With Or Without Trump, Republicans Likely To Head South : NPR

Then-candidate Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Mobile, Alabama in August 2015.In the last 28 months, the Republican Party has lost the White House and lost control of both chambers of Congress. Before that they had stuck with the Democrats even in the party's worst drubbings of the century, although some had left the fold for third-party attractions such as segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who left the Democrats for a time to form the States Rights Party in 1948. That's where the votes are.""The Southern Strategy"Working for Republican candidate Richard Nixon in 1968, Phillips popularized the label of "Southern Strategy" for the overall approach his candidate took to the electorate that year. Republicans nationwide paid the price, with the party losing seats in Congress it had held for generations.Two years later, Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president, largely because as a former governor of Georgia he could call his home region back to its Democratic roots. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.The 2020 aftermathNo wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.It's worth noting that, even without Georgia, Trump won 13 states where slavery had once been legal (including Oklahoma, which was still a territory during the Civil War, and West Virginia, which was then a part of Virginia) and these states provided nearly 70% of his Electoral College votes. The move to the right, and the focus on the South, have been the route to renewed success for Republicans again and again.It was there Trump began his big rally strategy nearly six years ago. So it seemed more than appropriate that South Carolina's Lindsey Graham would be the first Republican senator summoned to confer with Trump about the party's plans after the impeachment trial ended.