Forget the South, Democrats

Slate.com ^ | 1/27/04 | Timothy Noah

[Disgruntled_Voter]

"There goes the South for a generation," Lyndon Johnson is said to have predicted as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law. Actually, it's been two generations, but otherwise Johnson was dead-on. For 40 years, the Democratic Party begged Southern Democrats to return to the fold. Always undignified, this pleading eventually become futile as well...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2094552/

[Disgruntled_Voter]

Slightly worrying. Also, the article makes the point that the South is a socialistic place. This engendered some confusion for me. The South as a socialistic place?

[2banana]

This is the legacy of the Southern congressional barons on Capitol Hill, who blocked civil rights legislation from Reconstruction until 1957. Before that, Southerners successfully turned defeat in the Civil War into an occasion to erect Jim Crow laws.

The author just can't seem to acknowledge that is was southern DEMOCRATS who blocked the civil rights bills and southern DEMOCRATS who enacted Jim Crow laws...

[capt. norm]

I love it when ivory tower experts try to explain the South.

The extent of the author's 'experience' with the South was probably once having used a "Dixie Cup" at the water cooler.

[Tacis]

Not to worry, dems, the southern blacks will vote for you! So long the dems never let them on the porch and keep them in the feilds, southern blacks will continue to shuck and jive and do exactly what the dem massas tell them. Makes no sense, but they'll do it.

Once Sharpton gets to some southerm primaries and bigs up 30% of the vote and 80% of the black vote, his price of extortion will go up. But, the reality is that the dems won't spend effort courting black voters, all they need are the black racist demagouges that claim to speak for the black voters.

What is beyond me is why some black athlete, entertainer or local businessman hasn't seen the opportunity to take a leadership position as a Republican and split some black support. Once the black vote is truely in play, both parties will do much more to court it. 'Til then, black southern voters will vote for whoever Al and the black dem party thugs order them to vote for.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

The author said that the South is socialistic because of the majority of military bases being positioned in the South, and that we kept most of our bases while more of the ones in Northern areas were closed. HUH??? Does he equate socialism with support for the military? I don't get it.

And then he said that Southerners are masters at being offended. Maybe it's because they've given us so much experience.

I remember once when I was in high school, a step/cousin about my own age whom I had never met came for a visit. She was surprised that we had indoor plumbing and not outhouses. Hollywood has stereotyped us here just like they used to stereotype African Americans.

Has anyone else ever noticed that in most films, if there's an ignorant or backward man, he's a wife-beating, child-molesting racist drunk with a Southern accent and religious beliefs? Oh, and a gun.

[q_an_a]

i smiled out loud on that one. good point

[Gianni]

But there's an even longer political history of Southerners whining and wheedling their way into disproportionate and undeserved power. For all its resistance to Big Government, the South is arguably the most socialistic region in the country; nearly half of all U.S. military personnel are stationed there, and the region was only lightly affected by the post-Cold War base closings of the 1980s and 1990s. This is the legacy of the Southern congressional barons on Capitol Hill, who blocked civil rights legislation from Reconstruction until 1957. Before that, Southerners successfully turned defeat in the Civil War into an occasion to erect Jim Crow laws. Before that, the South treasonously separated itself from the Union. Before that, the South successfully battled all attempts to end the practice of slavery, which the Founding Fathers well understood was incompatible with the principles of the American Revolution.

What is wheedling?

[dljordan]

When I joined the Navy in 68' I actually had a guy from California ask me if we wore shoes!

[Disgruntled_Voter]

I think it's important to realize that the Southern Democrats who blocked civil rights legislation were conservatives. Misguided, benighted conservatives, but conservatives nonetheless. Of course, they were Democratic conservatives, so they weren't devotees of classical conservatism by any means. Wasn't their argument against it that there would be a violation of State's Rights?

[2banana]

Well, if we were having an election of the liberal party vs the conservative party, you might have a point...

[Dan from Michigan]

Gore lost every Southern state, including his home state of Tennessee.

Maybe because they knew him?????

Thus Lesson 1: Southerners won't vote for you just because you're a Good Ole Boy.

I wish some of us in the Midwest didn't always get fooled by a Southern Accented democrat. Just because they have one, don't mean they are conservative.

Thus Lesson 2: Democrats don't really need those southern votes.
They need to clean up in the Midwest and West then, as well as retain their base. Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan are not gimmess, neither is New Mexico in the Southwest, and Oregon on the coast. Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, Colorado and Missouri aren't gimmess either that the GOP won.

Thus when Vermonter Howard Dean made the perfectly innocent remark that he'd like to win votes from "guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks"—

C'mon Tim. That was just a dumbassed statementm and even this Yankee from the upper Midwest sees it. Why bring up the flag? Pickups and guns alone could have gotten the same point across without sounding so damn condenscending.

Never mind that subgroups in other parts of the country are routinely referred to in political discourse as "Joe Six-pack," "wealthy Jews," "blue-collar Midwesterners," "metrosexuals," inhabitants of "McMansions," "buppies," the "underclass," and so on without causing noticeable offense.
Right. If I make a joke about 'Wealthy Jews', imagine the scorn I would be hit with. Metrosexuals is used as an insult more than anything else, and McMansions is used in the same way.

For all its resistance to Big Government, the South is arguably the most socialistic region in the country;

Huh? Then why are so many Michiganders moving to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and Bama? Besides the weather?

Garry Wills

Going back to the original point, if the dems write off the South, that money the GOP would use in the South can go to Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, etc. And many of these "blue collar midwesterners" are as conservative on social issues as the South. Gun grabbers don't just fail there. Pro-aborts don't just fail there.

[KC_Conspirator]

"There goes the South for a generation," Lyndon Johnson is said to have predicted as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.

I don't ever recall LBJ saying that, in fact, I am pretty sure he said that he would get every "n-word" vote when he signed that.

[AmishDude]

They don't understand. The National Endowment for the Arts is socialistic, but if Congress commissions art for the Capitol rotunda, that is not. Welfare is socialistic, government paying people to do what government wants done for its own purposes is not.

[AmishDude]

The author's quote is all over the internet. The statement you quoted is hard to find. (Most sites have censored the n-word differently.) Snopes has no comment on either quote. I would love to know the source of each.

[gunnedah]

The blacks have their own personal Judas. His Christian name if you want to call it that is Jesse!The big money greases his palms so he and Kwesia will keep the others on the plantation.The poor to regular white has theirs in Congress. While ranting and raving each party covers the others back while stealing and building their own personal kingdoms.
Congress should be disbanded!

[KC_Conspirator]

If I find some time, I will dig it up. To think that democrats after over 100 years of voting democrat in the south would turn and vote GOP is pure revisionism.

[dixiechick2000]

"When I joined the Navy in 68' I actually had a guy from California ask me if we wore shoes!"

I've had people ask me the same thing. I mentioned this on another thread. One smart poster had a good comeback.

"Only when we have to." lol

[AmishDude]

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because statewide and local elections in the South still were overwhelmingly Democrat. It is true that the South turned Pubbie for Presidential elections, but I don't think that could have been predicted, as Nixon is excoriated for the "Southern strategy".

I prefer to believe the n-word comment because (a) that sounds more like Johnson and (b) he was a ruthless political animal and would do nothing to devastate his party. It seems much more reasonable that the already Democrat-leaning black electorate would begin to be locked in with that legislation, delivering the urban North to the Democrats and the neo-Confederates would hold the South.

It gave the Dems dominance for two generations.

[KC_Conspirator]

I saw the LBJ comment on FR a few years back in an article, but I have no idea where is is now. You make absolute sense when you point out that that democrat dominance still lasted for 30 years in congress. I also don't know one politician from the modern era who would sign a bill they believed so calamitous.

[Muleteam1]

>>"There goes the South for a generation," Lyndon Johnson is said to have predicted as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.<<

He could not have been more right for this native Texan, but not because of the Civil Rigts Act. LBJ was such a lier he needed the two chins he had to keep up with all his lies. I do give him credit for my having not voted for a Democrat for the past thirty years.

Muleteam1