Hi EN:  Thanks for this link.  Interesting to see "where you come from", re: attitudes toward RR and the Rep. party in general.

I'll confess that you leave me scratching my head just a little bit - from the tone and substance of your paragraphs on Atwater and the "Southern Strategy" that supposedly elected RR, I half-expected _The Nation_ link to be an  expose' on par with the Wansee Conference.  That is to say, some cabal of ruthless, evil manipulators who explicitly plot to encourage, nurture, and promote inveterate racism as the path to electoral success in the Deep South in 1980.  If you just read the edited version of events presented by Mr. Perlstein, you might come away with exactly that impression.  If you carefully listen to the whole 42 minute interview as recorded by the original source (Prof. Lamis), it's clear that it isn't anything of the sort.  :-/

The "infamous" paragraph that gets quoted again and again in the current prog-liberal catechism comprises about ...