Abstract
In light of the controversy aroused by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott s praise of Strom Thurmond s 1948 segregationist campaign for the presidency and the following step-down of Lott as the Senate s Majority Leader in December 2002, this thesis examines Republican party strategies concerning the issue of race in selected presidential elections after 1960.
More specifically, it addresses how the Grand Old Party s extensive use of racially loaded strategies correlates with and largely explains its breakthrough in the southern region of the United States. The Republican takeover of the South is by many considered to be one of the most significant political developments in modern American politics, and the thesis indicates how the Republicans often cynical use of race has been paramount for the cracking of the Solidly Democratic South.
The thesis also includes an analytical chapter on the case of Trent Lott, offering a visceral and contemporary example of what this thesis refers to as skeletons in the closet, the skeletons serving as a metaphor for the GOP s handling of the racial issue or, more specifically, how the GOP often has been speaking with a forked tongue on that controversial issue.
The analysis concludes that although the GOP ousted Lott as Senate Majority Leader, the racial skeletons still seem to linger in the dark corners of the Republican quarters.