To bring Movement Conservatives to his standard, Nixon went after the southern states Goldwater had won in 1964. He courted Strom Thurmond with the promise that he would not use the federal government to pursue desegregation. This was the point at which the Republican Party made the decision to abandon its attempts to attract black voters and instead to focus on attracting whites opposed to desegregation, a process that came to be known as the “southern strategy.”
