"A High-Pitched Voice that Merged the Grievance of Dixie with the Paranoia of Joseph McCarthy"

"Like some malevolent Forrest Gump, Thurmond was there at all the major choke points of modern conservative history: the 1948 breakaway from the Democrats of the short-lived States’ Rights Democratic (or Dixiecrat) Party, Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon’s southern strategy in 1968, and Ronald Reagan’s ascendance in 1980. A Democrat until 1964, Thurmond was the fulcrum on which the parties traded places on race issues. His trademark use of nasty populism dressed up in constitutional principle has echoes today on the far right—the territory of Rush Limbaugh and the shrillest of the Tea Partiers. Yet he also helped cement the association between conservatives on the one hand and big business, the Christian right, and anticommunism on the other."

In The Washington Monthly, Michael O'Donnell reviews Joseph Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America.