassiter recognizes that his view is a minority opinion and he's really listed as the only scholarly detractor from the historians that focus on the racial aspect of the Southern strategy in the section. Currently, the first paragraph in the section and the last paragraph in the section almost entirely consist of Lassiter's point of view. I think his point of view can be combined into one area and can be trimmed so it's not given too much weight. I don't mind including opinions from other peer reviewed works, but Lassiter is certainly given too much weight. He's basically getting an entire sub-section and Valentino and Sears are just commenting on the fact that Lassiter's opinion exist. I think there needs to be less focus on one scholar who holds a minority opinion, and more focus on multiple scholars.Scoobydunk (talk) 19:16, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

As it happens are quite a few scholars who have been contributing to the debate on the southern strategy. I just now added summaries of the work of two of them: Glen Moore, "Richard M. Nixon and the 1970 Midterm Elections in the South." Southern Historian 12 (1991) pp: 60-71 and Bruce H. Kalk, "The Carswell Affair: The Politics of a Supreme Court Nomination in the Nixon Administration." American Journal of Legal History (1998): 261-287. in JSTOR. They deal with topics that had not previously been touched upon here, such as the 1970 elections in the South and the Supreme Court nomination issue. Rjensen (talk) 15:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The sources you've added not only don't belong in the section, but attempt to give a position more weight than it actually has in scholarship. This area should strictly be about strong sources that speak to the disagreements held amongst scholars. The sources you added don't speak to the debate or conflict...at least not the text you actually wrote in the article. This section should be precise and accurate, and shouldn't be muddied by throwing in ancillary factors that might have been important during the 1970s. Just because some scholars think Supreme Court appointments have an impact, doesn't mean they are debating notions generally held regarding the Southern Strategy or speaking to a debate. To make this implication is a form of OR in violation of WP:Synth. Lassiter clearly says he disagree with the majority of his scholars and says race wasn't the biggest influencing factor. This is a clear example of what this section should consist of, not irrelevant red herring arguments about SC justices and byrd machines.Scoobydunk (talk) 18:21, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd also like a direct quote from Mayer please. Mayer doesn't mention the Southern Strategy at all in this source and actually admits the importance of race/civil rights in domestic politics which is what the Southern Strategy is. Mayer's comments about "American politics" does not serve to refute sentiments regarding the Southern Strategy because the SS was not a nationwide strategy, but one that focused on localized sentiments in the south. To this source of Mayer and try to apply it to debate/refutation of the Southern Strategy is another example of original research through synthesizing. I appreciate your moving the other sources out of the wrong section, but comments on the Bird Machine and SC justices aren't relevant to this article at all and certainly to speak to the "roots of the southern strategy". I ask that you please remove them and stick to sources that actually speak to the Southern Strategy.Scoobydunk (talk) 18:36, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on the content in question yet (although my gut instinct is that it's a combination of undue weight and original synthesis). But if these sections are kept, they need extensive copyediting. The section on Virginia and the Byrd, or "bird" , machine is particularly mangled. I'm not investing the time yet since it's not clear that the content actually belongs, but if Rjensen feels strongly then perhaps he could copyedit it the next time he re-inserts it. It's hurting my eyes. MastCell  18:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

He already reinserted it in another section. I think that shows some progress, but it's still irrelevant to the Southern Strategy.Scoobydunk (talk) 18:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Is this a strategy irrelevant to Virginia???? that seems a very strange line of argument. The fact is Virginia had a strongly and attached conservative Byrd organization and the Republicans build up their own organization to displace it, and largely succeeded. To carry out a southern strategy, you have to handle every state in the South, and every state had a different structure in place. That's why historians study the states. Rjensen (talk) 18:42, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

No, this article is about the Southern Strategy and not the individual state by state localized politics. That type of information might belong on articles directly relating to Virginia politics/history, but not in a general one about the Southern Strategy. Also, please address the issues expressed above.Scoobydunk (talk) 18:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Every politician knows that a national election is a combination of state elections. There's no such thing as a regional southern election, there are elections in southern states and each one has a different combination of demography, established politicians, and localized issues (like TVA) that they in fact address separately. When a candidate hopping from state to state accidentally praises the wrong governor, it's a serious mistake because it proves he's not paying attention to the voters and needs of the state that is actually in. Rjensen (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

This article isn't about what "every politician knows", it's about the southern strategy and information about the southern strategy. Continuing to post information not relevant to or speaking to the Southern Strategy can be seen as POV pushing and OR. To claim or imply that these complete separate micro-issues are related to the southern strategy when the sources themselves don't analyze them in relation to the southern strategy is original research as well. They might be relevant to a topic about political realignment in the south, but they are not directly related to the southern strategy.Scoobydunk (talk) 21:16, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Scoobydunk talks about "POV pushing"-- is he trying to say that he is innocent of that entity in fact has no appeal the agenda on this topic?? Rjensen (talk) 21:57, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm interested in accurately representing what reliable sources have to say about the Southern Strategy. Trying to include sources that don't speak to the Southern Strategy and asserting they do and refute what historians say about the southern strategy is a violation of multiple WP policies.Scoobydunk (talk) 22:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

There's been a request for a direct quotation from Mayer. OK here it is: Goldwater's staff also realized that his radical plan to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority was causing even racist whites to vote for Johnson. A Florida editorial urged Southern whites not to support Goldwater even if they agreed with his position on civil rights, because his other positions would have grave economic consequences for the region. Goldwater's opposition to most poverty programs, the TVA, aid to education, Social Security, the Rural Electrification Administration, and farm price supports surely cost him votes throughout the South and the nation. cite Jeremy D. Mayer, "LBJ Fights the White Backlash: The Racial Politics of the 1964 Presidential Campaign, Part 2 " Prologue 33#2 (2001) pp: 6-19. Rjensen (talk) 18:53, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

As I thought, this quote says NOTHING about the southern strategy and Mayer only speaks to some of Goldwater's oppositions costing him votes. This is not representative of a debate nor does it speak to a debate regarding the importance/impact of the Southern Strategy.Scoobydunk (talk) 19:00, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

wrong. the southern strategy = a) a technical term and b) a strategy to use race to win for GOP. Mayer says that in 1964 Goldwater brought up other issues (like TVA etc) that led southern racists to vote for LBJ. that is, the southern strategy did not work. The Southern Strategy TERM was invented later, but Mayer in fact uses the Southern Strategy term in his article and therefore he has it in mind. Rjensen (talk) 19:34, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Nothing in that quote spoke to the southern strategy or to scholarly debate surrounding the southern strategy. Please supply a quote from Myer that talks about the southern strategy, so far, nothing you're supplied is relevant to this article. Your claim that Myers quote asserts "the southern strategy did not work" is entirely the manifest of original research.Scoobydunk (talk) 21:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Scoobydunk should read this article. it's full of politicians and history, as well as scholars. The scholars are trying to figure out the strategy that politicians were using at different points of time in different states. In Misplaced Pages OR only means no footnote and everything is well footnoted here. Rjensen (talk) 21:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Your understanding of WP:OR is fallacious and I even specifically identified the parts of WP:OR that you've violated, which is WP:Synth. No, WP:verify speaks to things not being properly sourced/footnoted which is not the same thing that original research addresses. Nothing in your last response substantiated your mischaracterization of Myer. Also, your Shafer source is another example where the "southern strategy" isn't mentioned ONCE in either sources so to use it to try and make claims about the southern strategy is another example of original research.Scoobydunk (talk) 22:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

First things first--NPOV : does Scoobydunk claim that he is neutral on this topic and has no political agenda? Rjensen (talk) 22:16, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

This is the second time you've attempted to comment about an editor instead of policies relevant to the discussion. This type of behavior can easily be seen as disruptive as it serves as a distraction from the actual discussion. My POV is irrelevant since I'm not trying to push information into the article that doesn't speak to the Southern Strategy, nor am I trying to misrepresent scholarly opinions about the southern strategy by inserting irrelevant information or making my own OR conclusions about that information.Scoobydunk (talk) 22:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Scoobydunk wrote at 21:16 today "Continuing to post information not relevant to or speaking to the Southern Strategy can be seen as POV pushing and OR." He introduced the issue and now refuses to answer about his private agenda. he says his POV is "irrelevant"--he means secret. I challenge that: his extremely narrow view of the topic is a personal POV that is hurting the editing process. If an article agrees with him he allows it otherwise he says it is OR or synthesis or something. That is not helpful. Rjensen (talk) 22:35, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I think it is always good to present other ideas, but also that the section could better describe who holds dissenting views and how accepted they are. When mentioning Lassiter, it should point out his unique views on racism and the South, which probably influence his views on the Southern strategy. See his intro to The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism. TFD (talk) 00:30, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think Lassiter is much of an issue with the exception of how much weight his opinion is given. He clearly disagrees with the conventional wisdom regarding the southern strategy and he admits that his opinions run contrary to the majority of scholarship. The problem is that a bunch of nonsense has been added to the "scholarly debate" section where the authors aren't contesting the importance of racism and/or don't even mention the southern strategy ONCE in their articles.Scoobydunk (talk) 07:20, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

WP policies explicitly and clearly describe what original research is and what editing synthesis is. Taking an article that says absolutely nothing about the Southern Strategy and attributing to a stance on the southern strategy is a violation of WP:Synthesis. Also, I've supported the inclusion of Lassiter on multiple occasions, which shows I adhere to WP policy and am willing to look at sources regardless of their positions. I've looked at your sources and most of the sources you've added don't speak to the southern strategy or they address issues not relevant to the southern strategy. When you're asked for a quote supporting the edits you've included, you provide nothing that speaks to the southern strategy or criticizes the scholarly view on the southern strategy. Now it seems you're more focused on making personal attacks, rather than addressing the issues identified above.Scoobydunk (talk) 07:20, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest looking at Glenn Feldman's Painting Dixie Red. Early on he notes that the number of scholars who are agreeing with Lassiter and the "suburban strategy" is "rapidly growing". I think Scooydunk is correct, focusing on just one scholar doesn't show debate. Others who share that point of view need to be included. Springee (talk) 01:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

That's not quite what I said, but I did welcome the topic being fleshed out with a bigger array of opinions contrary to the conventional view of the southern strategy. However, the majority of the sources added are either misrepresented and/or don't mention the southern strategy ONCE in the entire source.Scoobydunk (talk) 07:20, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

This article defines the southern strategy as "a Republican Party strategy of gaining political support for presidential candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to regional racial tensions and history of segregation." That means a) Republican Party strategies for winning presidential elections in the South; and b) the SS is at work when that strategy focuses on appeals to racial tensions. A major question in the scholarly literature is whether the SS is actually at work in election X. scholar A says Yes because the racial appeal was important; scholar B says No because the racial appeal was not especially important & other appeals, like economics or foreign policy, were more important. I am arguing that coverage of both A and B fits the appropriate guidelines and should be included. Scoobydunk seems to be saying that he only wants to see coverage of scholar A. Evidence against the SS hypothesis somehow don't count. he seems to believe that A is absolutely true, and therefore B is outside the bounds of Misplaced Pages. That is his own personal POV-- he has prejudged the historical situation ow what actually happened based on his own personal private politics. Rjensen (talk) 11:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

This is basically an admittance to adding in information not relevant to the Southern Strategy. On an article about "Granny Smith Apples" it would be defined as a "type of apple or fruit" but that doesn't open the door for the article to discuss golden delicious, red delicious, bananas, pears, and XYZ. You're admitting to adding information about the LARGER UMBRELLA of political elections with sources that don't discuss the Southern Strategy. You say "A major question in the scholarly literature is whether the SS is actually at work in election X" which is true, but is only accurate if the scholar is actually saying "No, the southern strategy wasn't at work, these were the things that were". If they aren't commenting directly on the SS, then they are simply talking about the larger umbrella of presidential elections or voter realignment and to assert that this is a stance/criticism about the southern strategy is a vioalation of WP:OR. The Southern Strategy is a SINGLE APPROACH to presidential elections and voter realignment, that doesn't mean every other example is relevant or disproves that the southern strategy existed and was used. They are different strategies. This article talks about southern strategy, not political realignment or presidential elections in general. Hence why many of the sources you've added have zero relevance to this article and should be added to articles with broader subject matter. This isn't a "narrow pov" this is how articles are written on WP. Scoobydunk (talk) 17:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The southern strategy is academic hypothesis about the motivation of the Republican political strategies. some scholars think the SS was very important, and other scholars think it was much less important than other factors like economics or the Vietnam war. A scholar who says "economics was the most important reason" is stating evidence downplaying the SS. That evidence should be included. Scoobydunk only wants to include evidence that supports this hypothesis. I suggest we can't write encyclopedia articles without giving both sides of a controversial issue. Somehow the text never mentions that Nixon explicitly rejected the idea that he ever used a "Southern strategy" see >Joan Hoff (1995). Nixon Reconsidered. BasicBooks. p. 79. Rjensen (talk) 17:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that the "Southern strategy" is solely an academic hypothesis, nor do I think there is any serious doubt about its existence. After all, the strategy was expressed verbatim, and unapologetically, by some of its architects in the GOP, including Kevin Phillips and Lee Atwater. FFS, it was even acknowledged explicitly by the head of the Republican National Committee in 2005, in the course of an apology to the African-American community. I get the sense that a lot of effort is being expended here to pretend that the strategy didn't exist, or may not have existed, or is simply an academic conjecture, when in reality it was acknowledged both contemporaneously and in retrospect by the Republican Party. The fact that Richard Nixon—an individual not exactly renowned for his integrity or honesty—denied employing the strategy is perhaps worth mention, but does not falsify the underlying reality. MastCell  18:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I just read over the Atwater links. I don't think they say the GOP used said strategy to run for the White House at any point in time. He certainly and strongly suggests that all more recent claims of the Southern Strategy are questionable. Even the stuff Phillips is saying can be read in more than just one way. If you look at what Atwater says, not just the short clip but the full interview, he is saying two things. First, he is saying that in the past some candidates (he didn't specify party or which election) did try to appeal via racial messages. However, the more important point he makes is that the moment you make the message indirect/coded/subliminal most voters are going to miss the code. Thus the coded message stuff is really so much hot air because the voters won't understand it to be racist and thus it doesn't appeal to their racism (for those who are racist). Rather than saying Reagan did use a message designed to appeal to racists (as the article suggests) Atwater is actually saying he didn't because even if he did such a message, by virtue of being coded, is lost on the reader. This fuller message is included in the Lamis interview but not in the Wiki entry. Lamis uses Atwater to show how things happened in the past, not prove that such a plan was still in use. The Atwater "coded message is a lost message" view supports the scholars who say that the south went to the GOP for reasons other than race politics. Those reasons do include "class" politics with suburban voters not wanting to pay higher taxes to support low income inner city residents regardless of race. A number of the critics of the Southerns Strategy theory (of the GOP rise in the south) note that the GOP did make class based appeals (protect your suburbia from paying for the issues of the inner city) but the appeals were not based on race. I think this article needs to decide if it is narrowly about a strategy that was used for some period of time (how long is not agreed) in which case much of the background needs to go. Or it's an article that discusses things in broader terms in which case what Rjensen is adding should stay because it's related to the elections and the validity of various claims presented by sources. Springee (talk) 20:28, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I think your interpretation is pretty far off base. The whole point of using a coded message is that the code is clearly understood by its target audience, but provides plausible deniability and wiggle room to avoid accountability. Atwater is saying that public values had changed to the extent that it was no longer acceptable or politically profitable for Republicans to use explicitly racist language, and that they shifted to more abstract and coded language (e.g. "states' rights", "forced busing") to couch their continued appeal to white racism in politically tenable terms. Reagan, Bush I, and other Republicans used such coded language in their campaigns (the constant references to "welfare queens", the Willie Horton ad, pretty much anything from Jesse Helms, etc), and the code was not particularly subtle. Again, I'm not interested in debating whether the Southern strategy existed, when it was acknowledged both at the time and in retrospect, by its architects and employers. How can we pretend it didn't exist when the RNC has already apologized for it? MastCell  21:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The RNC did not apologize. Its chairman said: "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong." SS means only presidential campaigns & he did not mention them. Rjensen (talk) 22:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Wait, what? Look, when someone describes a reprehensible action and then says "we were wrong", they are apologizing. It's a waste of our time (and an insult to our intelligence) to pretend otherwise. Likewise, the RNC chairman blamed "some Republicans" (unnamed) for exploiting white racism. You claim that this has nothing to do with the Southern strategy because he didn't explicitly call out specific Presidential candidates, which I think is similarly a very weak and tortured argument. I'm past the stage in my Misplaced Pages career where I spend hours arguing with people who are intent on denying obvious realities, so if this is the level of discussion going on here, I'll leave you to it. MastCell  23:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

It's made to sound like an apology but he carefully has no examples, names, dates, states or candidates. he does not call it "a reprehensible action". he does not use the word "racism." he does not say the RNC ever did any of it. he did say "we were wrong" -- we took a poor approach to winning the black vote. you wanted him to say much more but he carefully did not do so. Much of this debate is about code words & historians are trained to look very closely at the exact wording and at what is left unsaid. Rjensen (talk) 00:38, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Look at the Atwater quote in Lamis (our current quote is cut down from the Lamis quote). He starts by saying that Reagan isn't using such a strategy. He then, in the text quoted in the Wiki page, explains why such a coded message doesn't work. The recipient of the message doesn't understand the code. This become even more obvious when you read the Nation's take on the interview but even Lamis's version makes it clear this isn't a Reagan thing. Springee (talk) 21:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The Atwater interview is a primary source and primary sources don't take precedence over reliable secondary sources. So to make so much of an effort to try and interpret what Atwater said is ultimately fruitless in the face of reliable sources. Historians have thoroughly analyzed and discussed Atwater's interview and we highlight what those reliable sources say about the interview and the parts relevant to the southern strategy. Regardless, I'd like to bring the focus of this discussion back to the fact that the article has been littered with entries from sources that don't even discuss the southern strategy and that Rjensen is in clear violation of WP:OR and WP:NPOV.Scoobydunk (talk) 06:41, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

The text of the Atwater interview is a primary source. You are correct about the order of precedence established by Misplaced Pages. The primary sources at to the interpretation of the interview are Lamis and Perlstein. Lamis only says that Atwater is explaining how such a process of coding worked. He doesn't make a claim about any particular election where it was used thus it is WP:OR or WP:SYNTHISIS. Perlstein, writing from a clearly hostile POV on the subject also does not say that Atwater was saying the strategy is effective or currently in use (during Reagan's time). Rjensen's additions are relevant because they are in a section that discusses if the strategy had any impact. Thus it is reasonable to discuss the larger picture during the elections in question. Why are you so concerned about removing material that shows that appeals to racism were not the primary factors in the GOP shift but you aren't concerned about removing a long intro section that clearly predates the southern strategy? Rjensen seems to be adding real content to an article that looks like a place for people to dump all sorts of racist charges against the GOP. Most of the evolution and later material looks to be of poor quality at best. Springee (talk) 13:24, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion about Lamis and Perlstein's interpretations, it was about your interpretation of the Atwater interview and how it's irrelevant in the face of what secondary sources say, and irrelevant to the article because of policies concerning OR. The section in this article isn't about "if the strategy had any impact", it's strictly about scholars who debate contemporary/historical understandings of the Southern Strategy. That's why Lassiter, Valentino, and Sears are perfect additions, because in their works they specifically talk about people who debate aspects of the Southern Strategy. Almost none of the information supplied by Rjensen speaks to the impact of the southern strategy or about debate concerning the southern strategy. "No", this article isn't about every"election ever held nor is about every time the Republican party realigned, it's specifically about a single strategy called the Southern Strategy. If the articles don't discuss the southern strategy, then it's a violation OR to takes excerpts from those articles and present them in away that refute the southern strategy and its impact. I only say "almost" because after checking the first 2-4 sources Rjensen added, it was clear those sources had no relevance to the Southern Strategy and I haven't checked the latest ones.

Again, this article isn't about "the GOP shift", it's specifically about "The Southern Strategy", hence why I don't support adding sources that don't even mention the Southern Strategy once in the entire work. The Southern Strategy was about appeals to racist sentiments in southern voters, hence why it's presented that way in sources that discuss the southern strategy. Even Lassiter, who disagrees with its impact, admits that the Southern Strategy was a tactic to appeal to racist attitudes. I'm not concerned with rewriting the entire article, so you're welcome to fix the long intro, but adding in OR and clear violations of NPOV are not how articles get fixed. Furthermore, why is it you require editors you disagree with to discuss on the talk page before making changes to the article, but here you commend Rjensen for adding in tons of OR, POV, irrelevant material without discussing it first?Scoobydunk (talk) 07:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

On the subject of Atwater: The way the sources are currently used is OR. Lamis uses Atwater's quote to show how things worked in 1968 and their about. He does not mention Reagan at all. The Wiki article uses Atwater's comments as proof that the Southern Strategy had evolved. That clearly isn't what Atwater said (and we can use primary sources, they just aren't given as much weight). Lamis does not say the strategy evolved... at least not in the section that quotes Atwater. If he says it elsewhere then that, and not Atwater, should be quoted. The Nation is, according to Misplaced Pages, a magazine with an editorial bias. Thus we can view those comments as such. Even with that bias, Perlstein does not say Reagan continued to use the strategy. To that I would add two more references. Hinderacker discusses the topic here ]. While The Powerline is a web blog, it should be given some level of credibility as Time Magazine named it blog of the year (according to Misplaced Pages). In terms of reliability it should be considered similar to the opinion article by Perlstein. Hinderacker supports the view that once the message is too coded then the voters are voting based on race but instead are voting based on other factors such as economics. Hence if a GOP candidate opposes welfare they aren't doing it to appeal to racism in voters but to appeal to the voter's wallet. I understand that guts most of the claims of "Southern Strategy" in the later parts of the Wiki article but that is what Atwater is saying according to Hinderacker. I would also add the view of Reva B. Siegel in an article in the Harvard Law Review. From her footnote: "Lee Atwater, a political strategist for President Reagan, gave an anonymous interview in 1981 to political scientist Alexander Lamis in which he discussed the evolving terms in which candidates could appeal to racial resentments. It is not entirely clear whether he thought that, in changing the code for racial issues, candidates were moving beyond race or simply finding new ways of talking about race that were more acceptable in the civil rights era." Thus she is saying it is NOT clear that Atwater was trying to appeal to racism vs other factors. The Atwater quote is clearly being misused in the wiki entry. I'm going to fix the citation so the quote comes from Lamis and is the full Lamis quote. I'm not going to move it because the article is just too big a mess to bother with.

1. Siegel, Reva (Nov 2013). "Foreword: equality divided". Harvard Law Review. 1. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

On Rjensen's edits: You feel that if an article doesn't mention the Southern Strategy it can not be part of the debate section. That simply isn't true. We are discussing why the south moved to the GOP (in national elections). Some people claim it was because of the Southern Strategy. Articles that support that POV will have to either directly mention the Southern Strategy or talk about appeals to racism via coded language (though Atwater, someone on the inside, says that doesn't work). Authors who don't agree might mention the Southern Strategy to state it didn't mater but others will simply not mention it. Their failure to mention it while citing other factors is evidence that the strategy failed. Thus you are wrong when you make a blanket claim that any article that doesn't cite the Southern Strategy can not be evidence against the racism appeal theory. Sadly I think any attempt to do the wholesale fixes that this article needs would be just as ugly as the American's for Prosperity article. Springee (talk) 14:03, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

On Atwater - You're wrong. Most of what concerns Atwater is the quoted interview where he talks about the Southern Strategy. That is not original research in any way shape or form. Furthermore, Atwater does discuss Reagan in the interview and it's Lamis who includes the "". So this portion of the article is not a violation of WP:OR and it directly relays what the source says. No where in the article do we claim that Lamis speaks to the evolution of the Southern Strategy due to this quote. This quote from his work is simply a characterization of the Southern Strategy, it's other historians who describe the evolution over time. However, this information is still relevant to the section since it's a point on the chronological evolutionary timeline of the southern strategy. Also, your Hindracker blog post is completely irrelevant when compared to peer reviewed scholarly works, so it doesn't "gut" anything. Lastly, you prove the inclusion of Lamis quoting Atwater with your source from Siegel, who explicitly said Atwater was explaining the "evolving terms". So the Atwater quote isn't being "misused" in any fashion. Furthermore, Siegel's quote confirms that the Southern Strategy was an appeal to racism, and he only expresses doubt in what Atwater thought. No where in this part of the article does it claim Atwater believed the party was moving beyond racial coding or finding new ways to do it.

On RJensen - No, we are discussing the scholarly debate surrounding the importance/impact of the Southern Strategy. This isn't a section to include every single election in the history of the united states, or discuss the importance of other factors UNLESS the source explicitly relates it to the Southern Strategy. If the source isn't talking about the southern strategy, then it's a violation of WP:OR to try and use those sources to debate the importance of the Southern Strategy. That's what WP:OR explicitly prohibits. If an author talks about the importance of Baseball in american history, it's a violation of WP:OR to cite authors talking about basketball, hockey, or football to try and debate the importance of Baseball. The only time you would be able to include those arguments, is if the author/source explicitly said something along the lines of "Baseball wasn't as important as XYZ" or "Baseball had little affect on the world of sports, Foorball is what radically changed blah blah blah". This is what Rjensen did and you're clearly supporting this violation of WP policy.Scoobydunk (talk) 00:45, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

On Atwater: No, actually it is you who is incorrect. Do a quick Google search for where Atwater and Reagan's names appear in Lamis's book. Aside from where Atwater mentions Reagan's name, the two don't appear together in the text. If Lamis says Reagan used the Southern Strategy then that should be quoted. As is Lamis only uses Atwater to say how the strategy came about in the Harry Dent period. Implying that Atwater's statements is proof that the Southern Strategy was continued during Reagan and later is WP:OR because Lamis does not say it when he quotes Atwater and Atwater specifically says it isn't true. You are wrong that the article doesn't "claim that Lamis speaks to the evolution..." etc. Sorry, if you want to find where Lamis says Reagan was using the Southern Strategy quote that section of his work, not an interview with Reagan's political strategist where Atwater says it doesn't work and why it doesn't work. By placing that Atwater quote in the evolution section that talks (makes claims) about Reagan there is a clear implication that the Atwater quote supports the claims that Reagan used the strategy. That is not supported by Atwater quote nor the Lamis material around the quote and thus is OR even if you are unwilling to see it. I would suggest you read Lamis, around page 400-403. It's clear he is saying the Reagan and Bush era politics were not focused on race as the key factor.

You are somewhat correct about the Hindracker blog. You are correct in that it isn't as reliable a source as Lamis. However, since the Lamis text doesn't say what you claim we have to fall back on other sources. Hindracker specifically says Atwater's quote refutes claims that Reagan was using the Southern Strategy. You are wrong about Siegel as well. Siegel states that we can not decide if politicians are trying to appeal to racism by using coded language or if in fact they are actually appealing to exactly what they claim. If they are then the whole idea that this "coded language" is to appeal to racism is wrong and its actually an appeal to the voter's self interest. Either way, the quote does not support that Reagan used the Southern Strategy. If you want Lamis to support that claim, please find the actual supporting quotes. The Atwater quote would be better placed in one of the earlier parts of the text.

On Rjensen: You are simply trying to justify excluding sources that don't support what you want the article to say. The problem with trying to attribute the success of the GOP to an appeal to racism is that anyone who researches the topic and finds reasons other than racism and thus doesn't mention racism is, according to you, not a valid source. It's a common issue with disproving fringe theories. You can't actually prove a negative. I support Rjensen's additions to the topic. They speak to the actions of politicians who were accused on using the Southern Strategy and to other (and honestly more credible) reasons why the South turned to the GOP. I've been looking for additional sources we might cite. Specifically, I'm looking for sources that talk about the rise of the GOP in the South even if they never mention the Southern Strategy. Those sources are just as relevant as ones that claim the GOP wouldn't have won the South without appealing to racist voters. Springee (talk) 04:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

On Atwater: Where does the article say that Lamis is commenting on Reagan with the Atwater quote? You used the word "implying" which leads me to believe that the article doesn't actually express this, and this is just a strawman argument of your own making. So this is not a violation of OR, the article simply uses Lamis to include a quote from Atwater, and makes no relationship between Reagan and the Southern Strategy in WP's voice. However, Misplaced Pages could express this relationship because Lamis is the one who wrote "". Furthermore, "No" just because a person is mentioned in a section, doesn't mean that entire section is about that person. This section is about the evolution of the Southern Strategy. Atwater's quote speaks to this evolution and deserves to be in the section. That's not OR in any way, shape, or form and your Seigal quote further proves that its inclusion is appropriate. The evolution follows a pretty clear, logical timeline and there are no statements about Lamis making claims about Reagan. It's a completely separate paragraph and you're welcome to take it to the OR message board.

I've made no wrong assertion about Lamis. So your attempt to give relevance to Hindracker is fruitless. I'm also not wrong about Seigel. Seigel says the uncertainty is whether Atwater thought the candidates were moving on from race, or had to create new racial coding. This copy and pasted from your post "It is not entirely clear whether he thought that, in changing the code for racial issues, candidates were moving beyond race or simply finding new ways of talking about race that were more acceptable in the civil rights era." He is "Atwater" so in this part of this quote of yours, Seigel is only speaking to Atwater's position and is not explaining his own. Also, I didn't say Seigel's quote had anything to do with Reagan, only that it had everything to to with evolution of the Southern Strategy. Therefore, the Seigel quote proves that Lamis's mentioning of the Atwater quote belongs in a section titled "Evolution". You keep trying to bring Reagan into this, and it's not relevant.

On Rjensen: You're just plain wrong and you refuse to address the very clear logical examples I give that prove how your position is erroneous. This is a violation of WP:OR, you are supporting taking comments made about other reasons for transitions in southern political alignment and use them as a way to refute the effectiveness of the Southern Strategy, even though the sources don't present that argument. That's exactly what the WP:OR policy speaks to. Do you need me to quote it? From WP:Syn, the first line, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." If the sources don't explicitly refute the effectiveness of the Southern Strategy, then you can not include them into the article in a way that implies that that they do refute its effectiveness. This is a clear policy violation. Also from WP:Syn "'A and B, therefore C' is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument in relation to the topic of the article." The topic of this article is the "Southern Strategy" not "Political Realignment in the South". So if the source doesn't even mention the Southern Strategy, you can not take arguments from it and present in the article to refute the academically held view of the Southern Strategy. Your assertion that I want to exclude information I don't agree with is absurd. I've already supported the inclusion of Lassiter, Valentino, and Sears which have differing opinions. I'm interested in following WP policy, not in supporting editing that's a clear violation of it.Scoobydunk (talk) 08:30, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

When leading scholars say that racial issues played a smaller role than economics, religion and foreign policy, that speaks directly to the question. The topic of the article is the Validity of the Southern Strategy. is Southern Strategy a valid historical statement of what happened? we need to include eminent scholars who provide negative evidence by Wiki's NPOV rule. Ian Haney-Lopez for example, emphasizes their importance for studying the SS. She says, "Just as some scholars doubt the significance of the Southern strategy by noting the election of Democrats, others dismiss its power by pointing out the class dimensions of the political realignment in the South. See, for instance, Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston, The end of Southern Exceptionalism." Rjensen (talk) 02:02, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

No, the topic of this article isn't about "the validity of the Southern Strategy", it's just about the "Southern Strategy". It's not a battleground for you to try and discredit its existence. The Southern Strategy was an appeal to racist sentiments held by southern voters. Its effectiveness is only a very small portion of what the overall topic is about and the sources you've added give way too much weight to that specific issue. Also, funny how you left out the part where Lopez says that the viewpoint "race didn't play a substantial role" is "ultimately untenable" because it supposes that there is a neat division between race and class. Scoobydunk (talk) 07:34, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

It's POV to ASSUME all that. Did the strategy exist--was it important? When did it start/end? These are basic questions in the RS you do not want asked. Why is that? Perhaps you think it's an evil that has to be exposed?? The job of the editors is to summarize what the scholars have to say about it. How important it was in deciding presidential elections is one major aspect (low/medium/high? Which years? why?) Rjensen (talk) 07:54, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Assume all of what? You're clearly giving a very small aspect of the Southern strategy undue weight, especially when it's regarded as the minority viewpoint. Scoobydunk (talk) 17:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The impact of the strategy is clearly a very important part of the overall story and thus should be front and center in the article. Claims that it was a major factor in the GOP's success in the south seem to be welcome in the article. Scoobydunk's view that scholarly work that doesn't mention the Southern Strategy should not be included in the article is simply wrong. If a researcher is looking at the topic of why the GOP gained a foothold in the South and doesn't mention the Southern Strategy then that can be taken as a clear indication that the strategy had little to no impact. Springee (talk) 11:30, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I quoted the parts of WP:OR that prove you wrong. Do you not know what "explicit" means?Scoobydunk (talk) 17:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually you are wrong in your reading of WP:OR. I see nothing that excludes what Rjensen is including but you are welcome to provide the exact quote again so we can read the paragraph that you feel is related. As far as I can tell it says we can't included unrelated material but we are allowed to include clearly related sources. For instance if we were discussing a conspiracy theory regarding the cause of Chicago Fire it would be very reasonable to include historical sources that say it was a cow that kicked over a lantern even if they didn't mention the conspiracy theory. The reason is the both directly relate to the cause of the fire. Articles that discuss the causes of the GOP conversion of the South are relevant even if they don't mention the Southern Strategy. This is because this article has some references/comments which state the Southern Strategy was critical to/cause of/etc the shift of the South to the GOP. Failure to mention the Southern Strategy shows that said author didn't think it was important. Thus if this article is going to have some sources that claim the strategy had a large impact it is reasonable to include other sources that didn't consider the impact significant enough to even merit discussion. That is not the synthesis you are concerned about. If you have a particular passage you disagree with then perhaps you can work to edit that passage.Springee (talk) 17:59, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Nope, From WP:Syn, the first line, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." If the sources don't explicitly refute the effectiveness of the Southern Strategy, then you can not include them into the article in a way that implies that that they do refute its effectiveness. This is a clear policy violation. Your perception that these authors "didn't consider the impact significant" is not explicitly stated by the sources. You are drawing a conclusion from what you feel is implied, and this is not permitted by Misplaced Pages policies regarding original research. So if you still don't understand this, I suggest you research the difference between "explicit" and "implicit".Scoobydunk (talk) 00:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I disagree that what you are concerned about is happening here. You are welcome to open up a RfC or similar to get additional opinions. Springee (talk) 00:27, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It clearly does. Please give me a quote where Shafer explicitly discusses the Southern strategy and its effectiveness.Scoobydunk (talk) 00:35, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It's a misreading by Scoobydunk. The rule says "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." He misreads that as "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by ALL of the sources." Rjensen (talk) 02:07, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Never have I required that it be a position held by "all" sources. The amount of sources is irrelevant in regards to OR. What matters is that the source that you're using as a reference has to explicitly say what you're trying to include into the article. If the source explicitly says what you're trying to add, then you can use that source as a reference. Shafer doesn't say anything about the Southern Strategy and so it's a violation of WP:OR to say that he refutes the effectiveness of the Southern Strategy or a to present the information in that way.Scoobydunk (talk) 05:05, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

If the SS says "A and B and C happened" and if source X says "A and B did not happen" then source X is appropriate for citation. no Misplaced Pages rule requires source X use the words SS Does Shafer in fact confront the SS? Scooby says no. But the RS say yes, and we go by them: "The 2006 publication of Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston’s The End of Southern Exceptionalism was met with critical acclaim, even winning the coveted V. O. Key Award for the best book in southern politics. Their premise was that the realignment of the South with the Republican Party was a function of the economic and class changes that transformed the region in post–World War II America. The thesis challenges the widely held belief that the “reddening” of the South was based solely on the Southern Strategy initiated by Richard Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 campaigns. " . Rjensen (talk) 05:28, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you can use what Lopez and Maxwell said because they are the ones likening Shafer's work to "challenging" a widely held belief about the Southern strategy. However, this doesn't mean you can cite Shafer for those positions because those are other peoples' interpretations of his work and must be properly accredited to them. This doesn't mean you can take Shafer's work and directly quote the parts you want to refute the widely held view/conventional wisdom of the Southern strategy because Shafer makes no such explicit criticism and to do so is a violation of WP:Syn. In essence, Lopez and Maxwell are the secondary sources and they are referencing Shafer as a primary source exemplifying authors who challenge the conventional wisdom of the Southern strategy. Though Shafer's work is a secondary source in some context, in examining the scholarly understandings of the effectiveness of the Southern strategy, his work is being used as a primary source. From WP:Primary "Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." Also from WP:Secondary "Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on context. A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences."

So, again, Lopez and Maxwell are perfectly fine to include because their work explicitly talks about the Southern strategy and different scholarly viewpoints about the Southern strategy. Shafer does not. This has nothing to do with a personal POV position on my part, but about being consistent with WP policy. If your accusations of pov pushing were true, then I would be rejecting all of these sources and I'm clearly not. You don't even have to quote Maxwell or Lopez, you can simply say in the article "Some scholars challenge the view that the political realignment in the south was solely based on the Southern Strategy. Authors like Shafer argued that the "reddening" of South was a function of economic and class changes." Then you would obviously list Maxwell and Lopez as the references. Shafer could be added to the article in the "Further Reading" section. Glad we cleared that up.Scoobydunk (talk) 09:12, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

goodness you're busy making up new rules. You misread the written Wiki rules and have not found a Wiki rule to support your policy of telling editors what RS they cannot cite. That's nonsense. Rjensen (talk) 07:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

You should try actually reading WP policies because I linked the rules that explain how what you're doing is wrong. So again, do you have a quote from Shafer where he explicitly discusses the Southern Strategy's effectiveness?Scoobydunk (talk) 18:47, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

please quote that Wiki rule again. Rjensen (talk) 19:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

From WP:Syn, the first line, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Also WP:Primary "Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." You're interpreting Shafer to be refuting the effectiveness of the Southern strategy, yet you've yet to provide a quote from Shafer that actually explicitly expresses his position about the Southern strategy. So where's that quote?Scoobydunk (talk) 08:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Based on that reasoning we would not be able to use the MANY official tellings of the moon landings to dispute the claim that the moon is made from green cheese. Since NASA said the moon is made of (NASA's claims here) but didn't mention dairy products you would have us believe that we can't use NASA's reports to dispute claims that the moon is made from dairy products. Sorry, the passage doesn't work that way. What it says is if one source says "The South turned red because of X,Y and Z, and not the Southern Strategy" then we can include other sources that say "The South turned red because of X/Y/Z" even if they don't mention the Southern Strategy. The other sources support the one that explicitly says X,Y,Z not Southern Strategy. If you still disagree I would suggest setting up a question on perhaps the RS noticeboard. Springee (talk) 14:11, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Your moon example is fallacious because, with caution, you an use primary sources as long as they explicitly say what you're trying to say. To your second point, the source has to explicitly discuss the topic of the article which is the Southern Strategy. Shafer does not discuss the Southern Strategy and including tangential sources is a against WP:Coatrack. This article/topic is about the Southern Strategy, not about all forms of political alignment. So, if you include Shafer under the premise that he talks about something "related" to the Southern Strategy, then it's a violation of WP:Coatrack. If you include Shafer under the premise that he is talking about the Southern Strategy, then it's a violation of policies concerning WP:Syn and WP:Primary. Either way you want to look at it, it's a violation of WP policy unless you can provide a quote where Shafer actually discuss the Southern Strategy in his source.Scoobydunk (talk) 06:04, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert writes interesting commentary but he is not an expert RS on the 1960s and cites no scholarship in any discipline to support his opinions. Rjensen (talk) 01:52, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Though as a columnist for a major national newspaper, Herbert can generally be regarded as a reliable source. Are you proposing replacement text for the passages you removed? gobonobo 22:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

he is a commentator on 21st century events but he never covered the 1960s and has never written more than a few sentences about that entire. He cites no RS for his opinions. Rjensen (talk) 23:17, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

@Rjensen: I have no interest in taking part in an edit war, so would you please observe WP:BRD and self-revert your edit here? This edit is problematic in several ways. It narrows the definition of Southern Strategy to only apply to presidential candidates, which is demonstrably wrong. It also introduces content to the lede that doesn't exist in the body of the article, which doesn't follow our manual of style which says the lede needs to summarize the body. These and the removal of sourced content that has existed in the article for a long time are bold changes and should be discussed on the talk page where we can hopefully reach a consensus on how to proceed. gobonobo 23:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Most of the reliable sources (regardless of their position on the debate) have stressed the presidential role. For example one of the first major books was Southern Strategy: Race, Region and Republican Presidential Politics, 1964 and 1968 by Donald T. Wolfe (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). The Origins of the Southern Strategy By Bruce Kalk p 117 is explicit about Goldwater and Nixon as central. In 1972, Nixon distanced himself from the Republican Party, carried 49 states, and carried very few southern Republicans on his coattails. Evan Spencer Jones The Politics that makes Presidents (2008) says "The Southern Strategy was Nixon's effort to lure socially conservative southern whites away from the Democratic Party" p 120. And indeed if you look back to the late 19th and early 20th century, it's always presidential politics that are covered. Notice that the Republicans At the state and local level were weakly represented in the South before the 1990s. As for Bob Herbert, he is not a reliable secondary source when he talks about the 1960s. He's a good commentator on daily events in the 21st century. As for items in the lead that are not based upon the text itself, that is a problem we can fix: which are the sentences you would specify? Rjensen (talk) 23:43, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Already fixed.Scoobydunk (talk) 06:05, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

"Stressing" the presidential role is different than defining the term as applying only to presidential campaigns. I also have concerns that "appealing to racism against African Americans" is being watered down to the rather vague "appealing to racial tensions". Why remove African Americans from the lede? Also "Some writers allege" is weasel-y worded. Unless you want to deny the existence of dog-whistle politics, multiple sources and examples in the body of text affirm that coded language was used as part of the southern strategy. To say that "some" people "allege" the fact is inserting bias. And the opinion of Joan Hoff that is being added to the lede doesn't even exist in the body of the article. Further, the strategy extended well beyond the 60s, and the Bob Herbert references are reliable sources for the passages that they support, namely his own take on the phenomenon. gobonobo 14:38, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

For just one example of non-presidential races where the strategy existed, see Aistrup, pp. 26–27: "Southern Republicans such as Martin and Workman were attempting to take advantage of the Northern Democrats' movement toward the pro-civil rights side of the debate..." "these GOP candidates were trying to 'out-nigger' their Democratic opposition." gobonobo 14:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I think you make a good point but keep in mind that the part you quoted is not really "proof" of the application of the coded words etc that are how the Southern Strategy is supposed to be implemented. That said, I've seen several references to the 1970 elections which clearly aren't presidential. Would "national" elections work better? Springee (talk) 17:04, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't realize that the use of coded rhetoric was in dispute. 'National' might be an improvement on 'presidential', but the strategy was also employed in state-wide races and at the state level (like in 1992 when Rod Shealy recruited an unemployed black felon to run for office in order to drive up white voter turnout). I'm not at all attached to the vaguery of 'certain elections', by the way, and am open to other formulations. gobonobo 23:26, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that part is in dispute. I think that is at the core of the claims. I was actually going in the other direction, saying that even if a campaign is racist, it isn't "the Southern Strategy" unless it has coded language etc. If the politician is opening hostile to blacks then it lacks that sort of two faced aspect that seems to be at the heard of (what I think of as) the Southern Strategy. I mentioned your quote because I recall reading, I think it was about Wallace, that before this politician decided to be anti-civil rights and the like he was going to show that he was all for it. Only when he felt that hurt his election chances did he reverse. He said something like what you quoted but when you read what he meant it wasn't about the Southern Strategy. Basically, your quote didn't show that someone was employing "the Southern Strategy". The full passage might have but the quoted part didn't.

Also I think at the local level most of the work I've read said that both sides were bad about using racist appeals, even the southern Democrats after 1968. My understanding is that when people talk about "the Southern Strategy" they are really thinking about federal level elections. It does seem problematic that we have such a nebulous term. Do you have a suggestion for figuring out how to do a better job defining it? That way we would have some way to say what should and should not be included in the article. I'm sure some who are going to say X was southern strategy are doing so because accusing of racism is such an easy way to apply an ugly label (one that no one thinks is a good thing) yet is hard to defend since it basically forces the accused into proving a negative. Anyway, that's a bit of an aside. Do you think it would be helpful if we could define what behaviors are and are not?

Finally, what is your take on the dissenting POV in the lead? I feel like there is a very strong body of literature that says the strategy was not a significant factor in the change of the South from blue to red. Thoughts? So far this discussion page has been rather rancorous. Perhaps it's time we all step back, understand that we are all acting in good faith and discuss these changes. Thanks and I look forward to your answers. Springee (talk) 00:00, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Gobonobo, would you mind sharing your thoughts on my questions above? As I said, I see three issues. The first is that we as a group can't seem to decide what is and isn't the Southern Strategy. Second, we disagree that Herbert is an opinion. Rjensen and I see it as an opinion article and thus it can't be used as it is being used in the lead. Finally, we have the question of the alternative POV. It is very clear that there are quite a few reliable sources that don't agree that the Southern Strategy had a significant impact. That certainly is important enough to be in the lead. Perhaps, in a nod to Scoobydunk's concerns we should keep the lead limited to reference that specifically mention the Southern Strategy (I mentioned one previously in the talk section). Would that address your concerns as well? Springee (talk) 05:03, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree that not every racist campaign in the South is using some sort of southern strategy. A key element is trying to get the white vote by invoking or alluding to racial problems. As Atwater noted, the codified language became more abstract over time to the point that, in my opinion, the strategy was superseded by those abstractions. I've been refamiliarizing myself with the topic and picked up a copy of Aistrup's book. He notes that David Duke's campaign, which displayed a more overtly racist southern strategy, was disowned by some of his Republican contemporaries. The gradual change in language over time should be summarized in the lead, but stated as a fact, not as "some people allege". It is also important that alternative viewpoints are given due weight, however the claim that the strategy never existed in any form is really fringe. Due to the difficulty in reliably determining the extent that a single issue has on people's motivations for voting, a degree of skepticism should be given to claims of whether the strategy worked or not. gobonobo 06:47, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

the "claim that the strategy never existed" is indeed fringe. But that is not what the critics are saying. The critics say that the importance of SS was much smaller--that is, Southern conservatives became Republicans for the same reasons that northern conservatives were Republican: economic issues like taxation, spending, & national debt; foreign policy (esp Vietnam War, amnesty); & social issues (abortion, school prayer, acid (drugs), youth rebellion, abortion, gay rights, ERA). In addition Joan Hoff & others argue that the SS was operational only briefly during Nixon's term. Rjensen (talk) 07:03, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

gobonobo, I agree the "didn't happen" when used to say the appeals were never used is fringe. However, we must be careful not to credit every claim of the use as valid. While it is somewhat hard to say why people voted some way, enough academics have attacked the problem to give us a good idea. We should not discount their POV and I think it is significant enough to warrant placement in the lead. I mean we have speculative claims in the lead, discussion of the impact of the strategy seems far more significant. Also, you didn't answer my question about the restoration of the Herbert citation to the lead. Herbert is clearly an opinion article and thus should be used as proof as in the lead. Perhaps we should use a WP:RS to make the same claim? Springee (talk) 11:08, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Springee, I've removed the Herbert references from the lede. With regards to discussion of the impact and strategy, I'm open to discussion on how to word that. I prefer to work on the entire article first though, as it may become more obvious what should be summarized there. To start with, the background information on the Reconstruction Era and the Solid South seems excessive for this article so I'd like to provide a briefer summary, retaining key points. gobonobo 02:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Gobonoboo, thanks for removing those from the lead. I like the work you have done to stream line the article. I think holding off on lead changes until the body is cleaned up makes sense. Please let me know if I can help with the effort. Springee (talk) 02:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Historians have long memories, and the role of blacks and whites in the South and the Republican Party has been a central theme since the 1860s in the history of the GOP . Notice that several major scholarly books dealing with the early period emphasize in their titles that this was the origins of the Southern Strategy. So let's keep the background in. In the 1960s, furthermore, Southerners talked great deal about Reconstruction & how it bears on current issues. Rjensen (talk) 04:35, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The Herbert article is clearly an opinion article (Herbert's opinion on something political). Per WP:RS it can only be used to show Herbert's POV. It should not be used in the lead as proof of anything other than that. The removal of the alternative POV from the lead is also questionable. Clearly there is a large volume of scholarship which is stating the Southern Strategy had little impact on the political shift of the south. That doesn't mean the scholars who say that are disavowing the impact of racism or claiming that appeals to racism didn't happen. What it does mean is that the impact of the strategy is low to zero according to many scholars. That is something that should be noted (and is in the debate section) and should also be in the lead. Springee (talk) 16:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

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