GOP’s white Southern men problem: Why they can’t hold Democrats down any longer

[DonViejo]

The days of the left humiliating itself in an effort to woo these voters are over. They're the right's problem now

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

In a very famous (and possibly apocryphal) quote, Lyndon Johnson said upon signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act that the Democrats had lost the South for a generation. And there’s little doubt that the Republicans immediately saw a path to a new majority. That realignment took more than a generation to gradually happen, but happen it did. The GOP marched through one election after another burning down every Southern Democratic stronghold in its wake.

And the Democrats have been bemoaning their Lost Cause ever since. For decades it was an article of faith that the only way for the Democrats to achieve a real majority again would be to recapture that Southern white vote. They agreed that they had to only nominate sons of the South who could speak the lingo. And they had to ensure that they never again spoke ill of guns, only spoke ill of gays and always praised God as if every day was an evangelical revival meeting. This was best articulated by a strategist by the name of Mudcat Saunders who spelled it out as clearly as anyone’s ever done it:

SouthNow: What’s the prescription for Democrats?

Mudcat: There’s only one prescription and that’s tolerance. I’m a white, southern male who hunts. I’m a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which has two black members, by the way. I don’t know how many northern Democrats who have tolerance for my kind.

SouthNow: What’s your strategy for Southern progress?

Mudcat: We need to quit all this tap dancin’ around the truth….We need to stop tap dancin’ around the issues of guns, gays and God….We’ve lost the white male. We need to get ‘em back. We need to get through the cultural wall. It’s a wall of straw. Inside every rural Republican is a Democrat trying to get out.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/30/gops_white_southern_men_problem_why_they_cant_hold_democrats_down_any_longer/

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Yeah. we just need more "bi-partisanship." That's the cure!

[DonViejo]

2. Did you read the article, blkmusclmachine?...

Digby agrees with you. At least, that's what I got out of the article.

[Sunlei]

3. a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, speaks about 'southern progress'.

Progress, sir would be to close that old southern club of sons of the massas, once and for all.

The war began when Confederate warships bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. The war ended in Spring, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

[mikekohr]

4. "Daddy was a veteran, A Southern Democrat, They outta kill the rich men that vote like that,"

Lines from "Song of the South"