Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy by Edward H. Miller (review)

Between 1968 and 2008 the GOP's southern strategy resulted in the political reorientation of the solid South. Once a comfortable home for the Democratic Party, the former Confederacy was a house full of Republicans by the first decade of the twenty-first century. The story of the southern strategy often begins with the Richard M. Nixon administration embracing the arguments made by Kevin Phillips in The Emerging Republican Majority (New York, 1969). Edward H. Miller challenges this assertion by arguing that the work of a handful of skillful Dallasites foreshadowed the southern strategy by at least a decade. Miller's well-written and well-organized book profiles ultraconservative residents of Dallas who challenged the consensus that Texas would remain loyal to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.

Some of the figures profiled are well known, such as H. L. Hunt, Bruce R. Alger, John G. Tower, Edwin A. Walker, and W. A. Criswell. Other persons may be recognized by scholars but not the general public. Examples are Dallas Morning News publisher Edward Musgrove "Ted" Dealey, oil and gas tycoon Peter O'Donnell, and the CEO of Texas Instruments, J. Erik Johnson. These men provided the money to sustain the Republican Party, forums to publicize their concerns, colorful personalities to draw attention to their cause, and a conviction that the solid South would dissolve and provide an opportunity for the GOP.

One particular strength of the book is that Miller identifies an important but overlooked group that proved invaluable to the party's success: women. Bruce Alger's successful runs for Congress in the 1950s resulted from the support and work of Highland Park women. Miller includes Rita Bass, who led "80 Women from Dallas," a group opposed to disarmament, in his assessment of the importance of Texas women to shaping the Republican Party. Sue Fitch chaired the Public Affairs Luncheon Club, using the organization to bring in conservative speakers who argued that capitalism and the American way of life were threatened by communism and the civil rights movement. Margot Perot used her influence to network and lobby in behalf of the party. Miller points out that seven of the nine directors of the Texas Republican Club's Women's Division were Dallasites.

Miller also focuses on three institutions that shaped the debate between ultraconservative and moderate Republicans. Under the leadership of Dealey, the Dallas Morning News became a venue to argue against organized labor, the Supreme Court, and, in particular, the John F. Kennedy administration. The day of Kennedy's assassination, the paper ran an ad accusing the president of communist sympathies. As he and his wife were leaving Fort Worth to travel to Dallas, the president responded, "We're heading into nut country today" (p. 7). The money for the ad came from members of the John Birch Society. Dallas was home to over seven hundred John Birch Society members, making the city's chapter one of the largest in the country. Finally, Miller examines the influence of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the United States. Under Criswell's leadership, the church became a strong voice that opposed the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and conflated communism and the civil rights movement.

Miller convincingly argues that these persons and institutions made Dallas the catalyst for the political realignment of the region, successfully contending that white southerners who felt betrayed by their party and, in the early 1960s, by their native son Lyndon B. Johnson should switch their loyalty from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.