Now, the Republicans are relegated to the South...

[Lionhearted]

...— an extremist backwater party of white heterosexual Christian fundamentalism, cultural intolerance, and political irrelevance.

They embrace xenophobia, islamophobia, and homophobia as America becomes a browner, more diverse nation.

They uphold the plutocratic interests of free market capitalism at a time when the public demands greater government intervention in the economy, as a check against corporate excess and upward wealth redistribution.

http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/11/22/an-end-to-the-southern-strategy-but-no-post-racial-america/

[melody]

1. The SOUTH?

North Carolina and Virginia are Democratic states. Many others got very close.

Most of the red is in Utah and Idaho.

[smkyle1]

5. Right, but together Utah and Idaho have...

9 electoral votes. Houston by itself probably accounts for that many electoral votes.

It's true that the Republicans had a Western strategy, in addition to their Southern strategy. It's just that the Southern states gave them a bedrock of solid, safe support from which to launch the 30 years of Red Reagan, Poppy Bush, Dubya Bush trickle-down catastrophe.

Isn't it refreshing to soon have a president who clearly knows what he's saying when he says it?

[melody]

6. My southern grandparents were civil rights proponents

My entire southern family (less one uncle) is Democratic. I'm from California and none of the LA Democrats I know can match the southern ones for zeal.

To stereotype an entire people (and that's what is being done when you stereotype the south which is as distinct a culture from the rest of the US as Canada is from us) is extremely unfair.

The problem is ignorance in the WHOLE country not just pockets of it.

[Lionhearted]

9. It isn't that all the South is this way...

It's that the Republican Party has isolated itself to "white heterosexual Christian fundamentalism, cultural intolerance, and political irrelevance" in the South and elsewhere.

That isn't the same as saying all the South or all Southerners are this way.

[melody]

12. But they have the heterosexual fundamentalist intolerant Christians everywhere

Not just in the south.

The problem is ignorance in areas with little funds for a proper educational system. My own grandmother had to pay to go to high school. It's not "southern", it's ignorance, whether willful or incidental.

[Lionhearted]

26. And don't you think Obama will work to improve education...

for so-called "middle-class" Americans across the country?

Certainly, better-educated people are less likely to be swayed by the fear-mongering and hate-mongering that tinged the McCain-Palin campaign toward the end, if they didn't typify it.

[melody]

30. What has that to do with anything?

I wasn't disputing Obama's ability to improve things everywhere. I'm here. I worked very hard for Obama.

I'm disputing your generalization about southerners.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. The country, not the south.

Even in the rest of the country, most of rural America went red.

Even in the deep south, most of the cities went blue.

County by county, McCain won *far* more land area than Obama did; it was just that it was all land area where nobody lives.

The big difference between the "red states" and the "blue states" is how many of the population live in cities.

[bamademo]

3. Yawn, not another South bashing thread.

We're all drooling, Palin loving, McCain voting idiots down here. Yeah, right. I'm not even bothering with a sarcasm smiley.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[geckosfeet]

7. I think two distsicts in Boston voted for mcLaime. There is ignorance everywhere.

Even on this thread.

[pinto]

8. Unfortunately, you chose the most inflammatory part of the piece to cite, it follows up -

Nevertheless, recent developments are promising. Now is the time to look for leadership in new places, and from new faces. And while we’re at it, perhaps we can reject the Atwaters of the world who seek to defile the political discourse, detract from the real issues and divide us from each other. Southern Strategy, rest in peace, and may we never see you again.

[Tarheel_Dem]

10. Never underestimate the gullibility and fickleness of the American...

electorate. You have to wonder how, after 8 years of Clinton's peace and prosperity, the '00 election was even close enough to steal. If Pres. Obama manages to turn around this horrible economy, and end our involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan, and put the American people back to work, if they will once again allow the right to inject web issues into the debate, and give us another Bush.

Most of the country was well fed and employed at the end of Clinton's presidency, and decided that certain moral issues were more important than having a job, and being able to educate and feed their families. Let's hope we won't make this mistake again. Dem administrations just seem to be better for regular people. However, I don't think it's purely regional.

[Trajan]

11. While it is true that many southerners support the ugly politics of the GOP ...

It is unfair to characterize 'The South' as a homogeneous pit of vicious rightism ....

There are MANY good liberals in the south .... WAY TOO many to cast sweeping generalizations about like this ...

Signed,
Yankee Liberal from NYC

[davidthegnome]

13. I think we're taking the message the wrong way

Perhaps the writer could have been more clear with his/her intent, but I don't think the intent was to bash everyone who happens to live in the South.

I'm from the far north of Maine (right by the border with Canada) and I know that a lot of us Northerners take it pretty much for granted that we're more liberal... more, "enlightened" than Southerners. We're entirely too smug about it, in and around my small County you'll find that we're at least 75% republican. Had it depended on us idiot Northerners entirely, Maine would have went to McCain (a landslide victory).

So on behalf of the North and us Northerners (some of us who are also liberals living in republican areas) I apologize to the South for the smugness we are at times, guilty of. I don't think the writer intended to offend anyone, but the title could have been chosen with more care.

Having said that - had I not discovered DU and similar forums years ago, I would likely still be of the notion that the South was filled with nothing but redneck republicans, the reddest of the red. I've never been in the South to learn differently.

I'm sure that in years past I've said ignorant things in regards to the Southern States and those who live in them, but I have absolutely nothing against Southern Liberals. I don't believe Lionhearted does either, but he/she can speak for themself.

Some times, like right now, as winter starts here in Maine, I wish I lived in South Carolina, some place far to the South and far warmer.

[RB TexLa]

14. Of course. I mean who hasn't thought of Alabama as a warm San Francisco.

Can hardly tell the two apart sometimes.

:crazy:

[bamademo]

17. When I lived in NJ I certainly felt love and tolerance for minorities.

It was all kittens, puppies, ponys and rainbows especially when I observed my co-workers calling a woman who had a white mother and black father, Zebra to her face. It was a great place to live and I was so thankful I didn't live in racist, redneck Bama anymore.

[TahitiNut]

16. Just an FYI

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000217.htm

:shrug:

[smkyle1]

19. The Democrats have a Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast strategy

...just like the Republicans have a Southern strategy and a Western States strategy.

In the 2000 and 2004 elections -- and others over the past 30 years -- the Republicans used their stranglehold on the South and the Rocky Mountain states, combined with a few other states they could pick off, to win those presidential elections.

Obama's strategy -- combined with the disastrous Bush administration -- has essentially isolated Republican support to the Deep South and the more sparsely populated Western states.

It isn't that all people in the South are religious nuts and bigots. It's that the Republican Party will need to have a broader message and appeal to a broader swath of the country to compete for the presidency.

[quickesst]

24. And if the south...

...my home since birth, along with my son, wife, and two grandchildren were to break off and sink into the ocean, the rest of the country would truly be a liberal eden, free of all things evil. Ignorance in the south has been a hindrance to our progress, but ignorance of the south is an equal participant, keeping the stereotypical perception alive by peddling the myth that, minus the slavery, the south remains committed to it's pre-Civil War ideals. We've got a long way to go, and I would suggest the energy spent in propogating myths would be better served continuing the clean-up in one's own back yard. The south may be lagging, but if memory serves, the red on the political map was not confined to our part of the country. Thanks.
quickesst

[Edweird]

25. You, sir, are correct.

County by county breakdown.

[tularetom]

15. Unfortunately facts are facts

Every Southerners is not an inbred redneck.

But enough low and moderate income voters in the south voted in opposition to their own ecenomic interests to create a majority vote in their region for a party which favors all the phobias and biases that have come to divide the citizens of this country.

[Edweird]

22. mmhmm....

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bill McBlueState]

20. It's true; the bulk of McCain's support came from the South

This page has a number of cartograms that illustrate that point quite well. Here's the most convincing:



This, of course, is not the same as claiming that all Southerners like Republicans or that only Southerners like Republicans. This should go without saying.

[Edweird]

21. True MY ASS! Here is the county by county break down from the SAME SOURCE!

[w4rma]

28. This one shows your point better. It shows that those little blue dots in the south are dense. (nt)

[RB TexLa]

29. So you put more weight in the land area of the counties than the population of the states

I guess that would make sense if dirt could vote.

:crazy:

[Edweird]

34. Right. Everybody lives in Illinois and Massachusetts with empty dirt in between.

:eyes:

Whatever.

[Edweird]

23. More bigoted assholery. Here's a county by county breakdown.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

32. That pretty much proves that Dems win population centers

and Repigs win a lot of very sparsely populated land and that applies to the entire country, not just the South.

[Bill McBlueState]

33. Nobody lives in the red western counties

People do live in the red southern counties.

[w4rma]

27. The South needs more and bigger cities, then they'd turn blue. (nt)

[Lex]

31. It's a RURAL thing, not a South / North thing. Look at a map.

nt

[mwb970]

35. It's the attack of the WORMs.

White, old, rural men. That's what most Republicans are these days.