American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt

This book analyzes the political culture of the American Sunbelt since the end of World War II. It highlights and explains the Sunbelt's emergence during the second half of the twentieth century as the undisputed geographic epicentre for conservative Republican power in the United States. However, the book also investigates the ongoing nature of political contestation within the postwar Sunbelt, often highlighting the underappreciated persistence of liberal and progressive influences across the region. Sean P. Cunningham argues that the conservative Republican ascendancy that so many have identified as almost synonymous with the rise of the postwar American Sunbelt was hardly an easy, unobstructed victory march. Rather, it was consistently challenged and never preordained. The history of American politics in the postwar Sunbelt resembles a roller-coaster of partisan and ideological adaptation and transformation.Introduction: what is the Sunbelt ... and why is it important? 1. Convergence, metropolitanization, and anticommunism; 2. Race, rights, and the liberal consensus; 3. Wars against liberalism; 4. Southern, suburban, and Sunbelt strategies; 5. Mobilizing the religious right in the politicized 'Bible Belt'; 6. Reagan's Sunbelt, Reagan's America; 7. Shades of red, shades of blue; Epilogue. Sunbelt politics in the twenty-first century.