GOP's Southern Strategy

The Philladelphia Inquirer's editorial "The Southern Strategy: Free at last" states, "Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!"

At least, America should hope it's dead. The witch being the vaunted Southern Strategy of the Republican Party, which since 1968 has used racial fears to divide this country politically and reap the results in presidential elections.

Following passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, white Southerners feared the impact of the growing black electorate. So, lifelong Democrats pledged allegiance to the GOP, which promised to protect them from the miscegenating throng.

For 40 years, Republican strategists used code words about black criminals (remember Willie Horton?), welfare cheats, and con artists to suggest that any minority candidate might be susceptible to such behavior, to suggest that no black politician could be trusted.

But the election Tuesday of Barack Obama to be the nation's first African American president should finally move the GOP to a new direction.