The Republican Party was taken over by the Dixiecrats when they realized that the GOB's in the Democratic Party were not going to bring back the Old South. First Lyndon Johnson betrayed them with Civil Rights. Then Bill Clinton didn't repeal any of the things they hoped he would. The Southern Cabal, hereinafter referred to as the SC went on the attack. Hell hath no fury like a Rebel scorned. Subsequent events were orchestrated and blown out of proportion by the SC. The question is why on earth go to such lengths?
When I was in the South after WWII, the good one, the Southerners were still fighting the Civil War. They had beautiful hazy memories of the way it used to be. Every white man with a little money had two families, one white and legitimate; the other black and starving. Every white family had black servants who were paid $1 a day and worked until they dropped of old age. Cook's daughter or granddaughter supplied the second family-see Strom Thurmond. 3 Federal Actions destroyed this heaven.
1. Welfare destroyed the control a white man had over his black victim after he knocked her up. Before Welfare, if she wanted to live, eat and feed her kids, she did what the white man told her.
2. Planned Parenthood -once People were aware of contraception, the black victim didn't have to get pregnant in the first place.
3. Social Security-The white folks could no longer work their servants until they died. The cook, maid, gardener and others actually could retire on money the white folks were supposed to have been paying into the system. And the white folks were prosecuted for not actually paying their full time employees.
These three programs, Social Security, Welfare and birth control of any kind had been the targets of of the Southern Cabal since after the they were enacted because they destroyed the Southern Way of Life which had held on by it's fingernails after the Civil War. These three programs are all that stand between freedom and slavery in the Old South. And these three programs are the main targets of the "new" Republican Party. When the Democrats abandoned the South in order to win elections the SC abandoned the Democrats. The recent Supreme Court decision on voting rights is step one back to the "good old days".
The reason the Paula Deen thing has blown up is that she has made it painfully apparent that the south has NOT changed and that the agenda of returning to the subjection of blacks is still in force. The SC is holding it's breath, praying that nobody makes the connection.
When I was in the South, natives made a face and snickered or grunted before they very carefully did not say the N word. They still use it within their Southern social groups regularly and resent not being able to use it in public, i.e. with non-southerners. It is over 150 years later that we see the results of "Save your Confederate money boys. The south will rise again." The Civil War was never over.