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Originally Posted by nik-
Well Wallace was Alabama's governor  |
Yeah, but don't fool yourself, he had a lot of influence and don't forget he was a southern Democrat who led the south to becoming a Republican stronghold.
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In Wallace's 1998 obituary, The Huntsville Times political editor John Anderson summarized the impact from the 1968 campaign: "His startling appeal to millions of alienated white voters was not lost on Richard Nixon and other GOP strategists. First Nixon, then Ronald Reagan, and finally George Herbert Walker Bush successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition."[15] Dan Carter, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta added: "George Wallace laid the foundation for the dominance of the Republican Party in American society through the manipulation of racial and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students."[16]
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Sad but I think that the good old days of openly racist politicians was preferable to the idiots we have today. Instead of 10% of the population being reduced to second class citizens, now 90% could find themselves in that situation.