Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats: An Explanation of the Appeal of Donald Trump

Over the course of this election cycle, I’ve seen a lot of confusion over the rise of Trump. How could someone so bombastic be so appealing? How could so many Republican voters embrace him, when he’s not really conservative at all (at least defined by the Conservative Movement’s gatekeeper The National Review)?

Well, the more I’ve thought about this, read articles about this, and spoken with people about this, I’ve realized Trump’s appeal isn’t very surprising at all. Here’s my theory about Trump. Trump is quite appealing to two distinctive groups within the Republican coalition, who decades ago weren’t even Republicans at all: Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats. And it’s these two groups that are launching him toward the nomination.

So, what are Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats? Let’s start with two important years: 1964 and 1980. 1964 is important because it’s the first time a leader of the Conservative Movement won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. 1980 is important because it’s the first time a leader of the Conservative Movement won the presidency. During these two election cycles (as well as the time between them) many high-profile politicians (like Strom Thurmond and John Connally) switched from the Democratic-fold to the Republican-fold and took with them many voters as well.

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) won the Republican nomination. Barry Goldwater was very ideologically conservative and extremely libertarian. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not because he was a racist, but because he believed the federal government didn’t have the constitutional power to enact it. In his view, segregation would be eliminated, but it would be through the long process of incentives and the free market. Now, it’s important to emphasize here that Barry Goldwater was not a racist because, as we will see, this is the source of a lot of the confusion over Trump today. Goldwater, as his defenders emphasize, was fully supportive of ending segregation and contributed to efforts to do so in his home state of Arizona. Now, that may be true, but the same cannot be said of many of his supporters. That’s where the Dixiecrats come in.

The Dixiecrats were a distinctive group of Democrats from the South. In fact in 1948, in opposition to President Harry Truman’s position on civil rights, they temporarily broke off and nominated their own candidate, Senator Strom Thurmond (SC), for president. These folks believed in many aspects of the New Deal and welcomed the “pork” (earmarks and other funding) that came from the federal government. On the other hand, they were racist, authoritarian, nationalist, and supported a southern power structure that oppressed African-Americans and poor whites. For them, Barry Goldwater’s political philosophy was appealing, not because they necessarily liked a small federal government, but because a small federal government would allow them to maintain their power structure in the South. That’s what “state’s rights” was all about: allowing these southern police state governments to continue, while neutering the federal government’s ability to do anything about it. Now Barry Goldwater was very aware of this, but he nonetheless didn’t reject their support (unlike long forgotten Republican like Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney from the moderate wing). When they moved to the Republican coalition and the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater was complicit in helping them find a new home in his political party. These Dixiecrats made history, when Barry Goldwater became the first Republican in American history to sweep the Deep South (despite losing the election of 1964 in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson).

The second group is the so-called Reagan Democrats, the folks who slowly but surely started moving to the Republican Party in 1968 and ultimately powered Richard Nixon (and his “Silent Majority”) to victory in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. Like the Dixiecrats, they had been members of the Democratic Party. Unlike the Dixiecrats, they overwhelmingly supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964. They were working-class whites, blue-collar workers, sometimes Catholics of the northeast, frequently members of what has been called “Middle America.” They were moved by (or at least accepted the Civil Rights Movement) and supported the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It’s what happened afterwards that sent these folks running into the arms of the Republican Party. The Watts Riots, the rise of feminism and gay rights, Roe v. Wade, the Anti-War Movement, Boston Busing, Affirmative Action, and other important events of the late 1960s and 1970s, changed the views of many Democrats. They felt that the party of the New Deal, focused on economic injustice and inequality, turned into a party of minority rights. They saw the rise of violence and radicalism as deep threats to social order, and they couldn’t understand why racial violence was flaring up, despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. They understood that legal segregation had to go, but didn’t recognize the social segregation in their own neighborhoods or at the very least didn’t see a reason for it to go too. They also saw in George McGovern (the 1972 Democratic nominee for president) and other Democrats a sudden dovishness on the Cold War and an unwillingness to stand up to the existential threat of Communism. Suddenly, the enemy wasn’t Wall Street elites, but big government planners and radical liberals who were going to run your neighborhood from some office in Washington, D.C. It was Reagan Democrats who saw George McGovern as a threat and ultimately shifted to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, seeing in them defenders of traditional values and men who could return us to simpler times (think about why the movie Back to the Future resonated so much with people in the 1980s), as well as defend us from Communism. Reagan Democrats didn’t necessarily believe in the gospel of small government, but saw the leaders of the conservative movement as people who could defend them from a New Left that was displacing the liberal establishment within the Democratic Party.

So, of course these two groups (and their descendants) are today fleeing to Donald Trump. Why wouldn’t they? As Barry Goldwater knew so well in 1964, many of them didn’t believe in the gospel of small government conservatism, but he knew well that he needed their votes to win. In 1968, Kevin Philips wrote a book called the Emerging Republican Majority, and that’s exactly what it was. People didn’t just wake up one day and decide they were conservatives. They saw in the rise of a new conservative Republican Party a political party that was in their best interest, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with all its principles. If Goldwater had never allowed them into the fold, then the Republican Party would never have become that majority. There’s no better proof of that than President George W. Bush, who vastly expanded government on his watch (from Homeland Security to No Child Left Behind to Medicare Part D), despite being a Republican.

What Donald Trump has done is directly appeal to these groups in a way no former Republican politician has. Muslims and Mexicans are the new blacks and gays. “Make America Great Again” is a clarion call to simpler times. Hedge-fund managers are the elites once again trying to screw us over, and Obama is the cool, aloof technocrat trying to run our lives, who doesn’t understand the existential threat of Islamic Terrorism. Given that these people used to be New Dealers, it’s no surprise that they’d be open to bigger government or everyone getting health care, anathemas to the true believers. Remember, in Iowa, moderates went for Trump, somewhat conservatives went for Marco Rubio, and extreme conservatives went for Ted Cruz.

The split between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is clear. Ted Cruz represents the true believers: the Barry Goldwaters, the Buckleys, that group of folks who truly believe in small government libertarianism/conservatism. Donald Trump is representing the Dixiecrats and the Reagan Democrats: the Strom Thurmonds, the John Connallys, the folks who feel their world is personally threatened and intend to nominate a strongman to defend it. For decades, Republicans have relied on Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats to win elections, and now that bargain has come home to roost. Never before has a Republican candidate so fully catered to the Dixiecrats and the Reagan Democrats at the expense of other constituencies. On the other hand, not since Barry Goldwater, has a Republican candidate so fully catered to the true ideological conservatives. The result is that the candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are literally tearing the Republican Party apart. It’s up to Marco Rubio, much like Richard Nixon did in 1968, to place himself between these various factions and to bring them together. If he doesn’t, we may have reason to question the future of the Republican Party.