From Politico: The Man Who Launched the GOP’s Civil War How a textile magnate turned the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Trump.

For our upcoming look at how the South went from being Democratic to Republican. I addition to racial issues, underlying hostility to labor unions by southern workers played a key role, as did the activities of a prominent political entrepreneur.

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Milliken’s name does not mean much to most anyone born after the Vietnam War, but he was the godfather to the first generation of modern conservatives. The owner of one of America’s largest private companies, a textile manufacturer he turned into a chemical-processing giant, Milliken used the profits from his staunchly antiunion mills to fund conservatism’s founding institutions, including the National Review and Heritage Foundation. Many of the facts we take for granted in politics today—that the GOP is a conservative party; that it counts on the solid support of white, male, working class voters in the South and West; and that big-money donors can pick and choose its candidates, even to the point of running themselves—were the fruits of his career.