"States's rights" has always been coded language. Lee Atwater's post Nixon interview gave away the playbook. The hypocrisy is easy to see in that lens. First it started with racial slurs, then welfare queens, racial slurs, big government, states rights, occasional "liberty and freedom" thrown in for good measure. Currently it's DEI and trans.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...