There are so many wonderful ironies in Miller's history of the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" that I would have read it even if this weren't the nutty season for American politics. This book shows how the "party of Lincoln" turned its back on civil rights to build its power base in the American south.

Lyndon Johnson correctly viewed the passing of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act as the legislation that would doom the Democrats in the southern states for a couple of generations. He didn't have to lobby for their passage. But he knew it was right and he believed they would keep him in power on the heels of the assassination of John Kennedy.

What I find terribly amiss is the obvious contrast between the people who feared liberal legislation and the lifestyle they enjoyed. We're talking some very wealthy people in a land of plenty: plenty rich agricultural land, plenty oil, and plenty money.

If you didn't agree with them you were a Commie or an atheist or a sexual deviant. What vivid imaginations these people had.

Richard Nixon's genius was to take the inbred racism and clothe it in a language more suitable to the national political dialogue, making it a respectable shield to hide behind.

Nixon was fortunate that Johnson bungled the Vietnam War. And lucky that Robert Kennedy was assassinated as well. Even with the Southern Strategy he mightn't have won the 1968 election. ( )

A concise review of how the Republican Party became the party of ultra-right wing loonies, focusing on Dallas and surrounds. While many of the names Miller lists mean nothing to this reviewer, born a generation later and a half a world away from the events of Nut Country, Miller is able to convey how Dallas a) became the centre of ultraconservative politics in the US and b) why it became the centre of ultraconservative politics in the US. ( )

On the morning of the day that would be assassinated, John F. Kennedy told his wife, “We’re heading into nut country today.” In his book, titled appropriately NUT COUNTRY: RIGHT WING DALLAS AND THE BIRTH OF THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY, Edward H. Miller attempts to explain what JFK was talking about, and in the process, recounts a piece of now ancient, and obscure, political history that proves to be incredibly relevant to our own times. It’s one of those books that lay out a roadmap of how we got where we are in America, and the people who got us there. A lot of stuff that was being done and said in Dallas, Texas, in the years after World War II that is being echoed today.

One thing Miller’s book recounts is how Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were instrumental in the political transformation of the South from a bulwark of the segregationist Democratic Party, to an anchor of a new and modern Republican Party that turned its back on the legacy of Lincoln and its long standing support for equal rights for Black Americans. This was because both of those Presidents helped direct large amounts of money into the South for the first time since Reconstruction, through the New Deal, and heavy defense spending. For Dallas, this meant becoming a center of aviation manufacturing, and with all those federal dollars, came a thriving middle class, and a lot of people who didn’t like paying higher taxes. They, along with a particularly ferocious bunch of Christian fundamentalists, virulent anti-Communists, Big Oil anti-government regulators, and militant defenders of Jim Crow, came together in the suburbs of Dallas and birthed a particular brand of ultra-conservatism that embraced absolutism, and dark conspiracy theories. That Eisenhower was a Communist secretly selling out America to the Soviet Union and Red China was taken as an article of faith. These were the people who flocked to the John Birch Society, and signed petitions to get an amendment in the Constitution to allow prayer back in public schools. Though their political fortunes waxed and waned, especially when their favored candidate, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 in the wake of JFK’s assassination, Miller shows how they trimmed their sails, moderated their language, and dug in for the long haul, regaining momentum in the 70’s, and then providing the money and grass roots that helped sweep Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office in 1980.

Miller shines a spotlight on some dimly remembered figures like Bruce Alger, H.L. Hunt, W.A. Criswell, and General Edwin A. Walker. He also details how women, mostly suburban housewives with time on their hands, were instrumental in organizing Dallas Republicans in the late 50’s and early 60’s, being the foot soldiers who stuffed envelopes, knocked on doors, and raised money with a passion that was rare in the rest of America at that time. Why were so many of these people, like the incredibly wealthy Hunt family, who enjoyed so much of the promise of America, so angry and fearful, especially of their fellow Americans who only wanted to climb higher on the ladder? That’s one of the things that struck me while reading this book. I also took notice of how the dark thoughts of conspiracy theories that took hold of right wingers in Dallas back in the day ultimately came to dominate conservative thinking on a national scale with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. It had to start somewhere. The Southern Strategy would ultimately become part of Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 campaign for President, when he would make an alliance with Southern Republicans and Dixiecrat segregationists to get the Republican nomination in return for a go slow policy when it came to Civil Rights and friendly judicial nominations. In NUT COUNTRY, we meet the people with whom Nixon would seal the deal.

It is a short book, at a little more than 150 pages, and some of the going is dry, with a steady repetition of facts. And it did leave me with the feeling that I was getting only a small part of the much larger story of how the Sunbelt came to dominate the party that was once led by Tom Dewey and Dwight Eisenhower.

The words of resentment and anger spoken by mid 20th Century Dallasites would be right at home at a Trump rally today, proving that little is new when it comes to American politics, and that the past is never really the past. I recommend Edward H. Miller’s NUT COUNTRY if you want to know why. ( )

Something else not to blame on Obama -- as this book shows, today's radical right has roots that stretch back for the better part of a century. Miller focusses on the development of Republican power and ideology in one city; Dallas. in the 1950's, the city was growing fast and changing dramatically. The employment and income of professionals and managers was surging with the oil and defense industries, pulling high-income migrants into Dallas. They were interested in preserving their comfortable economic status, and they-- and particularly their wives -- had the time and money to be active in politics. From this group emerged two strands of Republican activism -- moderates, who focussed on traditional Republican values of low taxes and small government, and extremists, who saw the Federal government as an enemy set on the destruction of everything they valued. Miller shows how these two groups developed and became intertwined with one another, producing a brand of Republicanism that was heavily influenced by religious ideas, and by conspiracy theories.

It was also dependent on racism, and -- as Miller says in the title -- was a big factor in the development of Nixon's "southern strategy". As the national Democratic party became more and more aligned with integration, many Southern Democrats were less and less happy with their party. This was the group the "southern strategy" successfully
pursued. The policy reflected very specific decisions by very specific people, as well as the zeitgeist, and several of these people came from Dallas. In time, this brand of Republicanism -- characterized by explicit or implicit racism, by very conservative Christian attitudes, by an "us vs. them" stance towards Washington, and by a strong dose of conspiracy theory -- became a major theme in the Republican party nationwide. Now, the party is in conflict about whether or not it will become THE major theme. It is this, not the Kennedy assassination, that Miller means when he refers to Dallas as "Nut Country".

For those who are interested in current day politics, this is an informative read: I learned a lot from it, especially about just how far back the roots of today's right wing extend. Dallas, of course, can't be blamed for the whole genesis of the right: I look forward to reading "Right Out of California", which the New York Times reviewed in tandem with this book. Also, Rick Perlstein's "Before the Storm", which traces the emergence of Barry Goldwater, focusses on the emergence of the radical right. As to this book, it is highly detailed and highly specific to Dallas, and is in some portions a bit of a slog. It is, however, well worth reading. ( )