information:classification, structural:reformatting
1981–2008

In 1980, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan announced that he supported "states' rights." Lee Atwater, who served as Reagan's chief strategist in the Southern states, claimed that by 1968, a vast majority of southern Whites had learned to accept that racial slurs like " nigger " were offensive and that mentioning "states rights" and reasons for its justification, along with fiscal conservatism and opposition to social programs understood by many White southerners to disproportionally benefit Black Americans, had now become the best way to appeal to southern White voters. Following Reagan's success at the national level, the Republican Party moved sharply to the New Right, with the shrinkage of the "Eastern Establishment" Rockefeller Republican element that had emphasized their support for civil rights.