You lost me at the point where legend was presented as fact. Once more we are offered the Cafeteria of Fallacy in a discussion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

You are absolutely right and I don’t mind the correction. I am rewriting the paragraph:

After the passage of the civil rights bills in 1964, Barry Goldwater ran on a platform opposing those bills. He lost overwhelmingly to Lyndon Johnson, winning only Arizona (his home state) and a handful of former Confederate states.

Republican policy proposals are so vile, they knew they could never win another election if they didn’t come up with something. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was that something. The Republicans ever since have carefully cultivated their bigoted and white supremacist base. Racists left the Democratic party like rats looking for dry ground.

Even people in former Confederate states would never vote for people who want to strip them of health insurance and raise their taxes to give rich people a tax cut, but they will vote for “build that wall” and “Mexicans are sending us their rapists.”