Black Democrats are on the rise in the south, while white Democrats are in decline. The Republicans now dominate in the New South. As Pat Buchanan explains, the Republican dominance is partly explained by the “conservatism of the region, which is in tune with the national GOP.”
Republican dominance in the New South is partly explained by the conservatism of the region, which is in tune with the national GOP. But the rise of the black Democrat and extinction of the white Democrat is also traceable to the Voting Rights Act.
Required by law and the Justice Department to create districts where African-Americans would be competitive, Southern legislatures began to draw up majority-minority districts where the black vote was so concentrated as to ensure the election of an African-American.
The GOP offer on the table for black Democrats was safe seats in Congress they could hold for decades, to build up sufficient seniority to garner real power to use on behalf of their constituents.
As Republicans took over legislatures, they not only followed the VRA mandate, they went beyond it.
They created secure House seats for black candidates, which inevitably resulted in heavily white districts, tailor-made for conservative Republicans.
Moderate and liberal Democrats were squeezed out as African-American Democrats colluded with conservative Republicans to carve up Southern states in a way to ensure the results we see today.
As Hispanics, also geographically concentrated, begin to register and vote in greater numbers, Republicans will likely use the same strategy to carve out deeply Hispanic districts for them.
Thus the end result of the Voting Rights Act is likely to be more districts represented by blacks, Hispanics and Asians. These will be largely Democratic and come to represent a plurality of Democrats in the House, as white Democratic Congressmen shrink in number.
Moreover, by using naked race-based ads in the Nov. 4 elections, Democratic strategists are pushing us to an America where the GOP is predominantly white and the Democratic Party, especially in Dixie, is dominated by persons of color.
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