Subject: Re: 18 USC 241 Intent
Dope, that isn't any smear, it's historical reality.

No. It's what The Nation said
https://www.thenation.com/arti...

along with this place
https://www.theatlantic.com/po...
and here
https://archive.nytimes.com/ta...
and here
https://www.newyorker.com/news...
and so on and so forth. All pushing the exact same narrative. Because it's convenient and far better than actually debating issues. But you know what those sites don't contain?

What Atwater actually said.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/...
Here's the part that The Nation and the rest of them didn't quote:
In 1980, I think the crucial thing in 1980 is, the two dominant issues in southern politics, which had been race and party'you had to be a Democrat to win'are pretty well resolved. And the main issues became the economy and national defense.

And
So what you have is two things happening that totally washed away the Southern strategy, the Harry Dent type Southern strategy, and that is, that whole strategy was based, although it was more sophisticated than a Bilbo or a George Wallace, it was nevertheless based on coded racism. The whole thing, busing, we want a Supreme Court judge that won't have busing, anything you look at can be traced back to the issue [of race], in the old southern strategy. It was not done in a blatantly discriminatory way.

But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.

Hmm. That seems to be the exact opposite of the points you're trying to make: That the GOP is hopelessly racist.

For some reason you keep bringing up LBJ, but studiously avoiding this quote from him:

"I'll have those <bad word here> voting democrat for 200 years".