Crashing the Party (2009)

For nearly a century, Democrats completely controlled politics in Alabama. Republican was a dirty word. But in the 1960s, as a new generation of Americans challenged the old order in a variety of ways, a different sort of an anti-establishment movement began to emerge in Alabama. 'Crashing the Party' traces the rise of the Alabama Republican Party from irrelevance to electoral dominance. In some ways, the story is a microcosm of the transformation of the once solidly Democratic South into a bastion of Republicanism. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are central to the narrative. But in other ways, it is a uniquely Alabama tale. Much of the film's narrative tension is provided by the shadowy presence of segregationist Democratic Governor George Wallace, who stymied the GOP's growth for decades while inhibiting the state's progress with his poisonous racial demagoguery. The film includes in-depth interviews with prominent elected officials including U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions; Congressman Jack Edwards; U.S. Senator Jeremiah Denton, who became a national hero after surviving more than seven years as a Vietnamese prisoner of war; and Governor Guy Hunt, who was elected in a fluke enabled by a Democratic meltdown but eventually was driven from office in disgrace. The narrative arc comes full circle with Republican Chief Justice Roy Moore, who tries to mirror Wallace's demagoguery but ultimately becomes an outcast in his own party and a symbol of how dramatically the state has changed.