Hoover Institution: Firing Line With William F. Buckley- The Wallace Crusade (1968)

Source:Hoover Institution- Firing Line With William F. Buckley, in 1968.

"WFB had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace came on Firing Line determined not to give an inch. GW: "Name one thing in Alabama that I have supported on the governmental level that you are against." WFB: "You want the state to take care of hospitalization, you want the state to take care of old people, you want the state to take care of the poor." GW: "Are you against caring for the poor and the old? ... I might say that no conservative in this country who comes out against looking after destitute elderly people ought to be elected to anything." WFB: "You call yourself a populist, right?" GW: "If you mean by a populist a man of the people, yes, I'm a populist. Let's get back to the old-age pension. Let's see, you're against Alabama's looking after the elderly destitute citizens of the state?" (The following month, Mr. Wallace would declare his third-party candidacy for President.)" 

From the Hoover Institution

The Wallace Crusade (if you want to call it that) at its best and at its best not saying this was all of it, but at its best the Wallace Crusade was a Federalist movement that was about local control and states rights. Not saying I agree with the Wallace movement, but at its best thats what it was: a movement that was about states-rights and local-control, that state and local governments no best how to govern their communities. And do not need the Federal Government interfering with how they govern their communities. 

Now at its worst, the Wallace Crusade was a majority over the minority movement as it related to race-relations: "There are more of us then you, that is more Caucasian-Americans then there are African-Americans in Alabama and we the majority are going to get to decide what the minority are going to have as it relates to freedom, constitutional rights and so forth. And we'll even keep you away from us and let you have what's left. If we decide to do so." 

George Wallace's movement at it's worst, was a Neo-Confederate, nationalistic movement in the South, that never got over losing the American Civil War and decided that if they had to live with African-Americans, they were going to make their lives as horrible as they could get away with.