Electoral results show precisely Maha’s points. The Southern states have consistently voted against Democratic presidential candidates. ONLY when Southerners like Carter and Clinton were Dem candidates did a very few break this pattern, just enough to tilt the electioral total the other way.

In fact, no candidate who was residing above the Mason-Dixon line during their run(if that line was drawn completely to the West coast) has been elected president since FDR. Except one, Kennedy, who barely eked out a win then was killed before he completed it.

Your analysis has a couple problems. First, the so-called southern strategy wasn't around when Kennedy was elected. It happened right around 1970, and was supposed to be a Nixon creation.

Second, you claim that since only Carter and Clinton were elected President, the strategy worked. Let's note that those two have accounted for three of the nine Presidential elections since then. Four of the remaining six we can throw right out the window: Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 were landslides – they won in the South and everywhere else. That leaves only the two Bush 43 elections.

So, of the non-landslide elections since 1970, Democrats won three out of five (and incidentally enjoyed great support in the south). Your comment is hardly convincing.

"To be sure, black incarceration rates are off the charts. Black men were 41 percent of the more than 2 million men in federal, state, and local prisons at midyear 2006. At the end of 2005, there were 3,145 prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared with 1,244 inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 inmates per 100,000 white males."

I wonder if the IQ correlation would fit roughly along those lines. 85 for blacks… 90…Hispanics 100 for whites. There was a very good ABC Evening News piece about how the Black/White divide looks fifty years later in Little Rock Central high. Sort of what you expect… blacks predominate remedial, whites in AP courses and grades. Yet the principal, a white female, was weeping over society's being at fault…and, oh yeah, she mentioned something about reading not being promoted in black families.

I submit that your opinion and mine do not change what exists. Kevin Phillips, Lee Atwater and other Republican strategists have admitted it – the very guys who put it into play – and if that doesn't meet any objective test of fact, I might as well go to Monty Python's room for arguments (Yes it is. No, t'isn't.) Because mere contradiction does not a rational debate make.

Electoral results show precisely Maha's points. The Southern states have consistently voted against Democratic presidential candidates. ONLY when Southerners like Carter and Clinton were Dem candidates did a very few break this pattern, just enough to tilt the electioral total the other way.

In fact, no candidate who was residing above the Mason-Dixon line during their run(if that line was drawn completely to the West coast) has been elected president since FDR. Except one, Kennedy, who barely eked out a win then was killed before he completed it.

The only thing mythical about the Southern strategy and its racism is that it is completely confined to the South. A few northern and western states have sufficiently strong records of racism in their populace that they've reacted similarly. Idaho, Utah and Indiana are the three most visible examples.

I've seen racism in many more states – including blue states like Massachusetts and Oregon. But they didn't exist in sufficient numbers to swing those states the other way.

Racism denial is similar to Holocaust denial. And any political activist in any party who can't see its impact on presidential races is either an amateur or has an agenda in denying it.

Your kind of logic leads Democrats to claim that welfare reform is racist. You see a hidden racist agenda in everything that Republicans stand for…like personal responsiblity and free markets. I submit that the real racists in our society are those who support policies with the assumption that minorities are incapable of taking care of themselves.

You clearly want to hang the racist label on Republicans. It doesn't fit and it's pretty sad that you keep trying. Whatever wins an election though, right?