[ConservativeStatement]

Whatever way the Dems want to spin it, they are dinosaurs in their thinking and out of touch with many Americans.

[Quanah Parker]

"Whatever way the Dems want to spin it, they are dinosaurs in their thinking and out of touch with many Americans"

True! But they are experts at manipulating the emotions of the 52% of Americans who let gossip do their thinking for them.

[LibLieSlayer]

This is simple. We Suthun' folks just hate dims!

LLS

[weegee]

The historic switch from blue to red over the past half century

Uh, the color went from being Blue for Republicans and Red for Democrats only in recent years. I hate this "red state" BS.

I think that the left disliked the commie association and wanted to be thought of as "true blue" or "blue collar".

There is one election atlas site that decided NOT to redraw all of the maps when the mass media shifted the colors.

[bourbon]

read the whole article. interesting.

[RedMonqey]

The Authors of this book are partly correct.

The only thing that kept the Solid South in Democratic hands was keeping the black man down(uniting upper, middle and lower classes together)

However Johnson broke that compact Seeing no difference between the two parties on race,, CLASS, not race based politics dominated.

A growing middle class shifted naturally to the Republicans and their conservative governing style.

[BamaGirl]

"Conventional wisdom says the Republican Party won the South because the Democrats embraced civil rights. Now a pair of political scientists argues that the GOP takeover had more to do with economics than race."

---

Ohmigawd there are just figuring this out now? If I recall Sowell wrote about this in his book that came out this year.

But them them keep thinking we are a bunch of backwards racist dimwits.

[Siena Dreaming]

Conventional wisdom says the Republican Party won the South because the Democrats embraced civil rights.

Ha. "Civil Rights" sounds so nice, but it was a way to continue keeping the "blacks on the plantation" by letting the Democratic white elites take care of them through welfare.

The Repubs coming into the South is what created more freedom there, both for black and white.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

"Whatever way the Dems want to spin it, they are dinosaurs in their thinking and out of touch with many Americans".

---

I grew up in St. Augustine, Florida. When, in 1963, I became 21, I registered as a Republican. The county registrar actually tried to talk me into changing my mind. If the party assigned numbers, I would probably be number 10 or 12, in St. Johns County. Republicans were almost as rare around here as dinosaurs. There were no Republican, local primaries, no Republican, local candidates
My father was always conservative, but it took me until 1995, a year before he died, to convince him to change his registration. He only did that, so he could sign a petition, to get a family friend on a local ballot.
Unfortunately, I now see the Republican Party slipping away from me, and, not even listening for my voice.
Is anyone really, vaguely, in touch with "many Americans"?

[x]

If you look at the areas where Republicans made inroads into the South in the 1950s and 1960s -- Texas, Tennesse, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida -- they weren't the Deep South states with the strongest opposition to segregation. It was Northerners moved South and Chamber of Commerce businessmen who voted for Eisenhower, not die-hard segregationists. So of course it wasn't race that started the shift.

If you look at Southern voting now, it doesn't seem like race is a major factor either. That is to say, Blacks tend to vote one way and Whites the other, as in other states, but Republican voters in the South aren't voting for segregation or to keep Blacks down. Race may have played a role in shifting some states to the Republican column, but it was hardly the monolithic factor that some make it out to be.

[stainlessbanner]

dixieping

[JamesP81]

I think the article is dead wrong. It's not race, it's not economics.

It's values.

The liberals continually sneer at the South, calling us uneducated, racist, homophobic, etc. Their secularist agenda diverges widely from what we perceive as right and wrong. It's no wonder we don't vote for them; they are against what we believe, pure and simple.