I love how the Southern Strategy narrative leaves out the fact that Democrats ran the South from the 40's to 80's, yet it was basically frozen in time (economically and outcomes for education and health). Upward mobility was only achieved by physically moving your family to the Northern or Western states.
Then after watching generations of these promises and programs all fail to improve your region, the people decide to vote a different way and the response is "those were the racists responding to Republican dog whistles".
If it was about local stewardship of the economy, that would bring up a few questions:
1) Why did they replace economically conservative Democrats with economically conservative Republicans?
2) Why did only southern whites shift to the GOP while southern blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic?
3) Why would southern whites vote for Republicans for federal office before they would for local office? Alabama and Mississippi didn't see the statehouses change over until the wave election in 2010, and it's hard to think that George W. Bush's track record with the economy is what won them over.
4) Why was this shift so dramatic among white southerners and not replicated elsewhere? Why hasn't the same thing happened in reverse in Kansas, for example?
