Download the full version of the ebook at ebookfinal.

com

Race Republicans and the Return of the Party of

Lincoln 1st Edition Tasha Philpot

https://ebookfinal.com/download/race-republicans-and-the-
return-of-the-party-of-lincoln-1st-edition-tasha-philpot/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookfinal.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Lincoln the Rise of the Republicans and the Coming of the

Civil War Kerry Walters

https://ebookfinal.com/download/lincoln-the-rise-of-the-republicans-
and-the-coming-of-the-civil-war-kerry-walters/

ebookfinal.com

Freedom Union and Power Lincoln and His Party in the Civil
War 1st Edition Michael Green

https://ebookfinal.com/download/freedom-union-and-power-lincoln-and-
his-party-in-the-civil-war-1st-edition-michael-green/

ebookfinal.com

The Return of the Public Dan Hind

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-return-of-the-public-dan-hind/

ebookfinal.com

The Return of Anti Semitism 1st Edition Schoenfeld

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-return-of-anti-semitism-1st-
edition-schoenfeld/

ebookfinal.com
An Alliance Of Women Immigration And The Politics Of Race
Immigration and the Politics of Race 1st Edition Heather
Merrill
https://ebookfinal.com/download/an-alliance-of-women-immigration-and-
the-politics-of-race-immigration-and-the-politics-of-race-1st-edition-
heather-merrill/
ebookfinal.com

The Return of Feminist Liberalism 1st Edition Ruth Abbey

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-return-of-feminist-liberalism-1st-
edition-ruth-abbey/

ebookfinal.com

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

First Edition Paul Krugman

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-return-of-depression-economics-
and-the-crisis-of-2008-first-edition-paul-krugman/

ebookfinal.com

Takeover The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the

Subversion of American Democracy 1st Edition Charlie
Savage
https://ebookfinal.com/download/takeover-the-return-of-the-imperial-
presidency-and-the-subversion-of-american-democracy-1st-edition-
charlie-savage/
ebookfinal.com

The Party Crashers of Paradise 1st Edition Reginald

Lockett

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-party-crashers-of-paradise-1st-
edition-reginald-lockett/

ebookfinal.com
Race, Republicans,
& the Return of the
Party of Lincoln

t
 Race, Republicans,
& the Return of the
Party of Lincoln

Tasha S. Philpot

The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

 Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2007
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid-free paper

2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philpot, Tasha S.
Race, Republicans, and the return of the party of Lincoln /
Tasha S. Philpot.
p. cm. — (The politics of race and ethnicity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-09967-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-472-09967-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-06967-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-472-06967-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Republican Party (U.S. : 1854– )—Public opinion.
2. Republican National Convention (37th : 2000 : Philadelphia, Pa.)
3. United States—Race relations—Political aspects.
4. African Americans—Politics and government. I. Title.

JK2356.P47 2007
324.2734089—dc22 2006020162
To my mother, Marcia Philpot

t
 Contents

Introduction Inclusion or Illusion? 1

1. Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 10

2. Party Politics and the Racial Divide 31
3. Party Image over Time, Contemporary Party Images,
and the Prospects for Change 62
4. A Different Spin The Media’s Framing of the 2000
Republican National Convention 84
5. Seeing Is Believing? Reactions to the 2000 Republican
National Convention 103
6. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back The Compassionate
Conservative versus the Florida Recount 123
7. The Second Time Around Race and the 2004 Republican
National Convention 136
8. Working in Reverse Reshaping the Democratic Party 143
9. The Final Tally Race, Party Image, and the
American Voter 158

Appendix 171
References 195
Index 205
 Acknowledgments

I O W E A G R E A T D E B T to many people without whom this book

would never have been completed. First, I thank my dissertation com-
mittee. To Hanes Walton Jr.—mentor, exemplar, and father ‹gure—
thank you for sharing with me your endless knowledge of black politics
and political parties. Second, I thank Michael Traugott for providing
me with guidance, mentorship, and a healthy dose of humor. I also
thank Nicholas Valentino and Vincent Hutchings. Working for and
collaborating with them proved to be one of the most rewarding learn-
ing experiences of my graduate school tenure at the University of
Michigan.
I am also grateful to many other scholars who aided in my intellec-
tual growth. First, I thank Janet Boles, my undergraduate adviser at
Marquette University, who encouraged me to pursue a career in acad-
emia. Second, I thank Nancy Burns and Donald Kinder for allowing
me to participate in the National Election Study Fellows workshop and
for providing me with funding to complete my dissertation research,
which eventually evolved into this book. Finally, I thank Arthur Lupia
for taking me under his wing. I only wish he had joined the faculty at
Michigan earlier in my graduate career.
This book bene‹ted greatly from ‹nancial support from the
Howard Marsh Endowment, the University of Michigan’s Depart-
ment of Political Science, the National Election Study, the Gerald R.
Ford Fellowship, the University of Michigan’s Horace G. Rackham
Graduate School, the Frank C. Erwin Jr. Endowment, and the Uni-
versity of Texas at Austin’s Of‹ce for the Vice President for Research.
I also thank Dara Faris, Jim Kelly, Ernest McGowen, Curt Nichols,
viii Acknowledgments

and Bryan Tillman for their research assistance. In addition, I thank

Jim Reische at the University of Michigan Press for his patience with
and enthusiasm for this project from beginning to end as well as the
anonymous reviewers for providing me with constructive feedback for
improving on the original version of this book. Parts of an earlier ver-
sion of chapter 1 were published in Political Behavior; excerpts from
“A Party of a Different Color? Race, Campaign Communication, and
Party Politics,” Political Behavior 26 (3): 249–70, are reprinted in this
book with kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.
I am extremely grateful for the support and friendship of a number
of colleagues. I particularly thank Ryan Hudson, Amaney Jamal, Har-
wood McClerking, Brian McKenzie, Joan Sitomer, and Marek Steed-
man (aka the Dissertation Group); Sean Ehrlich; Gena Brooks Flynn;
Mike Hanmer; Corrine McConnaughy; Irfan Nooruddin; Ismail
White; and Rochelle Woods for helping me push this project along. I
am also indebted to Gary Freeman, Terri Givens, Ted Gordon, David
Leal, Bob Luskin, and Daron Shaw at the University of Texas at Austin
and Karen Kaufmann from the University of Maryland for helping
smooth out that bumpy transition from graduate student to assistant
professor. Finally, I also thank some of my friends outside of the acad-
emy—Halima Henderson, Bridget McCurtis, and Ann Milo—for their
encouragement and support over the years.
I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my mother, Marcia Philpot.
For as long as I can remember, she reinforced the importance of
achieving excellence in all that I pursued and of using my success to
give back. Although times were not always good, my mother always
made sure my needs were met. Her sacri‹ces paved the way for me to
succeed. Thank you for standing behind me and giving me a push
when it was needed.
Finally, I thank my partner in life, Eric Leon McDaniel, whose love
brings me endless happiness.
 Introduction
Inclusion or Illusion?

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not

enough troops in the army to force the southern people
to break down segregation and admit the nigger race
into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our
homes, and into our churches.
—J. Strom Thurmond, 1948

The history of the Republican Party and the NAACP

has not been one of regular partnership. But our nation
is harmed when we let our differences separate us and
divide us. So, while some in my party have avoided the
NAACP, and while some in the NAACP have avoided
my party, I am proud to be here today.
—George W. Bush, July 10, 2000

I want to say this about my state: when Strom Thur-

mond ran for President, we voted for him. We’re proud
of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our
lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all
these years, either.
—Senator Trent Lott, December 5, 2002

DU R I N G T H E 2000 E L E C T O R A L C Y C L E , observers of the political

landscape witnessed the emergence of a “new” Republican Party.
Characterized by the catchphrase “compassionate conservatism,” the
Republican Party reached out to minority voters in ways it had not in
recent history. Without making any substantial changes to its platform,
the GOP presented itself as a more diverse party that welcomed African
Americans and other minority groups into its tent.
For example, George W. Bush became the ‹rst Republican presi-
dential candidate in twelve years to address the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at its national con-
vention in Baltimore. During his speech, Bush declared that he was
2 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

there because he believed “there is much [the NAACP and the Repub-
lican Party] can do together to advance racial harmony and economic
opportunity.” He admitted that for the Republican Party, “there’s no
escaping the reality that the Party of Lincoln has not always carried the
mantle of Lincoln.” Nevertheless, Bush argued that by “recognizing
our past and confronting the future with a common vision,” the GOP
and the NAACP could “‹nd common ground” (Bush 2000).
This theme of reclaiming the “mantle of Lincoln” and opening up
the Republican Party to minority voters would continue throughout
the months leading up to Election Day. Perhaps the best example of
the Republican Party’s minority outreach occurred during the 2000
Republican National Convention. As Denton (2002) notes, “The
Republican convention presented a friendlier, more inclusive, and
moderate convention than in 1992 and 1996. Republicans made direct
appeals to those of Democratic leanings” (8–9). In addition to its 85
black convention delegates (a 63 percent increase from the 1996 con-
vention), the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia featured
prime-time appearances by Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush’s for-
mer national security adviser and Secretary of State during his second
term; and retired general Colin Powell, former chair of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and secretary of state (Bositis 2000, 2). In fact, during the con-
vention, Powell challenged the Republican Party to bridge racial
divides and reclaim the “mantle of Lincoln” by overcoming blacks’
“cynicism and mistrust” toward the Republican Party and reaching out
to the African American community (Powell 2000).
Newspaper coverage of the 2000 Republican convention suggested
that the GOP’s diversity effort was part of its “search of a new package
for its core philosophy.” Republican Party chair Jim Nicholson was
quoted as saying that the 2000 convention in Philadelphia was “a dif-
ferent kind of convention, for a different kind of party” (Von Drehle
2000). During the convention, the Republican Party tried to distance
itself from its “battered old image” as “a bunch of mean moralizers”
while portraying itself as being “a new, happy and inclusive Republican
Party that wants to keep the good times rolling” (Dionne 2000).
Two years later, during a 100th birthday celebration for longtime
senator J. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), Republican senator Trent Lott
publicly remarked that the country would have been better off if Thur-
mond had been elected president in 1948. Lott’s comment referred to
the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, led by Thurmond, in which many south-
 Introduction 3

ern Democrats rebelled against the Democratic Party as a result of

President Harry S. Truman’s extension of civil rights to African Amer-
icans. Thurmond’s candidacy marked the South’s commitment to seg-
regation and white supremacy in spite of the party’s changing attitudes
toward civil rights. Observers thought that Lott believed that the
United States would have been better off if Jim Crow had remained
intact.
Lott’s remarks eventually incited a media frenzy. He was forced to
publicly apologize several times, and ultimately decided to resign as
Senate majority leader. Not surprisingly, Lott faced great criticism
from the Democratic Party and civil rights leaders. Perhaps more sur-
prising was the political heat Lott took from his own party. Republi-
cans might have forgiven Lott’s comments had they not occurred on
the heels of the George W. Bush–led Republican campaign to paint
itself as the party of racial harmony.
In light of this political chain of events, Time reporter Andrew Sul-
livan wrote an article on “Why Lott’s a Menace to His Party.” Sullivan
claimed that Lott “undermine[d] the inclusive spirit that Bush ha[d]
tried to build.” Sullivan assumed, however, that the “compassionate
conservative” strategy had succeeded in reshaping perceptions of the
Republican Party. It is quite possible that even after the Republican
Party’s attempt to appear more inclusive, voters had not changed their
perceptions of the party. After all, the party did not change its position
on racial issues such as af‹rmative action or reparations for slavery.
This book seeks to provide a means of assessing which image of the
Republican Party—the Party of Lincoln or the Party of Trent Lott—
pervaded. The injection of race into political discourse is nothing new,
of course, and is never more evident than during election cycles. His-
tory is saturated with examples of racially framed issues in campaign
advertising, including the 1988 Willie Horton ad and the 1990 Jesse
Helms “hands” ad. But while Lott’s remarks were consistent with posi-
tions taken by previous Republican elites, the example of the Republi-
can Party using racial images to signify inclusion deviates from its pre-
vious playing of the “race card.”1
More broadly, this book develops a theoretical framework for

1. This is not to say that race-baiting has been purged from the arsenal of campaign tac-
tics. Rather, in addition to the “hands” and Willie Horton ads, the electorate faces a sea of
ads that give a new, multicultural face to many of the Republican Party’s long-standing poli-
cies.
4 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

understanding what is needed to change party images in voters’ minds.

No current theories help to explain how citizens update their percep-
tions of political parties in light of changes in the parties’ projected
images. Scholars have noted shifts in partisan alignments when the par-
ties adopt drastically different positions on political issues. But a differ-
ence exists between changes in political parties marked by critical
realignment on public policies and the much smaller changes parties
make from election to election. How, then, do voters respond to these
marginal changes? Can a party reshape its image without making sub-
stantial changes to its platform? If so, are there limits to this strategy’s
effectiveness?
This book focuses on answering these questions. I identify some of
the constraints that bind political parties when they attempt to expand
their electoral bases. Speci‹cally, I examine what happens to an indi-
vidual’s image of a political party when that party repackages its core
without making changes to the core itself. I argue that a party will suc-
ceed in reshaping its image when voters perceive the new image as dif-
ferent from the old. In other words, when people recognize that a
party has changed in some way, they will adjust their perceptions of the
party to correspond with the party’s projected image. This sounds sim-
ple enough; however, parties face several obstacles when proving to the
electorate that they have changed.
First, parties must battle their histories. Neither party has
entrenched positions on some issues—generally those that are new or
less salient, such as stem cell research. Shaping and reshaping party
images on these issues should be relatively easy. In contrast, on some
issues—such as race, defense, and abortion—the parties have taken
clear and long-standing positions. Parties will ‹nd it more dif‹cult to
reshape their images on such issues. The more history surrounding an
issue a party must overcome, the harder it is to reshape its image on
that issue.
Second, change means different things to different people. For
some people, change means altering the party’s policy positions; for
others, simple cosmetic changes are enough to signal change. When
making super‹cial changes to its image with respect to a particular
issue, a party can expect to succeed only among those for whom the
party’s actual issue position is less salient.
Finally, when attempting to reshape their images, parties must con-
test countervailing information found simultaneously in the political
 Introduction 5

environment. Such information can come from political opponents,

the media, or, in the case of Trent Lott, other party members. By high-
lighting aspects of the party that have not changed or by contradicting
the party’s projected image, these other information sources can con-
vince citizens that the party has not changed. The greater the presence
of competing information, the more dif‹culty political parties will
encounter in altering their images in voters’ minds.
In what follows, I empirically test this central proposition. To do so,
I focus primarily on the use of racial imagery at the 2000 Republican
National Convention, which provides a unique opportunity to explore
the current political landscape in areas previously uncharted. First, as I
will demonstrate, the theme of inclusiveness that characterized the
convention program deviates from previous party activities, making the
convention a reasonably timely example of a party attempting to
reshape its image. Second, examining the convention allows us to
observe how parties try to reshape their images with respect to race and
to what extent these efforts succeed. Race is one of those issues on
which the parties have developed distinct and enduring reputations.
Thus, if we can identify conditions under which a party succeeds in
changing the racial component of a party image, we may apply these
‹ndings to other less salient issues. With the exception of Spence and
Walton (1999), the political science literature has failed to examine
African American convention participation. This study provides the
‹rst systematic examination of convention attendees beyond delegates
and candidates. Finally, this book is one of the only studies to examine
a political convention as a form of political communication.
The double entendre in the introduction’s title forecasts what is yet
to come. The obvious reference is to the analysis of the theme of inclu-
sion presented at the 2000 Republican National Convention. I ask the
question, “Inclusion or Illusion?” to gauge voters’ evaluations of the
GOP’s outreach activities. Campaign rhetoric can but does not always
substitute for real policy changes when political parties attempt to
reshape individuals’ perceptions. For certain individuals, the presence
of African Americans at the 2000 Republican National Convention
signaled a more inclusive Republican Party. For others, the presence of
blacks represented a mere illusion that masked the conservative posi-
tion of the Republican Party on racial issues.
The more obscure reference relates to the broader theme of this
book. Here, the question “Inclusion or Illusion?” ascertains whether
6 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

citizens revise their party images when presented with new information
about political parties. Do people include all or even some of this new
information, or do they dismiss the information as nothing more than
an illusion? I argue that citizens update their perceptions of political
parties to correspond with the parties’ projected images. I challenge
the notion that short-term political strategies aimed at disrupting exist-
ing electoral coalitions simply do not work (Cowden and McDermott
2000; Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002). While I do not dispute
the fact that such approaches do not create major shifts in partisan
identi‹cations, I contend that these activities allow political parties to
pick up voters at the margins. In light of recent presidential elections
in which every vote made a difference, understanding where, when,
and how parties can expect modest increases in vote share is immi-
nently important.
For that reason, chapter 1 reintroduces the question at hand: Can
aesthetic changes unaccompanied by corresponding changes in policy
positions alter voters’ perceptions of political parties along a particular
dimension? This chapter brings together the relevant literatures in
political science, psychology, and communication studies to establish
the importance of this question and develops a general theoretical
framework for answering it. I argue that a party’s ability to change its
image with respect to a particular issue domain depends on its history
on that issue, the presence of competing information, and individuals’
standards for what it means to be a changed party. In this chapter, I
also explain how the general framework applies to the test case, the use
of racial images at the 2000 Republican National Convention.
Chapter 2 establishes the historical context for understanding the
contemporary role of race in American party politics. Speci‹cally, this
chapter describes how the two major parties have dealt with African
Americans and issues of race over the years. This chapter illustrates the
magnitude of the obstacle faced when the two parties try to reshape
their images with respect to race, given their existing reputations on
this issue.
With the historical foundation thus established, chapter 3 examines
how party activities have resonated in the minds of the American pub-
lic. I employ survey data collected over the past ‹fty years by the Amer-
ican National Election Study as well as data obtained from focus
groups and qualitative interviews. Chapter 3 provides a baseline assess-
ment of party images. The ‹ndings from these analyses demonstrate
 Introduction 7

that people have clear pictures of the parties that correspond and move
with their positions on race. Currently, individuals overwhelmingly
perceive the Democratic Party as more racially liberal than the Repub-
lican Party.
In chapter 4, I include a discussion of the news media’s role in facil-
itating the response to the 2000 Republican National Convention. I
include a chapter on the media because most people obtain informa-
tion about political events through the media rather than through ‹rst-
hand experience. Using data drawn from three nationally circulated
newspapers (the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Wash-
ington Post) and thirteen African American newspapers, I examine how
the media framed the convention. This chapter seeks primarily to
determine the level and scope of countervailing information in the
campaign environment at the time of the convention. The content
analysis reveals that substantial variance occurred in the coverage of the
convention and that individuals had the opportunity to encounter
information that competed with the Republican Party’s new projected
image.
Using both survey and experimental data, chapter 5 explores
whether the Republican Party’s racial appeals affected individuals’ per-
ceptions of the party. First, I use secondary analysis of the Gallup
Organization’s Post–GOP Convention Poll to show that those who
watched the convention were more likely to believe that the Republi-
can Party did a good job reaching out to minorities. Further, the
results indicate that the effect of convention watching depended
largely on the viewer’s race.
While the results of the polling data provide insight into how the
Republicans’ use of racial appeals resonated with the general elec-
torate, the polling results by themselves do not answer the research
question suf‹ciently because they cannot isolate the causal relationship
between convention exposure and perceptions of the Republican
Party. To establish causality, the research design used in this book
incorporates several experiments. This method is ideal for testing the
argument that competing information found in the campaign environ-
ment undermined the Republican Party’s attempt to appear more
inclusive. Consequently, I use an experiment in chapter 5 to demon-
strate that subtle variation in the media’s conveyance of convention
events signi‹cantly affected the effectiveness of the GOP’s strategy.
Again, these effects were moderated by the race of the perceiver.
8 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Chapter 6 further explores the effect of countervailing information

by examining what happens when the party’s activities contradict its
new projected image. In particular, chapter 6 examines how much of
the headway gained as a result of the convention was undone by the
dispute over the 2000 election results. First, I examine how the print
news media discussed the Republican Party from Election Day until Al
Gore conceded the election. I ‹nd that most of the coverage focused
on the Florida recount. In addition, the media devoted a fraction of
this coverage to discussing the recount in conjunction with the impact
on minority groups and how the Republican Party’s actions under-
mined the spirit of “compassionate conservatism.” Using the 2002
American National Election Study, I ‹nd a link between the media
coverage and public opinion. That is, I ‹nd that believing that George
W. Bush was unfairly elected president in 2000 negatively correlated
with perceptions of the Republican Party’s ability to represent minor-
ity groups.
While the preceding chapters discuss the impediments encountered
in the process of party image change, chapter 7 discusses a strategy for
overcoming these obstacles. Speci‹cally, I consider how repeated
attempts to reshape citizens’ party images can minimize the presence
of countervailing information and increase the strategy’s success. To
do so, I revisit the compassionate conservative strategy by examining
the 2004 Republican National Convention. Although on a smaller
scale, the 2004 electoral cycle was once again marked by the Republi-
can Party’s concerted effort to reach out to minority groups. Analyses
of experimental data reveal that the recurring effort at the 2004 con-
vention allowed the Republican Party to make inroads among African
Americans, a group unaffected by the 2000 Republican National Con-
vention.
Although this book focuses primarily on the Republican Party, the
approach used to examine party image change applies to political par-
ties in general, as chapter 8 illustrates. I test the boundaries of the the-
oretical framework developed in chapter 1 by applying it to the Demo-
cratic Party. Speci‹cally, I explore the party’s limitations if it tried to
reshape its image with respect to race. The results reveal that the
Democratic Party would have to overcome the same obstacles when
trying to prove to the electorate that it was more racially conservative
that the Republican Party had to overcome in trying to appear more
racially liberal.
 Introduction 9

Finally, chapter 9 concludes the discussion of the politics and

process of party image change by summarizing the ‹ndings and dis-
cussing their implications. In this chapter, I speculate about the future
of race and party politics. As the U.S. electorate continues to grow and
change in racial/ethnic composition, I contemplate how political par-
ties will respond. I also theorize about how this project’s framework
can be applied to the study of other issues and groups in U.S. politics.
Chapter 9 closes with a discussion of potential avenues for future
research.
 1 Toward a Theory of
Party Image Change

WH I L E THE IMPORTANCE and study of party identi‹cation has

been duly noted, the study of party images—individuals’ perceptions
or stereotypes of political parties—has received signi‹cantly less atten-
tion. Based on the extant literature, we know the contents of party
image (Matthews and Prothro 1964; Trilling 1976; Sanders 1988) and
the impact of party image on candidate evaluation (Rahn 1993). Less
explored are the conditions under which individuals’ party images can
be altered. Studies (e.g., B. Campbell 1977; Carmines and Stimson
1989) have observed changes in party behavior and attempted to link
them to similar changes in partisan alignment. Scholars, however, have
not examined changes in party image at the individual level. More
speci‹cally, scholars have not incorporated party activities into models
of party image change. As a result, we do not know which party strate-
gies alter party images and what circumstances moderate the strategies’
impact. This chapter seeks to develop a theoretical framework for
understanding when party images can be reshaped. In particular, I
answer the question of whether aesthetic changes unaccompanied by
corresponding changes in policy positions can alter voters’ perceptions
of political parties along a particular dimension. I argue that a party will
succeed in reshaping its image when voters perceive the new image as
different from the old.
Party Images
Each of the two major parties1 is associated with political symbols—
policies, candidates, and constituencies—that give meaning to these
1. The discussion of political parties in this project is limited to the behavior of the
national organizations.

10
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 11

organizations for members of the U.S. electorate.2 Sears (2001)

explains, “When presented to us, these political symbols rivet our
attention and evoke strong emotion. These emotions are dominated
by a simple good-bad, like-dislike evaluative dimension” (15). Since
affective evaluations of the parties are a function of their symbolic com-
ponents, political parties manipulate the symbols with which they are
connected to gain favorable evaluations and ultimately electoral vic-
tory. Parties seek to manipulate not only which symbols get associated
with their party but also the meaning individuals assign to these sym-
bols.
The totality of the political symbols one associates with a political
party is known as a party image. Party images form because at some
point, political parties become synonymous with certain policy posi-
tions and groups in society. Petrocik (1996) suggests that
parties have sociologically distinctive constituencies and the linkage
between a party’s issue agenda and the social characteristics of its
supporters is quite strong, even in the United States. It is a com-
pletely recursive linkage: groups support a party because it
attempts to use government to alter or protect a social or eco-
nomic status quo which harms or bene‹ts them; the party pro-
motes such policies because it draws supporters, activists, and can-
didates from the groups. Issue handling reputations emerge from
this history, which, by the dynamics of political con›ict, is regularly
tested and reinforced. (828)
These reputations develop into an individual’s party image (the
“voter’s picture of the party”) and guide subsequent evaluations of a
party (Matthews and Prothro 1964). Party image is not the same as
party identi‹cation. While the two concepts are related, party image
differs in that “two people may identify with the same party but have
very different mental pictures of it and evaluate these pictures in differ-
ent ways” (Matthews and Prothro 1964, 82). Trilling (1976) argues
that “an individual’s party image not surprisingly is likely to be related
to his party identi‹cation, but his party image will consist less of purely
psychological, affective components and more of substantive compo-

2. Borrowing Sears’s (2001) de‹nition, a political symbol is “any affectively charged ele-
ment in a political attitude object” (15). The political attitude object in this study is a politi-
cal party.
12 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

nents” (2).3 Milne and MacKenzie (1955) describe party images as

“symbols; the party is often supported because it is believed to stand
for something dear to the elector. It matters little that the ‘something’
may be an issue no longer of topical importance; the attachment to the
symbol, and the party, persists” (130). Symbols in this case denote not
simply mascots and insignias but also candidates, issue positions, and
historical events that exemplify a political party.
Each element can be categorized as either policy oriented or devoid
of policy. For example, an individual can associate the Republican
Party with issue positions such as opposition to af‹rmative action,
opposition to big government, or support for capital punishment.
Individuals can also link the Republican Party with more symbolic
icons such as the GOP elephant, Ronald Reagan, Trent Lott, and
George W. Bush. Likewise, the Democratic Party can be represented
by the Democratic donkey, the Kennedys, or Jesse Jackson. Issue posi-
tions associated with the Democratic Party could include support for
af‹rmative action or support for social spending. Thus, party image
consists of all the substantive components a person associates with a
given political party.
Moreover, party image incorporates the interpretation individuals
assign to these components. According to Elder and Cobb (1983),
While a symbol references some aspect of reality external to the
individual, precisely what is referenced is often unclear and varies
from one person to another. When a person responds to a symbol,
he is responding not simply to external reality but to his concep-
tion or interpretation of that reality. Thus, the meaning he gives to
the symbol will be based on information and ideas he has stored
away in his mind. To understand how symbols acquire meaning,
we must inquire into the kinds of cognitive meanings that a person
has available to assign to a symbol. (40–41)
In this sense, two individuals’ party images can contain the same sym-
bols but ultimately differ by the meaning these symbols signify. For
example, two individuals can associate Trent Lott with the Republican

3. The key difference between party image and party identi‹cation is that party image is
the foundation on which party identi‹cation is built. Essentially, party image provides the
basis for liking one party over another. As mentioned earlier, people can have different party
images but the same party identi‹cation. Party image is how people perceive the party, and
party identi‹cation is the evaluative outcome of what individuals perceive.
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 13

Party but can reach different conclusions about where the Republican
Party stands on race depending on whether they view Lott as racially
conservative. Thus, party images are subjective and can vary across
individuals. Regardless of interpretation, the symbols and the meaning
assigned to them by an individual can potentially be used in evaluations
of party activity. Consequently, evaluations of a party depend not only
on what exists in an individual’s party image but also on what is notice-
ably absent and how the individual makes sense of all this information.
Citizens develop their partisan images (also referred to as partisan
stereotypes) through socialization and through (direct and indirect)
encounters and experiences with party members (Rahn 1993). Infor-
mation used to form party images can come from the parties them-
selves or from competing sources of political information such as the
media or other political organizations. The information is ‹ltered
through the individual’s political predispositions. Interactions with
political parties shape not only the political symbols people associate
with a given party but also the interpretation people lend to those sym-
bols. Further, an individual’s experiential knowledge also guides the
affective weight he or she places on those political symbols. The affec-
tive valence and the salience of these symbols and the interpretation
individuals assign to the symbols (i.e., the frames individuals use to
make sense of the symbols) then guide party preferences.
Understanding party images is important because of the role these
images play in the political process. Party images shape how individu-
als perceive political parties and can affect not only how people vote
but also whether they choose to engage in the political process at all.
As a result, party images can affect who wins and loses elections, which
ultimately affects which interests are represented in the political arena.
It is no wonder, then, that political elites often attempt to reshape
party images when seeking electoral success. After all, they must keep
up with the changing face of the political landscape. First, the nature of
political competition changes from election to election. Second, the
electorate experiences demographic changes. Finally, issues rise and fall
in importance. Thus, political parties must adapt to their changing
environment. This includes altering the way different groups in the
electorate perceive the political parties.
When attempting to reshape a party’s image, however, political
elites face a dilemma—they must attract new voters while maintaining
their current support base. One way a political party might reshape its
14 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

image is by adopting new issue positions. But as scholars note, doing

so will likely upset current constituents and confuse potential voters.
The alternative is to reshape the party’s image in a more cosmetic way.
Speci‹cally, a party can use different representational images to convey
to voters that the parties have changed without making any substantive
changes to the party’s platform. But does this strategy work?
Altering Party Images
While the party image literature does not currently address the ques-
tion of what incites modi‹cations in individuals’ party images, we can
glean some insight from research on party evaluations in political sci-
ence and research on stereotypes in social psychology. If we consider a
party image a form of stereotype, then social psychology research sug-
gests that party images may be updated in the face of inconsistent
information. Partisan stereotypes as well as stereotypes in general can
be thought of as a schematic structure. A schema is a “a cognitive struc-
ture that organizes prior information and experience around a central
value or idea, and guides the interpretation of new information and
experience” (Zaller 1992, 37). Thus, schemata allow us to interpret
what is ambiguous, uncertain, or unknown by applying it to a stand-
ing, known framework that exists in our heads. Schemata can be used
in making inferences about events, other people, and ourselves. For
example, when we encounter new people, we use either ascribed (e.g.,
age, race, sex) or achieved (e.g., experience or training) characteristics
about that person to activate a set of role-based expectations about
that person (Fiske and Taylor 1984). Fiske and Taylor (1984) assert
that “one way to think about stereotypes is as a particular type of role
schema that organizes one’s prior knowledge and expectations about
other people who fall into certain socially de‹ned categories” (160).
Political party stereotypes, then, would be “those cognitive structures
that contain citizens’ knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies about the
two major political parties” (Rahn 1993, 474).
Accordingly, when an individual has associated an event, issue, or
person with a particular stereotype, he or she then ascribes the stereo-
typic content to that situation, regardless of how much or how little
the situation may actually resemble the stereotype (Fiske and Taylor
1984, 160). “The main principle of schematic memory is that the usual
case overrides details of the speci‹c instance” (Fiske and Taylor 1984,
162). For example, when individuals have identi‹ed a candidate as a
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 15

Democrat, in the absence of additional information they will attribute

all the features of what they imagine a Democrat to be to that candi-
date, regardless of whether that candidate is a moderate or ideologi-
cally at the extreme left.
When an individual receives new information, updating the stereo-
type depends on whether the newly presented information con›icts
with existing knowledge. If the information presented in the stimulus
is consistent with individuals’ existing schematic information, they will
encode that information and store it in their memory with the rest of
the relevant considerations. Fiske and Taylor (1984) explain that
“inconsistent behavior requires explanation, which takes time when
the information is encountered—that is, at encoding. If people can
attribute inconsistent behavior to situational causes, they can forget
the behavior and presumably maintain their schema-based impression”
(164).
This process of absorbing consistent information more readily than
inconsistent information has a reinforcing effect on stereotypes in gen-
eral (Fiske and Taylor 1984) as well as on partisan stereotypes in par-
ticular (Rahn 1993). Partisan stereotypes or images consequently are
not easily altered because party images “are not created de novo”
(Rapoport 1997, 188) each time voters receive new information about
the parties as they would during a campaign. Current party images
constitute the starting point from which new evaluations begin
(Rapoport 1997, 188). Hence, when individuals encounter inconsis-
tent information, they must weigh that information against all previ-
ously received information. In a sense, prior beliefs have an anchoring
effect on how people encode new information.
This is not to say that party images or stereotypes cannot be altered.
Rahn (1993) examined under what conditions people abandoned their
use of party stereotypes when evaluating a candidate. Using an experi-
mental design, Rahn tested to see whether people would incorporate
policy information into their candidate evaluations when the policy
information associated with a candidate was incongruent with the can-
didate’s party af‹liation. Rahn’s results show that voters “neglect pol-
icy information in reaching evaluation; they use the label rather than
policy attributes in drawing inferences; and they are perceptually less
responsive to inconsistent information” (492). Furthermore, she
found that even when voters faced extreme inconsistency, people still
relied on their partisan stereotypes to make candidate evaluations. But
16 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

at the same time, she admits that her results are not absolute. For
example, Rahn speculates that voters may abandon their partisan
stereotypes when the inconsistency is even more extreme or involves an
issue that is particularly salient to the voter (487).4 In other words,
stereotypes should break down when people can substitute an equally
salient alternative means of categorization (Fiske and Taylor 1984;
Hamilton and Sherman 1994).
If we consider party image a form of party evaluation, then the liter-
ature suggests that party images shift only when the parties switch posi-
tions in salient issue domains. The structure and dynamics of party
evaluation have long been debated, with the debate centering on the
question of whether party preference (usually measured by party
identi‹cation) was ‹xed or malleable. Early studies (e.g., Downs 1957)
modeled party preference as a function of an individual’s issue posi-
tions relative to those of a party’s position. This model assumed that
voters updated their party preferences when they perceived changes in
the platforms of a party or experienced changes in personal policy posi-
tions. In the Downsian sense, party evaluation was a continuous
process. In contrast, party identi‹cation as conceptualized by A.
Campbell et al. (1960) posited a view of party preference that was
rooted in early childhood socialization and experienced very little alter-
ation in later years. This perspective viewed party identi‹cation as a lot
less malleable and more stable over time. In other words, party prefer-
ence had very little to do with the evaluation of a party’s activities but
rather resulted from a psychological attachment to a party inherited
from one’s parents.
Subsequent studies have found that party preference lies somewhere
between the two extremes. For example, Fiorina (1981) contends that
while party identi‹cation is updated by changes in political factors, it is
still ingrained in past policy preferences. Similarly, Jackson (1975)
argues that “voting decisions are largely motivated by evaluations of
where the parties are located on different issues relative to the persons’
stated positions and to a much lesser extent by party identi‹cations
unless people are indifferent between the parties on issues” (183).
Jackson contends that party preferences are “motivated by individuals’
desires to have public policy re›ect their own judgments about what

4. For additional evidence on the abandoning of partisan stereotypes in connection with

issue saliency, see Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1994.
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 17

policies should be followed and by the policies each party and its can-
didates advocate. Parties are important, but only if they constitute pol-
icy oriented, politically motivated organizations re›ecting the distribu-
tion of positions among voters and competing for the support of the
electorate” (183–84).
These and other studies show that party preferences are “more than
the result of a set of early socializing experiences, possibly reinforced by
subsequent social and political activity” (Franklin and Jackson 1983,
968). Rather, support for a political party depends on that party’s abil-
ity to maintain some congruence between its platform and an individ-
ual’s issue positions. In this sense, Franklin and Jackson (1983) argue
that “although previous partisan attachment acts to restrain change, it
is like a sea anchor, which retards drift rather than arrests it entirely. If
the tides of policy evaluation are strong enough, conversions can and
will take place” (969). And in fact, scholars have found that shifts in
partisanship among political elites (Clark et al. 1991; Adams 1997)
and among the mass electorate (Carmines and Stimson 1989) occur
when parties adopt salient issues that create key distinctions between
them and individuals attempt to realign themselves with the parties’
positions on this issue.
To summarize, the social psychology and political science literatures
suggest that party images will be updated when voters face inconsistent
information and attempt to realign the new version of the party with
the old. Updating party images, however, will be contingent on the
perceived level of inconsistency. More speci‹cally, altering party
images is a two-step process. First, the party must project an image of
itself that is inconsistent with its existing image. Second, the change
must be large enough to meet an individual’s threshold for what con-
stitutes real change.
Meeting the Threshold
To spread the word that they have changed in some way, political par-
ties will usually launch a campaign during the course of an election
cycle. As Iyengar (1997) contends, “In the television era, campaigns
typically consist of a series of choreographed events—conventions and
debates being the most notable—at which the candidates present
themselves to the media and the public in a format that sometimes
resembles a mass entertainment spectacle” (143). According to
Kinder’s (1998) de‹nition, campaigns are “deliberate, self-conscious
18 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

efforts on the part of elites to in›uence citizens. Campaigns expend

various resources—money, organization, technique and expertise,
words, symbols, and arguments—in an attempt to in›uence what citi-
zens think, what they think about, and ultimately, what they do”
(817).
As they strive to shape public opinion and behavior during the
course of a campaign, elites construct frames, which are “rhetorical
weapons created and sharpened by political elites to advance their
interests and ideas” (Kinder 1998, 822). Framing is the process by
which elites de‹ne and construct political issues or events (Iyengar and
Kinder 1987; Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley 1997). Through framing,
elites try to shape the meaning or interpretation people assign to
events, candidates, and issues. Frames allow elites to in›uence what
information people deem applicable to their evaluations. In other
words, frames used within the context of a campaign remind prospec-
tive supporters of the relevance of “pre-existing political attitudes and
perceptions” (Bartels 1997, 10).
Essentially, elites create frames in an attempt to invoke speci‹c feel-
ings, opinions, and ideas that potentially translate into mobilization
and/or support while displacing sentiments that might work to the
detriment of the elites’ goals. The assumption is that if certain emo-
tions or beliefs can be brought to mind, the outcome of an evaluation
can ultimately be altered. As Kinder (1998) explains, frames “spotlight
some considerations and neglect others, thereby altering the mix of
ingredients that citizens consider as they form their opinions on poli-
tics” (822). Frames also “lead a double life” by serving as “cognitive
structures that help individual citizens make sense of the issues that
animate political life. They provide order and meaning; they make the
world beyond direct experience seem natural” (Kinder and Sanders
1996, 164). In this sense, framing “is both a process and an effect in
which a common stock of key words, phrases, images, sources, and
themes highlight and promote speci‹c facts, interpretations and judg-
ments, making them more salient” (Tucker 1998, 143).
Altering party images is no more than reframing citizens’ pictures of
a political party. Existing party images are the initial set of emotions,
symbols, and beliefs people use to describe a party. When reshaping
party images, political elites seek to reconstruct these frames. During a
campaign, parties will project a frame or an image of themselves and
hope that individuals will adopt the same framing of the party.
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 19

Much like partisan stereotypes, the frames people possess come pri-
marily from elite debate. “[P]ublic opinion depends not only on the
circumstances and sentiments of individual citizens—their interests,
feelings toward social groups, and their political principles—but also
on the ongoing debate among elites” (Kinder and Sanders 1996, 163).
Nevertheless, individuals can reject the frames they dislike, rework the
frames they adopt, or create their own frames (Kinder and Sanders
1996, 165). As Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992) argue, “People
think for themselves, and media and of‹cial versions of problems and
events make up only part of their schema for public issues” (112). This
point is crucial, because it speaks to individual agency in controlling
just what information will apply to any political scenario.
Thus, the key to altering party images is knowing when and why
individuals will reject the newly framed version of the party. It is not
enough for elites to project a new image; citizens must be willing to
accept the new picture of the party. For each party and each issue
domain, individuals will set the lower boundary for determining what
signi‹es change when called on to revise their party images. The
party’s projected image will be incorporated into people’s partisan
stereotypes when it meets or exceeds the height of the bar for deter-
mining what constitutes a new party. This can prove to be somewhat
dif‹cult, however. Because the height of the threshold varies across
individuals, meeting the threshold is like trying to hit a moving tar-
get. Moreover, the political arena includes alternative sources of
information that affect whether people believe that parties have met
expectations.
Figure 1 depicts the process of changing a party image. The reshap-
ing process begins with the party projecting a new image along some
dimension or dimensions. The ‹rst hurdle to overcome is the party’s
existing image. Each political party has long-standing reputations for
handling certain issues. On other issues—usually newer or less salient
issues—the party may have less known positions or no positions at all.
A party will have an easier time reshaping its image on these issues
because individuals will require less convincing that the party has
changed. Here, the bar is set low because little information is available
to contradict the new image of the party. When trying to modify its
image in issue domains in which its reputation is more entrenched,
however, parties face an uphill battle. Parties have more dif‹culty con-
vincing the electorate that they have suddenly changed when they have
20 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Fig. 1. Hypothesized process of party image change

spent decades building an image in a particular domain than in starting

from scratch to build a reputation with respect to another issue area.
The second impediment to party image change is transcending the
predispositions of voters. As is evident from prior work on campaign
effects, susceptibility to elite discourse is not universal (Berelson,
Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954; A. Campbell et al. 1960; Iyengar and
Kinder 1987; Krosnick and Brannon 1993). Individuals’ willingness to
adopt the frames they receive from elites (including candidates, party
strategists, and the media) depends largely on individuals’ predisposi-
tions and attentiveness to the message (Zaller 1992). Adopting Zaller’s
(1992) de‹nition, predispositions encompass the “variety of interests,
values, and experiences that may greatly affect their willingness to
accept—or alternatively, their resolve to resist—persuasive in›uences”
(22). This de‹nition implies that while predispositions may manifest
themselves as some attitudinal dimension (e.g., egalitarianism, party
identi‹cation, racial prejudice), predispositions are made of informa-
tion gathered through direct and indirect encounters with the political
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 21

and social world that give meaning to the predisposition. In other

words, an individual’s preference for one party over another is not sim-
ply guided by some hollow liking for that party. Rather, an individual’s
preference for one party over another is based on the political symbols
that give meaning to the party for that individual.
Predispositions affect the process of party image change by deter-
mining what information becomes encoded into party images. Predis-
positions predict whether individuals will accept the cosmetic changes
made by a party or demand changes to the party’s platform before
altering existing party images. As noted earlier, individuals can have the
same party image but have different party identi‹cation. Conversely,
people can have the same party identi‹cation but have drastically dif-
ferent partisan stereotypes. It is quite possible to be a strong partisan
because of a party’s position on one issue but to place little value on
the party’s position in other issue domains. Therefore, when a party
tries to reshape its image along a particular dimension in which it has a
well-established position, the party will make the most headway among
those individuals who place relatively little importance on that issue.
Under these circumstances, the threshold for change will be lower,
regardless of party identi‹cation. Party identi‹cation may explain some
but not all responses to a party’s attempt to reshape its image.
Finally, the success of a campaign is affected by what other informa-
tion is available to the campaign’s targeted audience. The success or
failure of a campaign can hinge on whether the information is one-
sided or if competing frames exist. For example, Zaller (1992) argues
that “the most important source of resistance to dominant campaigns
. . . is countervailing information carried within the overall stream of
political information” (253). He ‹nds that when “people are exposed
to two competing sets of electoral information, they are generally able
to choose among them on the basis of their partisanship and values.
. . . But when individuals are exposed to a one-sided communication
›ow . . . their capacity for critical resistance appears quite limited”
(253). Thus, the presence of con›icting information can prohibit
political parties from meeting the threshold for change. With respect to
reshaping partisan stereotypes, two important sources of information
include the media and alternative projections of the party’s image.
Because political information is usually ‹ltered through the media,
they play an important role in the process of party image change. In
attempting to reach a large audience, political parties must rely on the
22 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

media. But the media do not passively participate in the political

process. They have the ability to present as much or as little of a party’s
campaign message as they choose. The media also have the capacity to
put their own spin on the message a party is attempting to convey to
voters. When a party projects a new image, the media can decide not
to highlight the change or can remind voters that the new image does
not differ substantially from the old. In this case, parties will ‹nd it
hard to meet the threshold of change in voters’ minds.
In addition, to convince citizens that a party has changed, it must
project a consistent image. Political campaigns are undermined when
party members engage in activities that otherwise contradict the new
image of the party. The incongruity confuses voters. Because the party
bears the burden of proof of change, voters are more likely to keep
their existing images than to modify them.
Racial Symbolism
The remaining chapters will empirically test the proposed process of
party image change. While party images can have many components, I
focus only on the part of a party image that relates to race. One of the
most (if not the most) persistent cleavages between the two major par-
ties has been race. As Carmines and Stimson (1986) put it,
Race has deep symbolic meaning in American political history and
has touched a raw nerve in the body politic. It has also been an
issue on which the parties have taken relatively clear and distinct
stands, at least since the mid-1960s. Finally, the issue has had a
long political life cycle. It has been a recurring theme in American
politics as long as there has been an American politics and con›ict
over race has been especially intense since the New Deal. (903)
In fact, scholars have posited race as the underlying determinant of
partisan division (B. Campbell 1977; Carmines and Stimson 1989;
Huckfeldt and Kohfeld 1989; Frymer 1999; Valentino and Sears
2005). Because of the highly salient cleavages surrounding race, the
subject provides an interesting backdrop for the examination of how
elites can use symbolic images to reshape party images. Moreover, if we
can identify conditions under which a party succeeds in changing the
racial component of its image and the meaning assigned to that com-
ponent, we may also apply this information to other less salient issues.
If claims about the role of race in party politics are correct, citizens
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 23

support political parties in large part (although not necessarily exclu-

sively) based on perceptions of the parties’ racial symbolism or reputa-
tion with respect to race. Racial symbolism, as it is used in this study, is
the interpretation an individual assigns to a political party’s activities
based on all of the racial, political, and social symbols that have come
to be associated with that party. It is the frame individuals use to give
meaning to a party’s race-related activities. Racial symbolism is the
product of the symbols in a party’s image, the racial valence of those
symbols, and the weight of each symbol. To be included in an individ-
ual’s perception of the racial symbolism of a political party, a political
symbol must receive a racial valence. It must also have an affective tag
(whether the individual likes or dislikes the symbol) and a weight
(importance). Thus, as ‹gure 2 illustrates, the interpretation of a
party’s race related activities depends on the political symbols associ-
ated with the party, whether these symbols are racialized, the affective
evaluation of the symbol, and that symbol’s importance to the individ-
ual.
For example, if the political symbol in ‹gure 2 were Jesse Jackson,
for him to be included in an individual’s perception of the racial sym-
bolism associated with the Democratic Party, the individual would ‹rst
have to recognize Jackson as a racialized ‹gure. Second, the individual
would have to place some importance on Jackson. If Jackson was not
salient to the individual, Jackson would not factor into the individual’s
calculus. Finally, the individual must have an affective evaluation of
Jackson—that is, view him as either a positive or negative ‹gure. If all
three conditions are met, Jackson could then be used to evaluate the
Democratic Party’s racial symbolism. As an important, positive, racial-
ized symbol, Jackson would yield a positive racial symbolism associated
with the Democratic Party. The opposite would be true if he were a
negative ‹gure.
As a subsection of one’s party image, racial symbolism can then be
used to make subsequent evaluations of a party. Provided that a polit-
ical party’s race-related activities are salient to people, they can make
more global evaluations of a party based solely on the party’s racial
symbolism. For example, when asked whether they like a political
party, people can recall the racial symbolism of the party and answer
based on this information rather than draw on a totality of information
about the party stored in their memories. If a political party is per-
ceived to have a positive racial symbolism and an individual values this
24 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Fig. 2. Racial symbols

criterion, then the individual will give the party a positive affective eval-
uation. Similarly, if an individual is racially conservative and associates
a political party with a negative racial symbolism, that individual will
have a positive affective evaluation of the party.
When attempting to revise their racial symbolism without altering
their policy positions, the two major parties have to ‹nd representa-
tional images that convey change. For the Republican Party, this
means using images that convey racial liberalism. Likewise, the Demo-
cratic Party must link itself with images that evoke racial conservatism.
More speci‹cally, the Republican Party must update its image from the
one described earlier to the Big Tent, which incorporates icons such as
Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and the Rock into the party ranks
while maintaining the same policy orientation. The Democratic Party
now reverts back to the party of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace
while keeping its liberal position on af‹rmative action and social spend-
ing.
Is increasing the presence of African Americans or racial conserva-
tives enough to alter the racial symbolism associated with a political
party? According to Sears (1993), a “group represents an attitude
object like any other and therefore evokes affective responses in the
same manner. Groups may behave like other political symbols, mainly
evoking symbolic predispositions (as in patriotism or nationalism or
class solidarity)” (127)—or, in this case, as in racial conservatism or
racial liberalism.
What about the other images associated with the party’s racial sym-
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 25

bolism? The ability to overshadow the other political images associated

with a party’s racial symbolism depends on the importance of the other
symbols. When the (unchanged) policy-oriented symbols are more
important, images will not be enough.
Improving Party Evaluations by Altering Party Images
The underlying assumption behind the theory of party image change is
that altering party images should lead to electoral gain. In other words,
if the parties reshape their images, these changes should lead to a sub-
sequent improvement in individuals’ affective evaluations of the par-
ties. Affective evaluations of the parties are a function of the affective
evaluations of their symbolic components. As Sears (1993) explains,
“[M]ost attitude objects contain multiple symbols. In the symbolic
politics view, each such symbol should evoke the speci‹c evaluation
associated with it, with overall evaluation of the full attitude object
being some simple function of those individual evaluations” (125). For
example, if the negative racial symbolism associated with the GOP
resulted in negative evaluations of the party, replacing this racial sym-
bolism with a new framing of the party should improve overall affective
evaluations.
The challenge to this proposition is that political elites must make
the racial symbolism of the party applicable to more general evalua-
tions. People possess multiple bits of information that may affect their
understanding of a given concept. For example, thinking about the
Republican Party may bring to an individual’s mind a host of consider-
ations, including speci‹c candidates associated with the party, the
party’s ideology, or particular policies and issues owned by the party.
This point is critical because, as Zaller (1992) notes, “[I]ndividuals do
not typically possess ‘just one opinion’ toward issues [or in this case
parties], but multiple potential opinions” (38). The considerations
used to form an opinion or make an evaluation are cued or signaled by
an individual’s environment. How might this process work?
The human mind, at least in terms of information processing, can be
divided into two components: the long-term memory and the working
memory. The long-term memory can be described as “a library of
information whose main property is the more or less permanent stor-
age of vast amounts of data” (Lodge et al. 1991, 1358). Similarly,
long-term memory has been conceptualized as a “knowledge store”
that contains “a network of constructs including information about
26 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

social objects and their attributes (OA); goals, values, and motivations
(GVM); and affective or emotional states (AS)” (Price and Tewksbury
1997, 24). These networks of constructs, analogous to schemata, hold
together potentially associated bits of information. The knowledge
store contains the full range of stereotypic considerations associated
with any given concept.
An individual does not draw on all of this information when making
a judgment, however. In instances where people need to make an
assessment, only the information in working memory is used. Working
or active memory is “where information is consciously attended to and
actively processed” (Lodge et al. 1991, 1359). At any given moment,
only a fraction of the knowledge store moves into the working mem-
ory. Further, the constructs that become activated tend to be the most
accessible, de‹ned by recency or frequency of use. The more a con-
struct has been repeatedly or recently used, the more accessible or
salient that construct is.
Activation occurs when an actor receives a stimulus from an external
source—in this case, a campaign message. The individual’s activated
schemata guide the way the information presented in the campaign
message is encoded. The activated schemata then provide a framework
for interpreting the meaning of the campaign message and will
in›uence what information from the campaign message the perceiver
stores (Cohen 1981, 50). When an individual tries to retrieve the pre-
viously stored information about the campaign message, the relevant
schemata will be reactivated to ‹ll in what is unknown or forgotten
about the stimulus (Cohen 1981, 50). After information has been acti-
vated—that is, transferred from the long-term to the working mem-
ory—actors must conduct their evaluation, whether voting or answer-
ing a survey question, by “averaging across accessible considerations”
(Zaller 1992, 49).5
During the course of a campaign, political elites attempt to activate
particular constructs to be transferred into working memory. The goal
5. This model of information retrieval is consistent with both memory-based and impres-
sion-driven or online processing. The memory-based model assumes that the evaluation is
based on some mix of pro and con evidence, while the online model assumes the existence of
a “judgment tally” that is updated as new information is introduced. Either way, when pre-
sented with a stimulus, some form of existing knowledge must be retrieved. Furthermore,
evidence suggests that “people sometimes rely on their memory of likes and dislikes to
inform an opinion, while at other times they can simply retrieve their on-line judgments”
(Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh 1989, 401).
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 27

of the stimulus is to de‹ne what considerations are applicable to the

situation. “A construct is deemed applicable, and is likely to be acti-
vated, when its key features correspond to the salient features of the
stimulus” (Price and Tewksbury 1997, 31). Referring back to the
Republican Party’s racial symbolism, by displaying the party’s racial
diversity and invoking the name of Abraham Lincoln, the campaign
message should prime people to link thoughts of racial inclusiveness
with the Republican Party. As Price and Tewksbury (1997) note, how-
ever, success in priming particular considerations for activation for
evaluation depends on the overlap between the existing stored con-
structs (and their accessibility) and the information presented in the
stimulus. If the stimulus presents individuals with an unde‹ned con-
cept or a consideration that does not currently exist in their long-term
memories, they may add a new construct that can be used in future
evaluations.
The weighting process is a function not just of how much informa-
tion is balanced against the new information but also of how salient the
prior constructs are. When certain constructs are repeatedly activated,
they become chronically salient. If this occurs, the chronically accessi-
ble considerations tend to be activated when making relevant deci-
sions, regardless of the intentional or unintentional priming of other
constructs by environmental stimuli. For example, when making pres-
idential evaluations, Iyengar and Kinder (1987) found that differences
in the susceptibility to certain primes occurred among individuals
along partisan lines. Speci‹cally, they found that “priming is strength-
ened among Democrats for problems that are prominent on the
agenda of the Democratic Party, among Republicans for problems that
are prominent on the agenda of the Republican Party” (96). The
authors conclude that priming effects are reduced among individuals
who are predisposed to reject the prime.
In sum, the same campaign that catalyzes the process of party image
change with respect to a particular issue domain can also prime the use
of that section of party image in affective evaluations of the party.
Because of the recency and salience of the construct, it should be front
and center in voters’ working memories, ready for use in their political
decision making. Reshaping party images along a particular dimension,
however, does not necessarily guarantee a subsequent improvement in
overall evaluations of the parties and their candidates. Citizens have
some autonomy in the priming process and can substitute another
28 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

aspect of party image that is more salient to their daily lives. In this
case, individuals will revise their party image but not apply the new
framing of the party to more macro evaluations of the party.
From Theory to Practice
Testing the central proposition that aesthetic changes unaccompanied
by corresponding changes in policy positions alter voters’ perceptions
of political parties when voters perceive the new image as different
from the old requires identifying an instance when such a strategy was
employed. As discussed in the introduction, the 2000 Republican
National Convention offers an excellent test case. The Republican con-
vention can be thought of as a campaign. Beginning in the early 1950s,
a series of reforms shifted the selection of presidential nominees from
the conventions to state-level primaries and caucuses. As a result, the
convention has become less a “deliberative body” and more an
“extended, four-day infomercial” (Karabell 1998, 7). During conven-
tions, the parties present the unifying themes of that election cycle.
The 2000 Republican National Convention was no exception. The
slogan integrated throughout the convention program, “Renewing
America’s Purpose. Together,” characterized the goals of the Republi-
can Party for the 2000 election cycle. These objectives included mak-
ing the party more attractive to minority voters:
We offer not only a new agenda, but also a new approach—a vision
of a welcoming society in which all have a place. To all Americans,
particularly immigrants and minorities, we send a clear message:
this is the party of freedom and progress, and it is your home.
(“Republican Platform 2000”)
To achieve this goal, the convention featured notable minority Repub-
lican leaders and supporters. In the next chapter, I will demonstrate
that the party did not alter its position on racial issues such as af‹rma-
tive action. How, then, did the use of racial images resonate among
those exposed to the convention? Applying the theorized process of
party image change, I argue that the impact of the convention is a
function of the Republican Party’s historical reputation for handling
race, how much of this history citizens ‹nd relevant, the media’s will-
ingness to convey the party’s message undistorted, and party members’
ability to commit to the theme and avoid engaging in activities that
would contradict its new projected image.
 Toward a Theory of Party Image Change 29

First, to have an impact, the display of diversity had to have been

inconsistent with voters’ existing pictures of the party. This was indeed
the case. Six months prior to the convention, 79.0 percent of blacks
and 49.2 percent of whites believed that the Democratic Party better
represented the interests of blacks. In contrast, only 12.3 percent of
whites and 4.2 percent of blacks believed that the Republican Party
better represented African Americans. Moreover, 72.5 percent of
blacks and 48.6 percent of whites believed that the Democratic Party
was better able to improve race relations, while 18.9 percent of whites
and 6.5 percent of blacks believed the Republican Party would do a
better job.6 These ‹gures indicate that shortly before the convention,
the Republican Party was not perceived as racially liberal, at least rela-
tive to the Democratic Party. Given the contradictory nature of the
2000 Republican National Convention, I hypothesize that exposure to
the convention will improve perceptions of the GOP’s racial symbol-
ism.
Second, when attempting to reshape party images, we also know
that a balancing act takes place between what individuals already know
and the new information being presented. The stronger the existing
information, the harder it will be to incorporate new information. In
the case of the 2000 Republican National Convention, I expect African
Americans to be the most resistant to the use of diverse racial images to
signal change since African Americans place a higher premium on the
parties’ policy positions. National survey data provide support for this
claim.
Table 1 presents summary statistics from the 1996 American
National Election Study and shows that prior to the 2000 election
cycle, African Americans were more likely than whites to believe that
racial issues such as social spending and government aid to blacks were
extremely important. African Americans were also more likely than
whites to see a difference between themselves and the Republican
Party on the same issues. Because of the importance blacks place on
racial issues and the relative distance from the GOP on these issues,
exposure to the 2000 Republican National Convention will have less
of an impact on blacks.

6. These ‹gures were estimated using the CBS News Monthly Poll #1, February 2000,
obtained from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (available at
www.icpsr.umich.edu).
30 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

TABLE 1. Importance of and Placement on Racial Issues, by Race

(in percentages)
Importance of Racial Issues
Social Spending Government Aid to Blacks
African Americans 36 53
Whites 25 18
Placement on Racial Issues Relative to the Republican Party
Social Spending Government Aid to Blacks
No Difference More Liberal No Difference More Liberal
African Americans 23 75 17 62
Whites 40 50 28 25
Source: 1996 American National Election Study.

Third, regardless of the individual’s race, the impact of convention

exposure will be moderated by alternative projections of the party.
When people are exposed to versions of the convention in which the
party’s racial outreach is not highlighted or when the race strategy is
discussed in conjunction with other aspects of the party that have not
changed, the magnitude of the effect of convention exposure will be
minimized. Likewise, framing the Republican Party as illegitimately
winning the presidency will have negative consequences for people’s
perceptions of the GOP’s racial symbolism, undermining any headway
made during the convention. Conversely, the Republican Party will
have more success in reshaping its party image when citizens are
informed that in 2004, the party repeated the effort initiated during
the 2000 election cycle as a sustained commitment to racial diversity.
Conclusion
As political parties seek additional votes at the margins, they make
small, super‹cial changes to their images. Voters’ receptivity to these
changes depends on a number of political and social factors often out-
side the party’s control. This book primarily delineates some of these
elements. In what follows, I will show that for some voters, cosmetic
changes are enough to change perceptions of political parties. For oth-
ers, however, the issue-relevant elements of a party image are more
important. For this second set of voters, their image of a party will
change only if the party changes its policies—aesthetic modi‹cations
will not be enough.
 2 Party Politics and
the Racial Divide

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of

the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his
safety.
—Frederick Douglass, August 15, 1888

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

—Kanye West, September 2, 2005

WH E N A S S E S S I N G T H E malleability of party images, it is essential to

examine how crystallized the party’s reputation is along particular
dimensions. Further, it is equally important to recognize how the party
built that reputation to assess the feasibility of counteracting it. The
presumption is that political parties consciously engage in activities
that contribute to the formation of the public’s perceptions of the par-
ties. Yet the parties’ actions are often taken for granted.
Research on party identi‹cation indicates that although party
identi‹cation remains quite stable over time (A. Campbell et al 1960;
Converse 1964; Converse and Markus 1979), it does experience short-
term deviations at both the individual (e.g., Allsop and Weisberg
1988) and aggregate (MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson 1989) levels. If
only for a short period of time, voters may ‹nd something appealing
about a party that they had not in previous elections, causing them to
upset their current partisan loyalties. Although such deviations have
been explained in terms of emerging candidates (Rapoport 1997),
issues (Carmines and Stimson 1989), or national political and eco-
nomic circumstances (MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson 1989), this
body of work has neglected to look at the activities of the parties them-
selves. One might ask (borrowing a phrase from Aldrich 1995), Why
parties? Or more speci‹cally, why would it be important to look at
political parties in explaining short-term deviations in partisan align-
ments?

31
32 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

One of the many functions of political parties is to gain and/or

maintain electoral success. In so doing, political parties seek to
strengthen existing partisan loyalties while attracting new supporters.
This means making themselves more attractive to groups that formerly
found the parties uninviting. Therefore, it is imperative to identify
what parties have done to induce changes in the way they have been
perceived.
With respect to race, the two major parties’ reputations have not
remained constant over time. The perceived ability to handle race has
shifted so much so that the party that was once racially conservative is
now the more racially liberal party, and vice versa. For example, Fred-
erick Douglass believed that the Republican Party was the political
party more amenable to the African American quest for political incor-
poration, seeing it as the “party of freedom and progress” (Platt 1989).
Judging by support for the Republican Party during the ‹rst eighty
years of its existence, most blacks believed the same. How, then, did
we get to the point where rapper Kanye West exclaims to the American
public that Republican president George W. Bush does not care about
African Americans and where fewer than 10 percent of blacks support
Republican presidential candidates in any given election? In particular,
what historical events contributed to the massive shift in perceptions of
the Republican Party? Moreover, how did the Democratic Party
become a more attractive alternative?
This chapter seeks to answer these questions. First, I discuss the his-
toric and contemporary role of political parties in U.S. democracy. Sec-
ond, I reveal how the two major parties have created a racial divide in
U.S. politics. Finally, I use this historical context to provide a backdrop
for understanding the potential motivation behind and the impact of
the 2000 Republican National Convention.
The American Political Party System: A Brief Overview
The term party is derived from “part” and is meant to refer to a subset
of “some uni‹ed whole” (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, 3). Within the
context of western politics, “party” represents “division, con›ict, [and]
opposition within a body politic” (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, 3). Elder-
sveld (1964) de‹nes a party as “a structural system seeking to translate
or convert (or be converted by) social and economic interests into
political power directly” (6). He argues that parties consist “of a set of
 Party Politics and the Racial Divide 33

socio-economic interests groping for political recognition, articulation,

and control” (6). To this de‹nition, Ware (1995) adds that power is
usually sought by attempting to occupy positions in government (5).
While parties may carry with them a negative connotation, citizens
and scholars alike render parties a necessary evil. In a representative
democracy, in which the people do not have direct control over gov-
ernmental affairs, institutions must link citizens to government and
provide a means of holding rulers accountable to the governed. Ran-
ney (1962) argues that “the popular control over government which is
the essence of democracy can best be established by the popular choice
between and control over alternate responsible parties; for only such
parties can provide coherent, uni‹ed sets of rulers who will assume col-
lective responsibility to the people for the manner in which govern-
ment is carried on” (12). Schattschneider (1942) contends that politi-
cal parties have played a major role in the development of democratic
government and that “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms
of the parties” (1). In general, those holding democratic principles
believe that “the political party is a specialized subsystem of group
action indispensable for the working of the political system” (Elder-
sveld 1964, 18). As Eldersveld (1964) argues, “The public recognizes
and accepts the party battle as central to government in a democratic
society” (19).
For the most part, U.S. politics functions within a two-party system.
While third parties periodically arise and exert power over government
and politics, the election of the president has been dominated by the
Democratic and Republican Parties (Key 1942, 252).1 Duverger
(1963) argues that “the two-party system seems to correspond to the
nature of things, that is to say that political choice usually takes the
form of a choice between two alternatives” (215). Stated another way,
the two-party system essentially presents the electorate with an
either/or choice—between the party in power and a single alternative
(see Key 1942; Schattschneider 1942).
The structure and function of American parties have evolved over
time. The ‹rst two parties, the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Repub-

1. While most third or fourth parties rarely receive more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote
in a presidential election, examples of more successful attempts can be seen in 1912, 1924,
1948, 1968, 1980, and 1992.
34 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

licans, were “organized ‹rst and most importantly to solve social

choice problems” (Aldrich 1995, 294). Elites created the parties to
facilitate the development of U.S. political institutions (Aldrich 1995,
295). The Constitution was adopted under the presidential rule of the
Federalist Party (Key 1942). The Republican Party dominated
throughout this era until it factionalized during the 1820s (Eldersveld
and Walton 2000).
Key (1942) argues that Andrew Jackson’s 1828 election marked the
beginning of the contemporary party system (266). The expansion of
the franchise coupled with an increase in the number of elections under
Jacksonian reforms allowed parties to become an ideal vessel for con-
testing elections during what Ware (1995) calls the party era (the mid-
1830s to mid-1890s) (315). With the rise of the present-day Republi-
can Party in 1856, the two major parties vying for political power
became the Democrats and the Republicans. From this time until
about 1960, the American parties (Jacksonian Democrats, Whigs, and
then Republicans) existed as mass parties whose primary function was
electoral mobilization (Aldrich 1995, 294). Aldrich (1995) maintains
that “the mass party was created for, and was critical to, the extension
of democratic practices in nineteenth-century America” (295).
The Populist Party temporarily disturbed the Democratic-Republi-
can dominance of the two-party system. Populist candidates won
gubernatorial races in Kansas, North Dakota, and Colorado. In the
1892 presidential election, the Populist candidate won approximately
one million popular votes and 22 electoral votes. But by 1896, the
Populists no longer posed a viable threat to the two-party system
because the Democratic Party in the South had co-opted the Populist
Party (Eldersveld and Walton 2000).
The Republican Party dominated presidential politics from 1896
until 1912, “when Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Progressive movement split
the party and led to two national presidential victories for the Demo-
crats with Woodrow Wilson” (Eldersveld and Walton 2000, 54).
Although Roosevelt received only eight Electoral College votes, he
won 27.5 percent of the popular vote. Like the Populist movement,
however, the Bull Moose Progressive movement was short-lived, and
the two-party system was restored in 1920.
Since the 1920s, three viable threats to the two-party system have
arisen. First, Robert M. La Follette’s Progressives won 17 percent of
 Party Politics and the Racial Divide 35

the popular vote in 1924. Second, George Wallace captured 13 per-

cent of the popular vote in 1968. Third, H. Ross Perot received 19
percent of the popular vote in 1992. However, the two-party system
has remained stable since 1932.
Historical changes and technological advances made the mass party
form obsolete in the twentieth-century. This gave rise to a third party
form, described by Aldrich (1995) as the party in service, which orga-
nizes and facilitates the electoral and the governing process for party
members (294). This contemporary party form is the “candidate-cen-
tered party designed by and meant to serve its of‹ce seekers and its new
brand of bene‹t seekers, and it was intended to transform the condi-
tions of party government into a reasonable approximation of that
party government in practice” (296). Eldersveld and Walton (2000)
contend that this era has been marked by the rise of the use of mass
media in campaigns, an increased importance on the role of interest
groups, and ideological con›ict within party competition. Key (1942)
notes, however, that while the names of the parties have changed over
the years, the parties’ coalitions have remained fairly stable (263).
While parties by necessity adapt to changing political environments,
they continuously perform three major functions in American politics.
First, parties help to organize the way people think about issues and
candidates. Party labels serve as heuristics and allow people to make
political decisions with minimal information. Second, parties organize
elections. Party primaries, caucuses, and conventions select which can-
didates will run for which of‹ces. The Democratic and Republican
National Committees prioritize campaigns based on viability and then
help fund candidates accordingly. Finally, parties help to organize gov-
ernment. Party leadership within government determines committee
assignments, procedures, and schedules.
Consequently, political parties’ actions can have profound effects on
the electorate. For example, Eldersveld (1964) found that “party effort
is associated with increased voting turnout, strengthening party
identi‹cations and loyalties, and developing attitudes favorable to
working for the party operation” (541). He also found that contact
with parties led to greater interest in national, domestic, and local
affairs (542). Rosenstone and Hansen (1993), who also found that
party mobilization efforts signi‹cantly affect voter turnout, explained
the phenomenon:
36 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Political participation arises from the interaction of citizens and

political mobilizers. Few people participate spontaneously in poli-
tics. Participation, instead, results when groups, political parties,
and activists persuade citizens to take part. . . . In mobilizing citi-
zens for political action, political leaders intend only their own
advantage. Seeking only to win elections, pass bills, amend rulings,
or in›uence policies, they target appeals selectively and time them
strategically. Nevertheless, in doing so, they extend public involve-
ment in political decision-making. They bring people into politics
at crucial times in the process. Their strategic choices impart a dis-
tinctive political logic to political participation. (37)

Thus, parties are vehicles for both interest articulation and aggregation
(Kitschelt 1989, 47).
In summary, political parties, by de‹nition and conception, provide
the vehicle through which societal groups have their policy preferences
actualized. In a representative democracy, parties connect voters to
elected of‹cials. Although the structure of the U.S. party system has
evolved, the parties’ goals have remained the same. Parties organize gov-
ernment, organize the way citizens think about government and their
elected of‹cials, and facilitate the electoral process both for candidates
and for voters. In so doing, political parties maintain electoral coalitions
that have remained stable for more than 100 years. At the same time, the
parties further exploit divisions already present in American society. In
the next section, I discuss one of the more enduring cleavages sustained
by political parties in their quest to wield political power.
The Southern Strategy: The Creation of the
Racial Divide in Party Politics
Whether explicit or hidden behind code words and symbols, race has
played and continues to play a central role in the U.S. party system.
Since early in the country’s history, foreign observers from Alexis
de Tocqueville (1835) to Gunnar Myrdal (1944) have recognized the
racial tension that has existed in the American populace. Race remains
one of this country’s political hot buttons. Because of this enduring
racial tension, party elites have included race when determining which
strategies to employ, which policies to adopt, and which constituencies
to pursue. As a result, race has helped shape the existing party coali-
tions and has affected how the public perceives political parties.
In attempting to assemble winning electoral coalitions, parties must
 Party Politics and the Racial Divide 37

mobilize their supporters and simultaneously demobilize the supporters

of their opponents. This task becomes easier when those constituencies
can be placed in opposition to one another. One of the most effective
and widely used tactics involves exploiting racial divisions in the Ameri-
can polity by racializing campaign rhetoric.2 Injecting race into cam-
paign communication has typically been manipulated for two purposes:
(1) to attract blacks into a party’s coalition or (2) to attract racially con-
servative whites in the South. Both of the major parties have used each
of these tactics at different times (Walton 1975; Frymer 1999).
Early in American history, political parties learned that they could
repeatedly exploit the competing interests of blacks and southern
whites when seeking public of‹ce. First, the politics of the South is
marred by racial con›ict. As Key (1950) wrote,
In its grand outlines the politics of the South revolves around the
position of the Negro. It is at times interpreted as a politics of cot-
ton, as a politics of free trade, as a politics of agrarian poverty, or as
a politics of planter and plutocrat. Although such interpretations
have a super‹cial validity, in the last analysis the major peculiarities
of southern politics go back to the Negro. Whatever phase of the
southern political process one seeks to understand, sooner or later
the trail of inquiry leads to the Negro. (5)
Second, with respect to their political behavior, blacks and southerners
behave as distinct electoral blocs. In other words, African Americans and
the South constitute two groups that have fairly cohesive voting patterns.3
These two factors led to the development of the “southern strategy.”4

2. While scholars have noted the need to de‹ne race and racial politics beyond the black-
white paradigm (Marable 1995), race here denotes the divide between African Americans
and whites. Race is con‹ned to this narrow de‹nition primarily because the black-white
cleavage has remained distinct and persistent throughout the history of U.S. party politics. Its
origins and maintenance are well documented, providing a good beginning point from which
this type of analysis can be expanded in the future.
3. The origins of the cohesiveness between these two groups can be explained by the
identi‹cation of a shared history within each group. For example, Key argues that the Civil
War and Reconstruction brought unity among the Confederate states. Prior to the war,
southern states exercised much more independence. Similarly, scholars such as Dawson
(1994), Tate (1993), and McClerking (2001) argue that the political unity among African
Americans is derived from exposure to institutions that reinforce the existence of a common
history among African Americans.
4. O’Reilly (1995) de‹nes the term southern strategy as “regionless code for ‘white over
black’” (8). This strategy is rooted in the assumption that electoral success depends largely
on political elites’ ability to frame elections in terms of black and white, pinning African
38 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Yet leading scholars in the ‹eld of political science rarely acknowl-

edge race’s contribution to the formation and perpetuation of the
American party system. For example, Schattschneider (1956) recounts
the political histories of the early Democratic and Republican Parties
but omits a discussion of race’s role in the formation of the modern-
day two-party system. He recognizes the importance of the business
elite within the ranks of the Republican Party and even acknowledges
the tension between the business community and the Solid South. He
discusses the Republican Party’s dif‹culties in establishing itself in the
South and attributes those problems to the party’s business faction. In
actuality, the bigger contention was between the existence of African
Americans in the Republican Party and the unwillingness of southern
whites to coexist in a party with blacks.
Sundquist (1983) discusses the role of race in the realignment of the
American party system during the slavery and civil rights movement
periods. Sundquist’s treatment of race falls short in that he ignores the
role of race between these two eras and from the aftermath of the civil
rights movement to the present. Similarly, Milkis (1999) “probe[s] the
philosophical and historical roots of America’s struggle to create
democracy on a grand scale” (8) but almost completely ignores African
Americans’ political struggle. He discusses race only brie›y and
super‹cially in a section on slavery and the civil rights movement.
In an examination of the formation of political party systems in the
United States, Burnham (1967) highlights the presence of three
enduring cleavages. First, he discusses the clash between the South and
the Northeast, arguing that “the more Americans of the New England
and Southern subcultures came to learn about each others’ social val-
ues and political goals, the more pronounced their hostility toward
each other grew” (283). Second, he discusses the tension between
“community” and “society” (283). A cleavage that fell along regional
lines, the battle between community and society essentially constituted
a con›ict between the working class and the business elites. Finally,
Burnham acknowledges an ethnic-cultural con›ict, but he restricts his
discussion to European immigrants. Like others, Burnham does not

American interests and the interests of whites in opposition to one another (10). This
de‹nition is consistent with that of Aistrup and others who de‹ne the southern strategy in
terms of a Republican strategy utilized in the past four decades “to transform the Republi-
cans’ reputation as the party of Lincoln, Yankees, and carpetbaggers into the party that pro-
tects white interests” (1996, 8).
 Party Politics and the Racial Divide 39

discuss the con›ict between blacks and white liberals and racial conser-
vatives primarily in the South.
In sum, with the exception of Key, most seminal works on political
parties in the U.S. context ignore or minimize the role of race in the
formation of the political system. Scholars who do acknowledge the
role of race center their discussions on key historical moments such as
slavery, Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement, arguing (incor-
rectly) that race was not an issue in the eras before, after, and/or
between these time periods.
In actuality, the history of what contemporary scholars call the
“southern strategy” of electoral politics can be traced back to the
founding of the Republican Party in 1854. Walton (1975) describes
political parties as
electoral devices which must appeal to the general electorate for
the right to administer the government of the state. Before a polit-
ical party can gain control of the government, it must, through
numerous appeals, form a coalition of voters from as many sectors
of the population as possible. (1)
In 1854, the Republican Party had begun seeking new groups to
incorporate into its electoral coalition. Because many of the new
Republicans were antislavery advocates who had already received black
support as part of the Liberty and Free Soldiers Party, “an appeal to the
Free Blacks who could vote, was a natural way to enlarge the ranks of
the party” (Walton 1975, 4).
During Reconstruction (from about 1868 to 1876), blacks achieved
many political successes within the ranks of the Republican Party. For
example, during its 1884 convention, the party appointed John R.
Lynch, a black state legislator from Mississippi, as the convention’s
temporary chair (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989, 21). Moreover,
13 percent of the 1892 Republican National Convention’s delegates
were black (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989, 21). As Republicans,
African Americans “went to the Senate and the House of Representa-
tives, to governors’ mansions, courts, state departments of education,
and ambassadorial posts, to aldermen, judgeships, and to numerous
positions of power throughout the South and the North” (Walton
1972, 87). During this period, Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson (1989)
argue, black political incorporation into the Republican Party reached
levels unmatched by either party until the 1960s (21).
40 Race, Republicans, & the Return of the Party of Lincoln

The relationship between blacks and the Republican Party began to

deteriorate as a result of the Compromise of 1877, which enabled
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to assume the presidency after a dis-
pute between southern Democrats and northern Republicans over
contested votes from Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon.
In exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, the
Democratic Party conceded the election (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jack-
son 1989, 21–22).
Walton (1972) argues that the election of 1876 signaled to Repub-
lican leaders that the party needed to integrate southern whites into
the GOP’s ranks (89). Prior to the end of Reconstruction, the South
was overwhelmingly Democratic. Without the presence of federal
troops overseeing southern political institutions, including elections,
the southern states adopted instruments to disenfranchise blacks,
thereby depriving the Republican Party of its black constituents and
leaving it politically impotent in the region (Key 1950). Consequently,
Walton (1972) notes, the Republican Party made a concerted effort in
subsequent presidential elections to pursue policies that would attract
southern white voters. Many of these policies, however, came at the
expense of black Republicans (88). For example, several black Repub-
licans in leadership positions were forced to vacate their posts and were
replaced by whites (Walton 1972, 90).
Yet the South remained very resistant to the Republican Party. First,
southern whites still regarded it as the party of blacks. Second, Key
adds, two-party competition would have diluted the South’s electoral
strength and thus its dominance of national politics. Key (1950) argues
that the South’s solidarity was necessary so that “the largest possible
bloc could be mobilized to resist any national move toward interfer-
ence with southern authority to deal with the race question as was
desired locally” (8–9). To maintain the status quo, many southern
states adopted suffrage restrictions. Although the Fifteenth Amend-
ment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited the denial of franchise on the
basis of color, Democrats in the South found ways around the amend-
ment by complicating voting procedures so that people with little to
no education found it dif‹cult to cast ballots. Instruments such as the
Australian ballot, literacy tests, and multiple box laws disenfranchised
between 8 and 18 percent of whites and between 39 and 61 percent of
blacks in the South (Kousser 1974, 55). Other tools of disenfranchise-
ment included the poll tax and the white primary. By restricting suf-
 Party Politics and the Racial Divide 41

frage, southern Democrats not only controlled opposition from the

Populist and Republican Parties but also prohibited blacks from gain-
ing political power.5
While the South was resisting building a relationship with the
Republican Party, African Americans sustained their relationship with
the GOP for a number of reasons. First, many blacks still felt a loyalty
toward the party of Lincoln. Second, a small but in›uential number of
black politicians were still drawn to party positions and federal jobs.
Most importantly, however, was the fact that blacks really had no place
else to go (Sherman 1973, 2). Political independence was ruled out as
an option because “not many were willing to follow a course that
seemed so uncertain in leadership and unpromising in results” (Sher-
man 1973, 3). Because of its “white supremacy principles and policies
as well as the violent actions and terrorism,” the Democratic Party
remained an unattractive alternative (Walton 1975, 39). Thus, blacks
had no option but to remain loyal to a “political organization that was
increasingly uninterested in their welfare and that took their support
largely for granted” (Sherman 1973, 3).
But blacks’ steadfast allegiance to the Republican Party collided
with the pursuit of southern white Republicans and the purging of the
Republican Party of blacks. This led to a polarization within the
Republican Party ranks between lily-white Republicans and black-and-
tan Republican factions (Walton 1975; Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson
1989). Lily-white Republicanism was an attempt to make the Repub-
lican Party more appealing to the South (Key 1950). The term lily-
white referred not only to the faction’s racial composition but also to
its philosophy of white supremacy and racial segregation (Walton
1975, 45). Black-and-tans have been described as “satellite black polit-
ical organizations [attempting] to operate as Republican organs at the
local level [to] gain recognition and acceptance by the national Repub-
lican party” (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989, 24). These organiza-
tions fought for African American political equality and unlike lily-
white Republicans did not endorse segregation (Walton 1975, 45–46).
For years, these factions competed with each other for Republican
Party recognition and patronage, but the black-and-tan factions even-
tually could no longer survive. “Lack of motivation and a variety of set-

5. For a more in-depth discussion of voting restrictions and their effects, see Kousser
1974; Key 1950.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 THE ANTI-BURGLARS
I
The letter was addressed to Miss Mary Stavely. It ran:
“My dear Mary,
“I have just received five pounds that I had given up for
lost, and, remembering what you told me at Easter of the
importance of distributing a little money in the village, I
think you had better have it and become my almoner. An
almoner is one who gives away money for another. I shall
be interested in hearing how you get on.
“Your affectionate
“Uncle Herbert.”
Inside the letter was a five-pound note.
Mary read the letter for the twentieth time, and for the twentieth
time unfolded the crackling five-pound note—more money than she
had ever seen before. She was thirteen.
“But what shall I do with it?” she asked. “So many people want
things.”
“Oh, you mustn’t ask me,” said her mother. “Uncle Herbert wants
you to decide entirely for yourself. You must make a list of every one
in the village who wants help, and then look into each case very
carefully.”
“Yes,” said Harry, Mary’s brother, as he finished breakfast, “and don’t
forget me. My bicycle ought to be put right, for one thing, and, for
another, I haven’t any more films for my camera. If that isn’t a
deserving case I’d like to know what is.”
 II
In a few days’ time the list was ready. It ran like this:
£ s. d.
Mrs. Meadows’ false teeth want mending.
It can be done for 0 12 6
Tommy Pringle ought to go to a Nursing
Home by the sea for three weeks. This
costs 7s. a week and 5s. 4d. return fare 1 6 4
Old Mrs. Wigram really must have a new
bonnet 0 4 6
Mrs. Ryan has been saving up for months
to buy a sewing machine. She had it all
ready, but Sarah’s illness has taken away
10s. I should like to make that up 0 10 0
The little Barretts ought to have a real ball.
It isn’t any fun playing with a bit of
wood 0 1 0
Mr. Eyles has broken his spectacles again 0 2 6
Old Mr. and Mrs. Snelling have never been
in London, and they’re both nearly eighty.
I’m sure they ought to go. There is an
excursion on the first of the month at 3s.
return each, and their grandson’s wife
would look after them there. Fraser’s
cart to the station and back would be 4s. 0 10 0
Mrs. Callow will lose all her peas and currants
again if she doesn’t have a net 0 3 0
The schoolmaster says that the one thing
that would get the boys to the village
room is a gramaphone like the one at the
public-house. This is 15s., and twelve
tunes for 9s. 1 4 0
 Mrs. Carter’s mangle will cost 8s. to be
mended, but it must be done 0 8 0
Thomas Barnes’ truck is no good any more,
and his illness took away all the money
he had; but he will never take it if he
knows it comes from us 1 10 0
Mary read through her list and once more added up the figures.
They came to £6 11s. 10d.
“Dear me!” she said, “I hadn’t any idea it was so difficult to be an
almoner.”
She went through the list again, and brought it down to £5 0s. 10d.
by knocking off one week of Tommy Pringle’s sea-side holiday and
depriving the village room of its gramaphone.
“I suppose I must make up the tenpence myself,” she said.

III
That afternoon Mary went to call on Mr. Verney. Mr. Verney was an
artist who lived at the forge cottage. He and Mary were great
friends. She used to sit by him while he painted, and he played
cricket with her and Harry and was very useful with a pocket-knife.
“No one,” she said to herself, “can help me so well as Mr. Verney,
and if I decide myself on how the money is to be spent, it will be all
right to get some help in spending it.”
Mr. Verney liked the scheme immensely. “But I don’t see that you
want any help,” he said. “You have done it so far as well as possible.”
“Well,” said Mary, “there’s one great difficulty: Thomas Barnes would
never take anything from our house. You see, we once had his son
for a gardener, and father had to send him away because of
something he did; but though it was altogether his son’s fault,
Thomas Barnes has never spoken to father since, or even looked at
him. But he’s very old and poorly, and very lonely, and it’s most
important he should have a new hand-truck, because all his living
depends on it; but it’s frightfully important that he shouldn’t know
who gave it to him.”
“Wouldn’t he guess?” Mr. Verney said.
“Not if nobody knew.”
“Oh, I see: no one is to know. That makes it much more fun.”
“But how are we to do it?” Mary asked. “That’s why I want you to
help. Of course, we can post most of the money, but we can’t post a
truck. If Thomas Barnes knew, he’d send it back directly.”
“Well,” said Mr. Verney, after thinking for some time, “there’s only
one way: we shall have to be anti-burglars.”
“Anti-burglars!” cried Mary. “What’s that?”
“Well, a burglar is some one who breaks into a house and takes
things away; an anti-burglar is some one who breaks into a house
and leaves things there. Just the opposite, you see.”
“But suppose we are caught?”
“That would be funny. I don’t know what the punishment for anti-
burgling is. I think perhaps the owner of the house ought to be
punished for being so foolish as to interrupt. But tell me more about
Thomas Barnes.”
“Thomas Barnes,” said Mary, “lives in a cottage by the cross-roads all
alone.”
“What does he do?”
“He fetches things from the station for people; he carries the
washing home from Mrs. Carter’s; he runs errands—at least, he
doesn’t run them: people wish he would; he sometimes does a day’s
work in a garden. But he really must have a new barrow, and his
illness took all his money away, because he wouldn’t belong to a
club. He’s quite the most obstinate man in this part of the country.
But he’s so lonely, you know.”
“Then,” said Mr. Verney, “we must wait till he goes away on an
errand.”
“But he locks his shed.”
“Then we must break in.”
“But if people saw us taking the barrow there?”
“Then we must go in the night. I’ll send him to Westerfield suddenly
for something quite late—some medicine, and then he’ll think I’m ill
—on a Thursday, when there’s the midnight train, and we’ll pop
down to his place at about eleven with a screw-driver and things.”
After arranging to go to Westerfield as soon as possible to spend
their money, Mary ran home.
Being an almoner was becoming much more interesting.

IV
Mr. Verney and Mary went to Westerfield the next day, leaving a very
sulky Harry behind.
“I can’t think why Uncle Herbert didn’t send that money to me,” he
grumbled. “Why should a girl like Mary have all this almoning fun? I
could almon as well as she can.”
As a matter of fact, Uncle Herbert had made a very wise choice.
Harry had none of Mary’s interest in the village, nor had he any of
her patience. But in his own way he was a very clever boy. He
bowled straight, and knew a linnet’s egg from a greenfinch’s.
Mr. Verney and Mary’s first visit was to the bank, where Mary handed
her five-pound note through the bars, and the clerk scooped up four
sovereigns and two half-sovereigns in his little copper shovel and
poured them into her hand.
Then they bought a penny account-book and went on to Mr. Flower,
the ironmonger, to see about Thomas Barnes’ truck. Mr. Flower had
a secondhand one for twenty-five shillings, and he promised to
touch it up for two shillings more; and he promised, also, that
neither he nor his man should ever say anything about it. It was
arranged that the barrow should be wrapped up in sacking and
taken to Mr. Verney’s, inside the waggon, and be delivered after
dark.
“Why do you want it?” Mary asked him.
“That’s a secret,” he said; “you’ll know later.”
Mr. Flower also undertook to send three shillings’ worth of netting to
Mrs. Callow, asking her to do him the favour of trying it to see if it
were a good strong kind.
Mary and Mr. Verney then walked on to Mr. Costall, the dentist, who
was in Westerfield only on Thursdays between ten and four. It was
the first time that Mary had ever stood on his doorstep without
feeling her heart sink. Mr. Costall, although a dentist, was a smiling,
happy man, and he entered into the scheme directly. He said he
would write to Mrs. Meadows and ask her to call, saying that some
one whom he would not mention had arranged the matter with him.
And when Mary asked him how much she should pay him, he said
that ten shillings would do. This meant a saving of half a crown.
“How nice it would be always to visit Mr. Costall,” Mary said, with a
sigh, “if he did not pull out teeth.”
Mary and Mr. Verney then chose Mrs. Wigram’s new bonnet, which
they posted to her at once. Mr. Verney liked one with red roses, but
Mary told him that nothing would ever induce Mrs. Wigram to wear
anything but black. The girl in the shop recommended another kind,
trimmed with a very blue bird; but Mary had her own way.
Afterwards they bought a ball for the Barretts; and then they bought
a postal order for eight shillings for Mrs. Carter, and half a crown for
Mr. Eyles, and ten shillings for Mrs. Ryan, and fourteen shillings for
Mrs. Pringle. It was most melancholy to see the beautiful sovereigns
dropping into other people’s tills. Mary put all these amounts down
in her penny account-book. She also put down the cost of her return
ticket.
When they got back to the village they saw Mr. Ward, the station-
master. After telling him how important it was to keep the secret,
Mary bought a return ticket to the sea for Tommy Pringle, without
any date on it, and two excursion tickets for old Mr. and Mrs.
Snelling for the 1st of next month. Mr. Ward did not have many
secrets in his life, and he was delighted to keep these.
While they were talking to him a curious and exciting thing
happened. A message began to tick off on the telegraph machine.
Mr. Verney was just turning to go away when Mr. Ward called out,
“Stop a minute, please! This message is for Miss Stavely.”
Mary ran over to the machine and stood by Mr. Ward while he wrote
down the message which the little needle ticked out. She had never
had a telegram before, and to have one like this—“warm from the
cow,” as Mr. Ward said—was splendid. Mr. Ward handed it to her at
last.
“Mary Stavely, Mercombe.
“How is the almoning? I want to pay all extra expenses.—
Uncle Herbert.”
The reply was paid; but Mary had to write it out several times before
it satisfied her and came within the sixpence. This was what she
said:
“Stavely, Reform Club, London.
“All right. Will send accounts. Expenses small.—Mary.”
On the way home they spoke to Fraser, who let out carriages and
carts. Fraser liked the plan as much as every one else did. He
promised to call in on the Snellings in a casual way, on the morning
on which they would receive the tickets, and suggest to them that
they should let him drive them to the station and bring them home
again. When Mary offered to pay him, Mr. Fraser said no, certainly
not; he would like to help her. He hadn’t done anything for anybody
for so long that he should be interested in seeing what it felt like.
This meant a saving of four shillings.
Mary went to tea at Mr. Verney’s. After tea he printed addresses on a
number of envelopes, and put the postal orders inside, with a little
card in each, on which he printed the words, “From a friend, for
Tommy to go to the sea-side home for a fortnight”; “From a friend,
for Mr. and Mrs. Snelling to go to London”; “From a friend, for Mr.
Eyles’ spectacles,” and so forth, and then he stamped them and
stuck them down, and put them all into a big envelope, which he
posted to his sister in Ireland, so that when they came back they all
had the Dublin postmark, and no one ever saw such puzzled and
happy people as the recipients were.
“Has your mother any friends in Dublin, Miss Mary?” Mrs. Snelling
asked a day or so later, in the midst of a conversation about sweet
peas.
“No,” said Mary. It was not until afterwards that she saw what Mrs.
Snelling meant.

V
Next Thursday came at last, the day on which Thomas Barnes’ shed
was to be anti-burgled. At ten o’clock, having had leave to stay up
late on this great occasion, Mary put on her things, and Mr. Verney,
who had come to dinner, took her to his rooms. There, in the
outhouse which he used for a studio, he showed her the truck.
“And here,” he said, “is my secret,” pointing out the words—
THOMAS BARNES,
PORTER, MERCOMBE.
which he had painted in white letters on the side.
“He’s bound to keep it now, whatever happens,” Mr. Verney said. “In
order to make as little noise as possible to-night,” he added, “I have
wrapped felt round the tyres.”
He then took a bag from the shelf, placed it on the barrow, and they
stole out. Mr. Verney’s landlady had gone to bed, and there was no
sound of anyone in the village. The truck made no noise.
After half a mile they came to the cross-roads where Thomas
Barnes’ cottage stood, and Mr. Verney walked to the house and
knocked loudly.
There was no answer. Indeed, he had not expected one, but he
wished to make sure that Thomas had not returned from Westerfield
sooner than he should.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Now for the anti-burgling.”
He wheeled the truck to the side of the gate leading to the shed,
and, taking the bag, they passed through. Mr. Verney opened the
bag and took out a lantern, a hammer, and a screw-driver.
“We must get this padlock off,” he said, and while Mary held the
lantern he worked away at the fastenings. It was more difficult than
he expected, especially as he did not want to break anything, but to
put it back exactly as it had been. Several minutes passed.
“There,” he cried; “that’s it.”
At the same moment a sound of heavy footsteps was heard, and
Mary gave a little scream and dropped the lantern.
A strong hand gripped her arm.
“Hullo! Hullo!” said a gruff voice. “What’s this? Housebreaking,
indeed!”
Mr. Verney had stooped for the lantern, and as he rose the
policeman—for he it was—seized him also.
“You’d better come along with me,” the policeman said, “and make
no trouble about it. The less trouble you make, the easier it’ll be for
you before the magistrates.”
 WHILE MARY HELD THE LANTERN, HE WORKED AWAY
AT THE FASTENINGS.
“But look here,” Mr. Verney said, “you’re making a mistake. We’re not
housebreaking.”
The policeman laughed. “Now, that’s a good’un,” he said. “Dark
lantern, screw-driver, hammer, eleven o’clock at night, Thomas
Barnes’ shed—and you’re not housebreaking! Perhaps you’ll tell me
what you are doing, you and your audacious female accomplice
here. Playing hide-and-seek, I suppose?”
“Well,” said Mr. Verney, suddenly striking a match with his free hand,
and holding it up so that the light fell full on his own and on Mary’s
face, “we’ll tell you the whole story.”
“Miss Stavely!” cried the policeman, “and Mr. Verney. Well, this is a
start. But what does it all mean?”
Then Mr. Verney told the story, first making Dobbs promise not to
tell it again.
The policeman grew more and more interested as it went on. Finally
he exclaimed: “You get the door open, sir, and I’ll fetch the truck
through. Time’s getting along.”
He hurried out of the yard and returned carrying the truck on his
shoulders. Then he stripped off the felt with his knife and ran it into
the shed, beside the old broken-down barrow that had done service
for so many years.
Mr. Verney soon had the padlock back in its place as if nothing had
happened, and after carefully gathering up the felt they hurried off,
in order to get home before Thomas Barnes should call with the
medicine that he had been sent to buy.
“Let me carry the bag, sir,” the policeman said.
“What, full of burgling tools!” said Mr. Verney.
“Mum’s the word,” the policeman replied, “mum’s the word.”
At the forge cottage he wished them good-night.
“Then you don’t want us in court to-morrow?” Mr. Verney asked.
“Mum’s the word,” was all that Dobbs replied, with a chuckle.
Thomas Barnes’ train being late, Mary did not get to bed until after
twelve that night. She laid her head on the pillow with particular
satisfaction, for the last and most difficult part of the distribution of
Uncle Herbert’s money was over.

VI
The next day Mary sent Uncle Herbert a long description of her
duties as his almoner, and enclosed the account. What with postages
and her railway fare, she had spent altogether £4. 18s. 11d.
Two days later this letter came back from Uncle Herbert:
“Dear Mary,
“You are as good an almoner as I could wish, and I hope
that another chance of setting you to work will come. Put
the thirteen pence that are over in a box labelled ‘The
Almoner’s Fund.’ Then take the enclosed postal order for a
pound and get it cashed, and the next time you are in
Westerfield buy Mr. Verney a box of cigarettes, but be sure
to find out first what kind he likes. Also give Harry six
shillings. I dare say he has broken his bicycle or wants
some more films: at any rate, he will not say no. The rest
is for yourself to buy something purely for yourself with.
Please tell your mother that I am coming on Saturday by
the train reaching you at 5.8. I shall walk from the station,
but I want Thomas Barnes to fetch my bag.
“Your affectionate
“Uncle Herbert.”
Whether or no Thomas Barnes knew where the truck came from we
never found out; but at Christmas-time he was discovered among
the waits who sang carols on the Stavelys’ lawn.
SIR FRANKLIN AND THE LITTLE
MOTHERS
 SIR FRANKLIN AND THE LITTLE
MOTHERS
I
Once upon a time there was a very rich gentleman named Sir
Franklin Ingleside, who lived all alone in a beautiful house in
Berkeley Square. He was so rich that he could not possibly spend
more than a little of his money, although he gave great sums away,
and had horses and carriages, and bought old pictures and new
books.
He lived very quietly, rode a little, drove a little, called on old friends
(chiefly old ladies), usually dined alone, and afterwards read by the
fire.
Although the house was large and full of servants, all Sir Franklin’s
wants were supplied by his own particular man, Pembroke.
Pembroke was clean-shaven, very neat, spoke quietly, and never
grew any older or seemed ever to have been any younger. It was
impossible to think of Pembroke as a baby, or a boy, or a person
with a Christian name. One could think of him only as a grave man
named Pembroke. No one ever saw him smile in Berkeley Square,
but a page boy once came home with the news that he had passed
Mr. Pembroke talking to a man in the street at Islington, and heard
him laugh out loud. But page boys like inventing impossible stories,
and making your flesh creep.
Pembroke lived in a little room communicating by bells with all the
rooms which Sir Franklin used; so that whenever the bell rang
Pembroke knew exactly where his master was. Pembroke did not
seem to have any life but his master’s; and the one thing about
which he was always thinking was how to know beforehand exactly
what his master wanted. Pembroke became so clever at this that he
would often, after being rung for, enter the room carrying the very
thing that Sir Franklin was going to request him to get.
Sir Franklin once asked him how he did it, and Pembroke said that
he did not know; but part of the secret was explained that very year
quite by chance. It was like this. In the autumn Sir Franklin and
Pembroke always went to Scotland, and that year when they were in
Scotland the Berkeley Square house was done up and all the old
pull-bells were taken away and new electric ones were put in
instead. When Sir Franklin came back again he noticed that
Pembroke was not nearly so clever in anticipating needs as he had
been before; and when he asked him about it, Pembroke said: “My
opinion, sir, is that it’s all along of the bells. The new bells, which
you press, ring the same, however you press them, and startle a
body too, whereas the old bells, which you used to pull, sir, told me
what you wanted by the way you pulled them, and never startled
one at all.”
So Sir Franklin and Pembroke went to Paris for a week while the new
press bells were taken away and the old pull-bells put back again,
and then Pembroke became again just as clever as before. (But that
was, of course, only part of the secret.)

II
It was at a quarter to nine on the evening of December 18, 1907,
that Sir Franklin, who was sitting by the fire reading and thinking,
suddenly got up and rang the bell.
Pembroke came in at once and said, “I’m sorry you’re troubled in
your mind, sir. Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Sir Franklin. “But do you know what day this
is?”
“We are nearing the end of December 18,” said Pembroke.
“Yes,” said Sir Franklin, “and what is a week to-day?”
“A week to-day, sir,” said Pembroke, “is Christmas Day.”
“And what about children who won’t get any presents this
Christmas?” Sir Franklin asked.
“Ah, indeed, sir,” said Pembroke.
“And what about people in trouble, Pembroke?” Sir Franklin asked.
“Ah, indeed, sir,” said Pembroke.
“And that reminds me,” Pembroke added after a pause, “that I was
going to speak to you about the cook’s brother-in-law, sir: a worthy
man, sir, but in difficulties.”
Sir Franklin asked for particulars.
“He keeps a toy-shop, sir, in London, and he can’t make it pay. He’s
tried and tried, but there’s no money in toys in his neighbourhood—
except penny toys, on which the margin of profit is, I am told, sir,
very small.”
Sir Franklin poked the fire and looked into it for a little while. Then,
“It seems to me, Pembroke,” he said, “that the cook’s brother-in-
law’s difficulties and the little matter of the children can be solved in
the same action. Why shouldn’t we take over the toy-shop and let
the children into it on Christmas Eve to choose what they will?”
Pembroke stroked his chin for a moment and then said, “The very
thing, sir.”
“Where does the cook’s brother-in-law live?” Sir Franklin asked.
Pembroke gave the address.
“Then if you’ll call a hansom, Pembroke, we’ll drive there at once.”

III
It does not matter at all about the visit which Sir Franklin Ingleside
and Pembroke paid to the cook’s brother-in-law. All that need be
said is that the cook’s brother-in-law was quite willing to sell Sir
Franklin his stock-in-trade and to make the shop over to him, and Sir
Franklin Ingleside rode back to Berkeley Square not only a
gentleman who had horses and carriages and who bought old
pictures and new books, but perhaps the first gentleman in Berkeley
Square to have a toy-shop too.
On the way back he talked to Pembroke about his plans.
“There’s a kind of child, Pembroke,” said Sir Franklin, “that I
particularly want to encourage and reward. It is clear that we can’t
give presents to all; and I don’t want the greedy ones and the
strongest ones to be as fortunate as the modest ones and the weak
ones. So my plan is, first of all to make sure that the kind of child
that I have in mind is properly looked after, and then to give the
others what remains. And the particular children I mean are the little
girls who take care of their younger brothers and sisters while their
parents are busy, and who go to the shops and stalls and do the
marketing. Whenever I see one I always say to myself, ‘There goes a
Little Mother!’ and it is the Little Mothers whom this Christmas we
must particularly help.
“Now what you must do, Pembroke, during the next few days, is to
make a list of the streets in every direction within a quarter of a mile
of the toy-shop, and then find out, from the schoolmistresses, and
the butchers, and the publicans’ wives, and the grocers, and the oil-
shops, and the greengrocers, and the more talkative women on the
doorsteps, which are the best Little Mothers in the district and what
is the size of their families, and get their names and addresses. And
then we shall know what to do.”
By this time the cab had reached Berkeley Square again, and Sir
Franklin returned to his books.

IV
The next few days were the busiest and most perplexing that
Pembroke ever spent. He was in Clerkenwell, where the toy-shop
was situated, from morning till night. He bought all kinds of things
that he did not want—cheese and celery, mutton-chops and beer,
butter and paraffin—just to get on terms with the people who know
about the Little Mothers.
Although naturally rather silent and reserved, he talked to butchers
and bakers and women on doorsteps, and schoolmistresses, and
even hot-potato men, as if they were the best company in the world,
and bit by bit he made a list of twenty-two Little Mothers of first-
class merit, and fifty-one of second-class merit, and all their
children.
Having got these down in his book, Pembroke was going home on
the evening of the 21st very well pleased with himself on the whole,
but still feeling that Sir Franklin would be disappointed not to have
the name of the best Little Mother of all, when an odd thing
happened. He had stopped in a doorway not very far from the toy-
shop, to light his pipe, when he heard a shrill voice saying very
decidedly, “Very well, then, William Kitchener Beacon, if that’s your
determination you shall stay here all night, and by and by the rats
will come out and bite you.”
Pembroke stood still and listened.
 A LITTLE PROCESSION PASSED THE DOORWAY.
“I don’t want to go home,” a childish voice whimpered. “I want to
look in the shops.”
“Come home you must and shall,” said the other. “Here’s Lucy tired
out, and Amy crying, and John cold to his very marrer, and Tommy
with a sawreel, and father’ll want his dinner, and mother’ll think
we’re all run over by a motor-car; and come home you must and
shall.”
Sounds of a scuffle followed, and then a little procession passed the
doorway. First came a sturdy little girl of about ten, carrying a huge
string-basket filled with heavy things, and pulling behind her by the
other hand a small and sulky boy, whom Pembroke took to be
William Kitchener Beacon. Then came the others, and lastly Tommy,
limping with the sore heel.
Pembroke stopped the girl with the bag, and asked her if she lived
far away, and finding that it was close to the toy-shop, he said he
should like to carry the bag, and help the family home. He was not
allowed to carry the bag, but no objection was raised to his lifting
Tommy on his back, and they all went home together.
On the way he discovered that the Little Mother was named Matilda
Beacon, and that she lived at 28, Pulvercake Buildings, Clerkenwell.
She was nine years old, an age when most of you are still running to
your nurses to have this and that done for you. But Matilda, in
addition to doing everything for herself very quietly and well, had
also to do most things for her mother, who went out charing every
day, except Sunday, and for her brothers and sisters, of whom she
had five—three brothers aged seven, six, and three, and two sisters,
who were twins and both five. Matilda got them up and put them to
bed; picked them up when they fell, and dried their tears; separated
them when they quarrelled, which was very often; bought their food
and cooked it, and gave it to them, and saw that they did not eat
too fast; and was, in short, the absolute mistress of the very tiny flat
where the Beacons lived.
Mr. Beacon worked on the line at St. Pancras, and if he was late
home, as he very often was, Mrs. Beacon was always sure that he
had been run over by a passing train and cut into several pieces; so
that in addition to all her other work Matilda had also to comfort her
mother.
The next day, when he came again to the toy-shop district,
Pembroke was delighted to find that by general consent Matilda
Beacon was considered to be the best Little Mother in Clerkenwell;
but who do you think came next in public opinion? Not Carrie
Tompsett, although she had several strong backers; and not Lou
Miller, although she had her supporters too, and was really a very
good little thing, with an enormous family on her hands. No, it was
neither of these. Indeed, it was not a Little Mother at all, so I don’t
see how you could have guessed. It was a “Little Father.” It was
generally agreed by the butchers and bakers and oilmen and hot-
potato men and publicans and the women on the doorsteps, that the
best Little Mother next to Matilda Beacon was Artie Gillam, who,
since his mother had died last year and his father had not yet
married again, had the charge of four sisters and two brothers.
All these things Pembroke reported to his master; and Sir Franklin
was so much interested in hearing about Matilda Beacon that he told
Pembroke to arrange so that Mrs. Beacon might stay at home one
day and let Matilda come to see him. So Matilda put on her best hat
and came down from Clerkenwell to Berkeley Square on the blue bus
that runs between Highbury and Walham Green.

V
When the splendid great door was opened by a tall and handsome
footman Matilda clung to Pembroke as if he were her only friend in
the world, as, indeed, he really seemed to be at that moment in that
house. She had never seen anything so grand before; and after all, it
is rather striking for a little girl of nine who has all her life been
managing a large family in two small rooms in Clerkenwell, to be
brought suddenly into a mansion in Berkeley Square to speak to a
gentleman with a title. Not that a gentleman with a title is
necessarily any more dreadful than a policeman; but Matilda knew
several policemen quite intimately, and was, therefore, no longer
afraid of them, although she still found their terribleness useful when
her little brothers and sisters were naughty. “I’ll fetch a policeman to
you!” she used to say, and sometimes actually would go downstairs
a little way to do so and come back stamping her feet; and this
always had the effect of making them good again.
Sir Franklin was sitting in the library with a tea-table by his side set
for two, and directly Matilda had dared to shake his hand he told
Pembroke to bring the tea.
Matilda could not take her eyes from the shelves of books which ran
all round the room. She did not quite know whether it might not be
a book-shop and Sir Franklin a grand kind of bookseller; and then
she looked at the walls and wondered if it was a picture-shop; and
she made a note in her mind to ask Mr. Pembroke.
Her thoughts were brought back by Pembroke bringing in a silver
tea-pot and silver kettle, which he placed over a spirit lamp; and
then Sir Franklin asked her if she took sugar.
(If she took sugar? What a question!)
She said, “Yes, please, sir,” very nicely, and Sir Franklin handed her
the basin.
Would she have bread and butter or cake? he asked next.
(Or cake? What a question again!)
She said she would like cake, and she watched very carefully to see
how Sir Franklin ate his, and at first did the same; but when after
two very small bites he laid it down and did not pick it up again,
Matilda very sensibly ceased to copy him.
When they had finished tea and had talked about various things that
did not matter, Sir Franklin asked her suddenly, “How would you like
to keep shop, Matilda?”
Matilda gasped. “What sort of a shop?” she asked at last.
“A toy-shop,” said Sir Franklin.
“Oh, but I couldn’t,” she said.
“Only for one day,” Sir Franklin added.
“One day!” Her eager eyes glistened. “But what about Tommy and
Willy and the twins?”
“Your mother would stay at home that day and look after them. That
could easily be arranged.
“You see,” Sir Franklin went on, “I want to give all the children in
your street and in several other streets near it a Christmas present,
and it is thought that the best way is to open a toy-shop for the
purpose. But it is necessary that the toy-shop keeper should know
most of the children and should be a capable woman of business,
and that is why I ask you. The salary will be a sovereign; the hours
will be from two to eight, with an interval for tea; and you shall have
Mr. Pembroke to help you.”
Matilda did not know how to keep still, and yet there was the least
shade of disappointment, or at least perplexity, on her face.
“Is it all right?” Sir Franklin asked.
“Ye-e-s,” said Matilda.
“Nothing you want to say?”
“No-o-o,” said Matilda; “I don’t think so.”
And yet it was very clear that something troubled her a little.
Sir Franklin was so puzzled by it that he went out to consult
Pembroke. Pembroke explained the matter in a moment.
“I ought to have said,” Sir Franklin remarked at once on returning,
“that the shopkeeper, although a capable business woman, may play
at being a little girl, too, if she likes, and will find a doll and a work-
basket for herself, and even sweets too, just like the others.”
Matilda’s face at once became nothing but smiles.
“You will want a foreman,” Sir Franklin then said.
“Yes,” said Matilda, who would have said yes to anything by this
time.
“Well, who will you have?”
“I don’t think Tommy would do,” said Matilda. “He’s that thoughtless.
And Willy’s too small.”
“How about Frederick?” said Sir Franklin, ringing the bell twice.
Matilda sat still and waited, wondering who Frederick was.
After a moment or two the door opened, and a very smart boy, all
over buttons, came in. “You can take away the tea-things,” said Sir
Franklin.
“That was Frederick,” said Sir Franklin, when the boy had gone.
“Oh!” said Matilda.
“Would he do for foreman?” Sir Franklin asked.
Matilda hesitated. She would have preferred some one she knew,
but she did not like to say so.
“Too buttony?” suggested Sir Franklin.
Matilda agreed.
“Then,” said Sir Franklin, “is there anyone you know?”
“I think Artie Gillam——” said Matilda.
“Very well, then,” said Sir Franklin, “it shall be Artie Gillam. His
wages will be ten shillings.”
And thus everything was settled, and Matilda was sent home with
Frederick the page boy, the happiest and most responsible Little
Mother in London, with an armful of good things for the family.

VI
Meanwhile Pembroke had been to Houndsditch buying quantities of
new toys: for every Little Mother a large doll and a work-basket, and
smaller dolls and other toys for the others, together with sweets and
oranges and all kinds of other things, and everything was ready by
the day before Christmas Eve, and all the tickets were distributed.
The tickets were Pembroke’s idea, because one difficulty about
opening a free toy-shop in a poor district of London for one day only
is that even the invited children, not having had your opportunities
of being brought up nicely and learning good manners, are apt to
push and struggle to get in out of their turn, and perhaps even to try
to get in twice, while there would be trouble, too, from the children
who did not belong to the district. Pembroke knew this, and thought
a good deal about the way to manage it so that there should be no
crowding or difficulty. In the end Sir Franklin engaged a large hall, to
which all the children were to come with their tickets, and from this
hall they were to visit the shop in little companies of ten, make their
choice of toys, and then go straight home. Of course, a certain
number of other children would gather round the shop, but that
could not be helped, and perhaps at the close of the afternoon,
when all the others had been looked after, they might be let in to
choose what was left. And in this state were the things the night
before Christmas Eve.

VII
Pembroke managed everything so well that the great day went off
without a hitch. At half-past two the Little Mothers with their families
began to arrive, and they were sent off to the shop in companies of
ten or thereabouts, two or three families at once. A couple of
friendly policemen kept the crowd away from the shop, so that the
children had plenty of time and quiet to choose what they wanted.
All the Little Mothers, as I have said, had each a doll and a work-
basket; but the younger children might make their choice of two
things each, and take two things for any little brother or sister who
could not come—Clerkenwell being full of little boys and girls who
are not very well.
When they were chosen, Artie Gillam wrapped them up, and off the
children went to make room for others.
Matilda was a splendid shopkeeper. She helped the smaller children
to choose things in a way that might be a real lesson to real keepers
of toy-shops, who always seem tired.
“Now then, Lizzie Hatchett,” she said, “you don’t want that jack-in-
the-box. What’s the good of a jack-in-the-box to you if your brother’s
got one? One in a family’s plenty. Better have this parasol: it lasts
longer and is much more useful.
“Here’s a nice woolly lamb for Jenny Rogers’s baby brother,” she
cried, taking away a monkey on a stick. “He’ll only suck the paint off
that and be deathly ill.
“Now, Tommy Williams, don’t bother about those ninepins. Here’s a
clockwork mouse I’ve been keeping for you.” And so on. Matilda’s
bright, quick eyes were everywhere.
Only one or two uninvited children squeezed in with the others. One
of these was a very determined little rascal, who actually got in
twice. The first time he went away not only with toys of his own, but
with something for a quite imaginary brother with whooping-cough.
This made him so bold that he hurried away and fought another little
boy in the next street and took away his coat and cap. The coat was
red and the cap had flaps for the ears, so that they made him look
quite different. Wearing these, he managed to mix with the next
little party coming from the hall. But he had forgotten one thing, and
that was that the little boy whom he had fought was Artie Gillam’s
cousin. Artie at once recognized both the cap and the coat, and told
Mr. Pembroke, and Mr. Pembroke told one of the policemen, who
marched into the shop, looking exceedingly fierce, and seizing the
interloper by the arm, asked him whose coat he had on. At this the
boy began to cry, and said he would never do it again. But it was too
late. The policeman took hold of his wrist and marched him out of
the shop and through all the other children in the street, who
followed them in a procession, to the home of Artie’s cousin, and
there he had to give back the coat. Then he was allowed to go,
because Artie’s cousin’s father was out, and Artie’s cousin’s mother
(who was Artie’s aunt) was not at all the kind of woman to thrash
little boys.
So the time went on until all the children in Pembroke’s list had got
their toys and the hall was empty, and then the many others who
had been waiting outside were let in, one by one, until all the toys
were gone, and the policemen sent the rest away.
“Now,” said Pembroke, “we must shut the shop.” So Artie Gillam
went outside and put up the shutters, and Matilda put on her jacket
and hat.
Then Pembroke took some money out of his pocket to pay the
manager and her foreman their salaries.
“How will you have it?” he said to Matilda.
“Please I don’t know what you mean,” Matilda replied.
“Gold or silver?” Pembroke explained.
Matilda had never seen gold yet, except in jewellers’ windows. Her
mother’s wedding-ring was silver. “Oh, gold, please,” she gasped.
“One sovereign or two halves?” Pembroke asked.
“Two halves,” Matilda said.
Pembroke gave them to her.
Artie Gillam, on the other hand, wanted his ten shillings in as many
coins as he could have, and his pocket was quite heavy with it.
“And now,” said Pembroke, “I suppose you’re going home. Be careful
of your money on the way.”
“Oh no,” said Matilda, “I’m not going home yet. I’ve got some
shopping to do.”
“To-morrow’s dinner?” Pembroke suggested.
“No,” said Matilda mysteriously. “That’s all bought. Father won a
goose in the Goose Club.”
“Then what are you going to buy?” Pembroke asked, for he wished
to take as long and full a story home to Sir Franklin as might be.
“I’m going shopping for myself,” said Matilda. “I’m going to buy
some Christmas presents.”
“May I come with you?” Pembroke asked.
“Oh yes, please, I want you to. I’m only going to spend one of these
half-sovereigns. The other I shall put away. But I must buy
something for mother, and something for father, and I want to buy
something else, too, for somebody else.”
So Pembroke and Matilda and Artie, having turned out the gas and
locked up the shop, which, however, now contained nothing
whatever but paper and string and straw, walked off to the shops.
They first went into a draper’s, where Matilda looked at some shawls
and bought a nice thick woollen one for her mother, and also a pair
of grey wool mittens for her father. These came to five-and-six.
Then they went to an ironmonger’s and bought a cover for a plate to
keep things warm, which Matilda said was for her father’s dinner,
because he was often late while her mother thought he was being
cut in pieces. This cost ninepence.
Then they went to a tobacconist’s and bought a pipe with a silver
band on it, and two ounces of tobacco. These came to one-and-
fourpence and were also for her father.
Then they went to a china-shop and bought a hot-water bottle for a
shilling. “That,” said Matilda, “is for the old woman next door to us,
who nursed mother when she was ill. She can’t sleep at night
because her feet are so cold.”
“And now,” said Pembroke, “it’s my turn,” and he took the children
into a greengrocer’s shop and bought a shilling’s worth of holly and
mistletoe for each of them. “If you like,” he said, “I will carry this
home for you.”
Matilda thanked him very heartily, but said that she still had one
more present she must buy, and led the way to a little fancy shop,
kept by an old maid.
“Please,” said Matilda, “I want a kettle-holder.”
The old lady took out a drawer and laid it on the counter. It was full
of kettle-holders, some made in wool-work, others in patch-work.
Matilda looked at them very carefully one by one, and at last chose
one in scarlet and bright yellow wool-work. When it was done up in
a neat little packet and she had paid for it—sixpence—she handed it
to Pembroke.
“That,” she said, “is a present for the gentleman. When I had tea
with him I noticed that he hadn’t got one, and of course every family
ought to have a kettle-holder. I should have liked to make one for
him myself, but there hasn’t been time.”
 VIII
Sir Franklin Ingleside did not use the kettle-holder. He hung it on a
nail by the fire-place, and whenever he is asked about it, or people
smile at its very striking colours, he says, “I value that very highly;
that is the profit that I made out of a toy-shop which I once kept.”