why did texas change hands?

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Texas was always a Democrat state wasnt it? But now it is pretty staunchly Republican. am i right in thinking this isnt a fleeting thing. this is quite unusual isnt it, for an area to change political orientation like this so strongly, from one side to the other?

so, how did it happen? and does this make it unusual among US states? have the others pretty much stayed in whichever camp they usually are (i guess borderline/marginal states dont count here, more ones that have swung heavily from one party to the other)

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

presumably it happened when the Republicans had moved to the Right to such an extent that Southern Democrats felt happier voting for them than for a party with a load of pinko fag northern liberals in it. Also, memories of the Civil War had receded to such an extent that no one could remember that Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Why did texas join the union, why didn't it maintain its independence.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

because of that bastard sam houston.

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:53 (twenty-two years ago)

also, i think the accurate answer to your question is the civil rights movement. the whole south switched.

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:55 (twenty-two years ago)

The Democrats have been pretty much dead across the South since the days of Reagan. That is, a lot of state-wide contests consistently go Republican, although there remains a number of Democratic strongholds (but not enough).

Interestingly enough, I remember when the NY Times published a county-by-county map of presidential votes after the 2000 election, and I think the highest percentage of voters in a county for Al Gore was someplace in rural Alabama (at something like 82% of voters in the county), yet he didn't win the state.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Pretty sad that Americans don't seem very interested in what goes on outside their own state...and I'm not talking about the Texans.

― Kerry (dymaxia), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:12 (twenty-two years ago)

uh, what?

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

anyway gareth this is a question I think of party identity changing over the past 50-60 yrs (and civil rights being the detonating issue w/r/t the American south) while state/local political identity staying pretty much the same. Though the south has changed a lot; in the 60's it was pretty third world economically.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

ryan it only "switched" with massive prodding and organizing by Republicans. Southern Dixiecrats weren't exactly committed to racial diversity but by the late 40s the Republican Party had changed enough to where Strom Thurmond could lead a deliberate campaign to exacerbate racial fears, a strategy he handed on to Richard Nixon: the "Southern Strategy" to capture the White House and a majority of Congress. crosspost --> the story of Texas "switching" (and it hasn't yet, really; the governor is often a Democrat) is really the story of the Republican party switching: throwing its historical commitment to Federal authority and racial equality out the window in the middle of this century, becoming mendacious and venal and intolerant for the price of a few votes.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

uh, what?
There's precious little about what's going on in Texas in non-Texas media sources.

― Kerry (dymaxia), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)

uh, was Strom Thurmond a Republican in '48?

the story of the Republican party switching: throwing its historical commitment to Federal authority and racial equality out the window in the middle of this century, becoming mendacious and venal and intolerant for the price of a few votes.

Yes, this is one of the saddest things in American history, aside from the legacy of slavery in the first place. What happened to Free Soil and Free Men?

― hstencil, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Washington state used to be scarily conservative 'til the 80s from what I vaguely remember, now it (seems like) is one of the more vocally liberal states... or at least its most populous city is. Any Washington state lifers that want to give more background?

British Columbia (ok, not a US state) has switched from hard left to hard right almost all of its life.

Sometimes, that's just the way a state or province operates over time. Strange but not uncommon.

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:37 (twenty-two years ago)

WA is still terribly conservative outside of Seattle-Oly; DB have you seen the Uncle Sam billboard in Chehalis?

(hope this works)

http://insilico.diaryland.com/images/birchers.jpg

The rise of software and aerospace industries - which are more intellectual than, uh, logging - are responsible for the shift. And Evergreen.

― chester (synkro), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

uh, was Strom Thurmond a Republican in '48?

Why did you preface that with "uh"? Have I made some really obvious blunder? Say what's on your mind, hstencil!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

anyway, texas...

― chester (synkro), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

>Any Washington state lifers that want to give more background?

I'm not from Washington, but you have the Coastal-City-Liberal/Inland-Rural-Conservative divide there. The area that dominates state politics might change back and forth over time.

― fletrejet, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:46 (twenty-two years ago)

uh, was Strom Thurmond a Republican in '48?

He was a Dixiecrat. An entire third party whose only message was segregation.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:49 (twenty-two years ago)

"the story of Texas "switching" (and it hasn't yet, really;"

hasn't this just happened what with the Texas Democrats now camped out in Oklahoma?

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just checkin', Tracer, but I'm pretty sure in '48 Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat, i.e. he split off from the Democratic Party. I think even in the 1940s the Republicans, while conservative on race, weren't as vociferously hateful and opposed to Civil Rights as the Southern Democrats, and remained that way (with a few exceptions, such as Joe McCarthy) until Nixon. And Nixon didn't pick up that specific strategy until much later (tho he did crib Commie-bashing from McCarthy). I mean, Ike enforced the Brown v. Board decision, even if he didn't go as far as later Dems such as JFK or LBJ in promoting Civil Rights.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Gareth we'll go visit the Museum of Texas History when you're down here. ;)

― That Girl (thatgirl), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha. I once fact-checked a 4th grade book of Texas history for this job I'm neglecting right now. Good times.

Anyway, as Hstencil pointed out on another thread, Karl Rove (GW's chief strategist) was instrumental in pushing a lot of Dems out of power on a statewide level over the last 20 years.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Ed the Democrats in Texas are still quite powerful. It's true that they don't have a majority in the state legislature though, I think it's the first time since the Civil War. They're new to the game of being the minority so they're trying some pretty unorthodox moves, but the whole hiding-out thing just shows what power they do actually wield, they can block almost any legislation they want to.

The Dixiecrat thing was the first virulent step towards making the Republican Party the whitest party on earth. Thurmond siphoned off votes from mainstream Democrat Harry Truman to show everybody not to take the ultra-separatist Democrats for granted. They really advocated a form of apartheid, the code word for which was "states' rights". That phrase still has a LOT of racial resonance in the South. Anyway as time went on and the 50s became the 60s and black voting power was starting to become a reality, Thurmond and Nixon delivered the Dixiecrats to the Republicans and Kennedy Democrats grabbed the prize that was left: black votes.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

(chester, yeah I know WA is really conservative outside most large Western WA cities, and i've seen that Chehalis billboard, but not with THAT message! Holy becheezus!)

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

my homestate of new jersey used to be the prototypical "swing state." as recently as the early nineties, it really couldn't be predicted very easily whether it would go Democratic or Republican in a presidential election. that's quite different now -- NJ is solidly Democratic in presidential elections, in no small part because of Clinton (one of the reasons why i love the guy). and loathe though i am to say anything nice about Republicans, to be fair the typical NJ Republican is much more middle-of-the-road than their brethren elsewhere (think Whitman v. Ashcroft).

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 17:38 (twenty-two years ago)

As that New Yorker piece on Rove makes clear, Republicans have stitched together a politically potent set of interest groups -- the same thing the Democrats did from the 30s-70s, combining labor issues (working-class) with quality-of-life (Social Security, environment, middle-class), racial progressiveness (minority votes, white liberals), and the college-educated liberal elite. The biggest shift, obviously, is in the working class, which is A.) no longer nearly as unionized as it was and B.) generally religious and open to conservative moral appeals. Where the Democrats were once able to convince a lot of working class voters that Republicans were only interested in rich folks, Republicans are now successfully convincing working class voters that Democrats want to have gay teachers rape their children. Democrats so far don't show much sign of knowing how to handle this. Bill Clinton was a stop-gap, not a way forward -- he relied on personal charm and a willingness to compromise anything at the drop of a hat (and he never got 50 percent of the vote, either). Basically, Republicans are running on a "We're Tough, They're Pussies" platform, which is crude but -- for the moment -- effective. It won't last. Eventually, someone will figure out a way to tell people what's really going on with the economy and foreign policy that will make sense to the average voter. These guys in Texas might be part of that.

― JesseFox (JesseFox), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 02:14 (twenty-two years ago)

four years pass...

OMG, THINGS CHANGE!

(hey, ned - isn't orange county on the verge of becoming democratic, if it isn't already?)

― gershy, Thursday, 17 May 2007 06:50 (eighteen years ago)

Wow I forgot about this thread. I sound like such a know-it-all but my facts are only just barely right. I should remember that.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 17 May 2007 10:03 (eighteen years ago)

even a cursory reading of southern history should have told you that, leatherpantsman

― 696, Thursday, 17 May 2007 10:04 (eighteen years ago)

I'm gonna make leather pants outta you if you don't quit it

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 17 May 2007 10:14 (eighteen years ago)

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