
Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon,
and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it
seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,” to
stress just how much conservatively-minded Americans owe to these two
canonized martyrs. Any demurer, any dissent or disagreement, brings
forth condemnations of the complainant as a “racist” or “reactionary,”
or worse, maybe some Southern redneck hick who hides his old Klan robe
but keeps it at the ready.
During the past fifty or so years the old Southern Democratic Party
has virtually disappeared, died out, as millions of conservative
Southerners, many motivated by their sincere religious faith and
resistance to radical and unnatural change, migrated to the Republican
Party. The GOP, beginning in the Nixon years, employed what was called a
“Southern strategy,” largely elaborated by consultant Kevin Phillips
and spelled out most clearly in his volume, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969).
GOP spokesman learned to speak a language and offer symbols that
millions of Southerner found attractive, even compelling.
More @ The Abbeville Institute