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They would find the answer if they read Zell Miller's book. However, I'm kinda glad that they've dismissed him as a wacko and not paying attention to it.
Well, certainly not in liberal NE senators...
Now tell me again how Hillary is going to get elected president?
What these idiots don't realize is that with the rise of an independent thinking black middle class, many of those blue counties will be turning red.
The Dems will be unable to recover many of these lost voters, because there was a significant percentage of Southern whites who voted Dem simply because their family "always voted Democrat", and had done so for generations. The Dems went SO far Left this time, that even these eyes-tightly-shut legacy voters finally had to admit to themselves that the Democrat party was no longer "their father's Democrat party". With the veil lifted, the Dems will not recover these voters without shifting positions on nearly every racial issue, gun issue, and religious issue, which they will never do. (They may promise to do so, and it may work for one election, but it would never work a second time. Southerners are not known for quick forgiveness on major issues they hold dear.)
Well, in fact it played a factor in Klinton's, Carter's, and LBJ's elections. This is an attempt to say that all southern bigots left the party and went to the GOP, and thus have not had any influence since 40 years ago. Well, Klinton grabbed southern states as short as 8 years ago and when Reagan was president there were over 18 senators from the south that were democrats.
No matter how many times Public Radio says this, it won't ever be true. The truth is, the average southerner was never this bigoted, it was the Lester Madduxes and Bull Connors, all Democrats, who imposed their racist views on everyone else. And they've been pitched out forever by people voting for Republicans.
It's always about racism. The libs can't get away from it. We voted for Bush because we're a bunch of angry racists.
I'm old enough to remember when just about the only GOP wins in the South were at the Presidential level, when the Dem candidate was viewed as unacceptably leftist (McGovern, for example), and a few isolated Senate and Gubernatorial wins, mostly in the "Outer South" as opposed to the Deep South, and usually during Presidential election years, with the assist of coattails. Generally, these Republican wins were cobbled together with a combination of mountain votes (many parts of the Southern Appalachians retaining Union -- and GOP -- sentiments from the War Between the States) and suburban votes. Often, the GOP victors were moderates, sometimes actually running to the left of their Dem opponents, particularly on racial issues. Howard Baker of Tennessee was one such example.
The changes since the '70s are nothing short of amazing. Generally speaking, Southern Republicans have maintained their strength in the mountains, even with more conservative candidates. Southern suburbs/exurbs continue to vote strongly Republican, and the good news is that the population growth of that demographic has been staggering. Counties surrounding Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, etc. are among the nation's fastest growing, and they cranked out 70%+ numbers for W.
Still, the biggest change has been that Bubba is now a Republican, at least at the Presidential level, often at the Senatorial and Congressional level, and increasingly all the way down the ballot. The Yellow Dog has become an endangered species.
As amazing as the GOP Southern gains have been, progress seems frustratingly slow to the more impatient among us. It's still tougher to take the Governor's mansion in most Southern states than it is to take a Senate seat, because Senate races can be nationalized. The thought of Hillary or Teddy taking control of Senate leadership positions is a powerful incentive to Bubba to vote GOP; it's more difficult to make a case against a Dem Governor, particularly one who tries to disassociate himself from the national Dem ticket.
And progress at the State Legislative level has been slow in some Southern states, as well. There remains something of a vicious circle mentality: people are reluctant to vote for candidates who will be in the minority in the State Assembly, and the GOP will be in the minority in many Southern State Assemblies until voters perceive that the GOP will become the majority party. But, as we've seen in some Southern states already, there comes a "tipping point." We're close in NC. A few more seats, and the GOP controls re-districting, the only thing that keeps the Dems on life support. In my judgment, it's only a matter of time before the GOP is dominant all the way down the ballot in most of the South.
Shelby County, Alabama went for the President by an 81-19 margin. Earlier I posted a story by Russ Feingold referring to Greenville, AL. He said that it was the reddest place on the map. I disagree; it's Shelby County, AL.
A big thank you to my redneck bretheren and sisteren (?) from a gracious swamp yankee. There are a lot of us up here counting on you all!
If you want to know the real reason the Democrats are loosing ground in the South, look at their declining support of the military. Republican gains in the South have little to anything to do with racism- it's about national defense. It's no secret that the South is very strong in its support of the military. In the two world wars, the South provided much more than its fair share of soldiers and sailors in all ranks. This carries over to elections.
Since the days of FDR, the South has always gone for the stronger defense candidate:
1948: Truman was the man who dropped the bomb and did not hide his hatred of Communism. He won the South.
1952 and 1956: The South began abandoning the Democrats when the GOP ran Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower against the agademic egghead Stevenson
1960: Kennedy the young war hero demolished Nixon in the South. Kennedy won Georgia by a bigger margin than Mass.
1964: Barry Goldwater, lampooned for his brinksmanship approach to defense, took the South.
1968 and 1972: two socialist peaceniks had no chance against Nixon in the South.
1976: The SOuth split between the less than effective Ford and the southerner claiming to support the military.
1980: Carter's claim to be pro-defense had turned out to be a load of garbage and Carter paid the price at the Southern ballot box
1984 and 1988: two more anti-defense peaceniks get demolished in Dixie
1992 and 1996: a "new Democrat" southern governor with a shady role in the anti-war movement wins only 4 Southern states in each election. He ran against bona-fide war heros each time.
200 and 2004: another pair of anti-defense peaceniks get their a$$es handed to them in the South.
That's one way to phrase it. I like to put a finer point on it:
Democrats have trouble in the South because they can't defeat the GOP's "combination lock". The combination could be written on a Post-It note and tacked right next to the safe, but they'd choke every time the combination required them to "Turn to the Right".
The reason is patriotism. People in the South still love America.
The REAL reason: The South still believes in moral living.
The Dems will never win as long as they are the "anything goes" party.
John Kerry and his "Spitball Brigade" are going to "report for duty" and become "southern" during the next race. The Dems have completely lost the south .... I must take exception however, with the author trying to sell race as the primary motivating factor for a southern voter. Brownstein tries to implicity paint the south as a racist bunch who care only about racial issues. This is all garbage. The south's move to the GOP is about values. It is due to the Dems removal of God from our schools, gay marriage, weakness on defense issues, tax and spend policies, ridiculous political correctness, anti-Christian filth, blame America first, gun control (codeword for ban), weak on crime attitude... just to name a few. The Dems just don't get it. God bless the South!!
Ping!! A good read!
The DUmmies are wishing that the South would break off from the rest of the nation. As long as the DNC keeps nominating elitist snobs like Kerry, the RATS will never make any inroads with Southerners.
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Someone needs to 'splain the donks that France is not the moral compass of the free world.