That a great many southern conservatives feared and detested Roosevelt and the New Deal is well known; there was a definite but abortive movement in 1944 to bolt the ticket, for instance in South Carolina; the idea was that a split vote might throw the election into the House of Representatives. But when election day came Roosevelt carried South Carolina by fifteen to one. People may have loathed him; but to vote against him meant cutting their own throats. (In Texas, however, the revolt, although unsuccessful, did become concrete and actual.) Roosevelt on his side attempted famously to purge some southern senators, like George of Georgia; he too was unsuccessful. A final extraordinary point is that Roosevelt would have won in 1944, and also in his earlier campaigns, even if the solid South had voted solidly against him. The South, despite its hatred of the New Deal, gave tremendous majorities to Roosevelt; but on the basis of electoral college figures it had no responsibility whatever for electing him.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "That a great many southern conservatives feared and detested Roosevelt and the New Deal is well known; there was a definite but abortive movement in 1944 to bolt the ticket, for instance in South Carolina; the idea was that a split vote might throw the election into the House of Representatives. But when election day came Roosevelt carried South Carolina by fifteen to one. People may have loathed him; but to vote against him meant cutting their own throats. (In Texas, however, the revolt, although unsuccessful, did become concrete and actual.) Roosevelt on his side attempted famously to purge some southern senators, like George of Georgia; he too was unsuccessful. A final extraordinary point is that Roosevelt would have won in 1944, and also in his earlier campaigns, even if the solid South had voted solidly against him. The South, despite its hatred of the New Deal, gave tremendous majorities to Roosevelt; but on the basis of electoral college figures it had no responsibility whatever for electing him." in the context of "John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (1947), p. 678" to mean that wisdom is timeless.