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Article published Jun 27, 2003
Thurmond helped forge Republican South

Tom Langhorne
Staff Writer

To say that Strom Thurmond played a key role in altering South Carolina's political landscape in the 1960s might be to underestimate his impact.
The man who was elected to the state House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1932 made a very public switch to the Republican Party 32 years later -- and in so doing he helped forge what political consultants now call the GOP's Solid South.
Thurmond had been a Democratic U.S. senator for 10 years when he switched parties to support Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater's campaign for president in 1964. Goldwater, who had voted against the Civil Rights Act that year, carried only six states against President Lyndon B. Johnson -- but South Carolina was among them.
"(Thurmond's) party switch seemed unwise at the time but proved sentient about the direction of opinion; in 1968, Thurmond provided key backing to hold the South for Richard Nixon at the Republican National Convention," states The Almanac of American Politics.
"South Carolina can be said to have led the South into the Republican Party. It was the only Deep South state to vote for Richard Nixon over George Wallace in 1968 and since then has voted Democratic only once, for Jimmy Carter in 1976. It was one of the top three Republican states in 1988 and 1992; among Southern states, only Mississippi in 1992 and Alabama in 1996 gave Republican nominees higher percentages."
George Graham, a former local and state Republican Party chairman, told the Herald-Journal last year that Thurmond's 1964 party switch gave the GOP "instant credibility" in South Carolina.
"I think he made it respectable to be a Republican," Graham said.
Goldwater and Thurmond portrayed the Civil Rights Act as social engineering by advocates of Big Government, and that sentiment arguably was sincere -- but political scientists said opposition to the Act also was a rallying point and a litmus test for white supremacists.
"It was race. Let's face it," University of South Carolina Spartanburg political scientist Ron Romine said in 2002.
"The old Democratic Party -- the one I don't like to remember -- was the party of racism, segregation and keeping blacks in place. That began to change, and it was all about civil rights. No matter how Republicans try to slice it, that's why it happened."
Republicans say it was the national Democratic Party's increasingly liberal posture, not white racism, that drove traditionally conservative Southern voters into the GOP.
Graham said the rising taxes and expanded federal control that accompanied Johnson's War on Poverty alienated whites who had voted Democratic.
Tom Langhorne can be reached at 562-7221 or tom.langhorne@shj.com.