Boll weevil (politics)

During and after the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, conservative Southern Democrats were part of the coalition generally in support of the economic policies of Democratic presidents Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, dubbed the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively, but were opposed to desegregation and the civil rights movement.

In the 1964 presidential election, five states in the Deep South (then a Democratic stronghold) voted for Republican challenger Barry Goldwater over Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, partly due to Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Goldwater's opposition to it.

These included Democratic House members as conservative as Georgia's Larry McDonald, who was also a leader in the John Birch Society.

[2] Most of the Democratic boll weevils eventually retired from politics, or in the case of some, such as Senators Phil Gramm of Texas and Richard Shelby of Alabama, switched parties and joined the Republicans.

A bloc of conservative Democrats in the House, including some younger or newer members as well as the remaining boll weevils who refused to bow to pressure to switch parties, organized themselves as the "Blue Dogs" in the early 1990s.