Southern Politics Quotes

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.

What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.

... rich white leaders of the American South defeated populism in the late 19th century, by persuading poor Whites to hate poor Blacks.

Southern politicians who have tried to rise above the passionate rhetoric surrounding the Civil War have frequently found themselves dragged back into the mire. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican, was forced to apologise when his proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month failed to make any reference to slavery.

In the South, there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln.

As a general rule the Southern Delegates were not a creditable class.

My mother was a Democrat - southern Democrat, y'all.

Jimmy Carter, of course, was beloved. Peanut farmer. Came out of nowhere, governor of Georgia. Normally Democrats hate Southern accents, 'cause Southern accents equals Deliverance, equals hayseed, equals idiot. But if it's one of them... But you had to look the other way with Jimmy Carter and then here came Bill Clinton later. So depending on where the Southern accent's from, they'll make an exception and not be prejudicial about it. But for the most part, a Southern accent may as well be a slave owner as far as Democrats are concerned; they want no part of it.

Bill Clinton was a liberal who could appeal to conservative-leaning Bubba voters.

In the South, people in power feel they don't have to answer to no one.

[On the 1948 Dixiecrats:] … a political movement based openly and almost entirely upon racism.

Preachers were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement in the South because they were influenced by their congregations while most other Southerners were under the influence of the Chamber of Commerce. The Clergy were the best able to withstand the white economic pressure that could intimidate and harm most others.

The great majority of negroes in the South who do not vote, do not care to vote and would not know for what to vote if they could.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

[Mississippi Senator] Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by some Communists.

Historically, tobacco control was not a partisan issue in American politics. Neither major party favored it. Republicans were sympathetic to corporate interests and Democrats were dominant in states where tobacco was grown and manufactured. However, beginning in the late 1960s Republicans began replacing Democrats in the South … and that liberated the Democrats to be the party of tobacco opposition.

The scalawag of today is the southern liberal who is painted by conservative ideologues as a traitor to the South for daring to say that poor whites and poor blacks possess similar economic interests.

My family is Southern. I'm used to Bill Clintons.

[People] didn't vote for me because they thought I was a racist and if you look at my campaign literature it is not much different than a lot of Republican literature and some conservative Democrats in the South.

I don't think anybody from the South will be nominated [for President] in my lifetime. If so, I don't think he will be elected.

Mr. Watson belongs to that school of southern Populists who honestly believe that the respectable and commonplace people who own banks, railroads, dry goods stores, factories, and the like, are persons of mental and social attributes that unpleasantly distinguish Heliogabalus, Nero, Caligula, and other worthies of later Rome.... If he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions

Complaint is made that the Southern people have recently elected military men to most of their local State offices. We do ourselves a wrong in making this complaint. I found it almost everywhere true in Georgia and the Carolinas that the best citizens of to-day are the Confederate soldiers of yesterday. Of course, in many individual cases they are bitter and malignant; but in general the good of the Union, no less than the hope of the South, lies in the bearing of the men who were privates and minor officers in the armies of Lee and Johnston.

The marked decrease in the average vote for congressmen in the South, from 1892 to 1902, is due primarily to the limitations upon the suffrage, and that these limitations were intended to eliminate the negro vote.

No such thing as a Dixiecrat.

I knew the Civil Rights Act was right … but I also loved the South and didn't want it used as the whipping boy of the Democratic Party