Abstract

Shooting an Elephant

U.S. politician Rodney Cook had tried for years to build in Georgia a Republican Party of reform, an alternative to the old courthouse-gang, racist, state Democratic Party. When the votes were counted in Atlanta's 1969 mayoralty election, Cook, who had been waiting in the wings for eight years for his big political chance, found that the had suffered a dreadful defeat. He won 73 per cent of the white votes, but though popular among Negroes in the past, lost the election to Sam Massell, a liberal Democrat, who took 92 per cent of the black vote. It was, in one sense, the very tail end of an era of hope for "modern Republicanism" in the Deep South's biggest city. That kind of Republicanism may live again in the urban South, but with the "Southern strategy" running at full power, no one should expect it soon. In fact, urban Republicans everywhere might well take note of what happened to Cook.