Like how they created the KKKWell , let ' s see . Choices made by a party nearly a century and a half ago are certainly not the same thing as choices made by a party ~ 30 years ago . Mainly because the people who made supported those latter decisions are often still alive and even in control of the party still . only supported the Civil Rights Act because public opinion heavily favored it and they wanted to take credit for it ? Well . that ' s how Democracy works . And it resulted in a welldocumented Political Realignment across the country that led directly to the aforementioned Southern Strategy employed by Nixon , Reagan , and Republican presidential candidates continuing into the modern day , because Southern Democrats who could not stomach the Civil Rights Act shifted Republican .