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Michael Steele and the GOP's New Southern Strategy

February 4, 2009 —

The famed -- and defamed -- Southern Strategy of the Republicans in the Nixon era was to garner the support of white voters who were opposed to the on-going desegregation of the South’s public schools. In practice, it was more a public relations ploy than a change in national policy. The South’s public schools were finally integrated in a massive and meaningful way in the first two years of the Nixon presidency.

But as a recipe for political success, the Southern Strategy has lived on, with the Democrats holding a virtual monopoly on black votes in the South and elsewhere, and the Republicans garnering a sufficiently large share of the white votes to carry the South, or most of it, in election after election, as well as claim a substantial majority of its congressional representation.

 While the strategy worked reasonably well in a number of elections, it took a major shellacking in 2008, when African-American Democratic nominee Barack Obama not only won the election, but did it in part by carrying three Southern states -- Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. In the process, Obama not only increased the turnout of black voters, but also ran somewhat better than usual among Southern whites.

 Steele the Moderate?

 At least partly in response to Obama’s victory, the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week elected Maryland’s former lieutenant governor Michael Steele as its first African-American chairman. Steele’s signals are somewhat mixed. During his campaign for national GOP chair, he told a Washington Times reporter, “You can’t change your basic principles and views, but you can express them differently.” In his acceptance remarks, Steele said, “This is the dawn of a new party moving in a new direction with strength and conviction.” While the two statements are not mutually exclusive, they offer a difference in tone.

 Thus, Steele’s election and the media’s interpretation of it suggest that the GOP, in recent decades a redoubt of staunch conservatism, may have adopted a more moderate posture. After all, Steele was on the board of the Republican Leadership Council, a moderate GOP group founded by Christie Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency director. And the gay Log Cabin Republicans hailed Steele’s election as a good development for the GOP.

 More Ploy than Policy

 On closer examination, however, Steele’s election -- like Nixon’s Southern Strategy -- can be seen as more ploy than policy. The former Maryland lieutenant governor, for all of his forwardlooking image, took pains to exhibit a conservative orthodoxy on the issues that have characterized the modern right-left split in American politics. In an answer on a questionnaire prepared for all the chairman contenders by Virginia Republican National Committeeman Morton Blackwell, a major figure among self-labeled “movement conservatives,” Steele stated “We value life, born and unborn… As a strong social and fiscal conservative, I will continue to embrace -- not take advantage of -- the conservatives of our Party.” In his only nod to moderation, he added, “I also recognize that good Republicans can disagree from time to time.” Blackwell told SPR that “The answers of all [six candidates] were solidly conservative. The comments were rather what one would expect in a statewide Republican Primary in South Carolina.”

The Role of Race

 Despite all the signs that Steele represents little change in the ideological direction of his party, the very fact that he is an African American who heads the GOP for the first time could change the way many voters view the GOP, and that includes in the South. If moderation didn’t make major headway, racism lost big time. Tennessee’s former GOP chairman Chip Saltsman, who gained notoriety for distributing a CD of songs satirizing the Democrats that included one entitled, “Barack the Magic Negro,” could not get enough supporters to have his name placed in nomination and withdrew before the vote took place. (Saltsman also suffered because, as national chairman of Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign, he was viewed by RNC members as closely tied to a likely contender for the party’s 2012 nomination.)

 The RNC’s hard-right members, the movement conservatives, mostly backed former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also an African American. These included RNC executive board member Morton Blackwell as well as such high-profile conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly, Richard Viguerie and Steve Forbes. But when Ken Blackwell dropped out on the fourth ballot, he gave a strong endorsement to Steele, which gave the Marylander the momentum to win on the sixth ballot.

 Steele Strong in the South

 Steele’s election also raises the question, has the GOP’s old Southern Strategy been dumped? The evidence suggests that the question is no longer relevant. Although Steele’s last standing opponent was South Carolina state chairman Katon Dawson, Steele had major support among Dixie’s members on the RNC. While the ballots -- all six of them -- were secret, Sue Everhart, the Georgia state Republican chairman, and Jim Greer, the Florida chairman, actively courted fellow Southerners for Steele during the RNC vote. And Steele himself, a known quantity among Dixie GOP officials, stumped the South in his well-organized campaign for party chair.

 A New Southern Strategy?

 Indeed, in the longer run, the GOP’s new Southern Strategy may be geared toward improving its support among black voters. With about half the nation’s African Americans living in the South, many Dixie Republicans would welcome some high-level help in increasing their black support, especially now that the GOP’s strong hold on the white vote appears to be weakening.

 While there is little likelihood that Republicans will increase their share of the black vote as long as Obama is president, it is not unreasonable to project a time in the not-too-distant future when black voters -- feeling less separated from other Americans after having one of their own elected president -- will not feel so duty-bound to pull the Democratic lever, especially if the Republican Party makes a concerted and substantive effort to win their support. Indeed, in 2006, the GOP won 15% to 18% of the African-American vote in statewide races in Virginia, Florida and Georgia, significantly higher than in most previous elections.

 Moreover, the GOP’s conservatism may not be that much of an obstacle to black support as long as it does not include civil rights stands that black voters find offensive, such as opposing affirmative action programs. In California last fall, for example, a majority of the state’s African-American voters supported the Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which rescinded the state’s law allowing same-sex marriage, indicating that some socially conservative issues would not hurt the GOP with all black voters.

 But Rufus Montgomery, an Atlanta lobbyist and longtime Republican activist who is African-American and who supported Steele, says it is “a mistake to compartmentalize how Steele will be able to help the GOP.” He notes that as a Marylander, Steele is known in two key neighboring states that the GOP needs to win, Virginia and Pennsylvania; “he could have an impact not just with African Americans.” Montgomery also notes that Steele “has the skill set to take the party beyond the appeal to the South,” and notes that “the term moderate should not be confused with a person having an open mind, the ability to give and take.”

 So while Michael Steele may not represent a major shift away from conservatism or from the South for the nation’s Republicans, there is likely to be a shift in campaign strategies, in Dixie as well as across the nation. Will it work? Stay tuned.