The Emerging Republican Majority Essay

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In the late 1960's political strategist Kevin Philips published The Emerging Republican Majority, a book that "foregrounded the changing political and social landscape in the US South" (Brunn et al 2011: 514). Philips argued the Republican Party would enjoy a period of unparalleled success beginning in the 1970's that would culminate in victories in national and regional elections. Conservatives would achieve these victories by taking advantage of the racial animus created through the struggle over civil rights. Philips' idea capitalized on the racial antipathy of working class whites in an effort that would bring Republicans to power, thus creating the necessary political conditions for Republicans to enact a broadly conservative agenda …show more content…

Harvey 2005; Peck 2008; Springer 2010). Combined with an all encompassing commitment to extend the free market into virtually every aspect of life; neoliberalism is characterized by market deregulation, the redistribution of social service provision, and regressive tax policies that significantly enhance the power of elites and expand inequality (Harvey 2005). As a doctrine, neoliberalists "argue for the desirability of a society organized around self-regulating markets, and free, to the extent possible, from social and political intervention" (Glassman 2009: 497). As a policy neoliberalism often differs from its theory and the implementation of neoliberal policy is uneven (ibid). For these reasons, neoliberalism is not a monolith. Therefore, explaining how neoliberal logic came to dominate economic and political debates in the West is complex (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Springer 2010; Peck 2008). Peck and Tickell (2002) note that one of neoliberalism's enduring features is that it can be applied selectively and tailored to fit specific socio-spatial conditions. Materially this means widely divergent applications of neoliberal principles, as varied as Detroit, Michigan and Baghdad, Iraq. In the United States neoliberalism is sutured to geographies of race and racism in ways that reproduce inequality and this reality is important to understanding how neoliberal economic policies are enacted and maintained despite the widespread damage these policies do to communities of all