Interesting analysis of the GOP's "Southern Problem" from a ?wingnut? site's article:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

I'll concede that I got this article from a thread at a (ahem) non Dem-friendly site, linked via a post here on DU. The article is, I think, interesting because even though it's from the GOP "team" perspective, some of the analysis is pretty spot on, and it's interesting to see how some of their strategists see the race shaping up.

Of course all the posters at the other site decried the article as BS.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/05/fred_thompson_and_the_gops_sou.html

May 04, 2007
Fred Thompson and the GOP's Southern Problem
By Richard Baehr

...


I think Thompson is by far the least likely of the 4 major GOP candidates to be elected if nominated, assuming he decides to run. This is due to one principal factor; his Southern roots. This is also one of several reasons why Newt Gingrich is almost certainly unelectable were he to be nominated.


This may not be fair, but it is the reality of the 2008 race. The Democrats have had success in their multiyear campaign to identify the GOP as largely a Southern regional party, and a bigoted one at that. You may not like it, but pretending that the problem doesn't exist is foolish.

...

But the 2006 elections demonstrated real weakness for the GOP in the Midwest- particularly in Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and even reliably Republican Indiana. There was bad news in the West, too: in Montana, Colorado, and Arizona. There was a near total collapse for the Party in the Northeast: Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire most prominently. Only in the South did the Republicans pretty much hold their own - losing seats in Texas and Florida due to specific scandals (Delay and Foley), a Senate seat in Virginia due to a terrible mistake-prone campaign by George Allen, and just a few isolated House races elsewhere.


The GOP's primary problems in the 2008 cycle will be Iraq, and the memory of George Bush. The more closely a candidate is associated with Bush and the Iraq war, the more trouble he will have getting elected next November. But compounding those factors is that anyone who sounds like Bush - meaning a Southerner - will also be a damaged candidate. Fred Thompson sounds like George Bush to too many non-Southerners. Elites, and many secular Americans not from the South, still have a distinct if inaccurate and superficial view of most Southerners - Bible belt Christians, homophobes, narrow minded racial bigots, a bit dim witted. These stereotypes, always bigoted and unfair, should have disappeared decades ago, as the South was flooded with people from outside the region. (This mass movement of people has also occurred in the West, Southwest and Mountain states). The South has become more like America, as the country has become more homogenized in general. But defining people by their voting patterns, the South is still different.

...

On Edit: The 4 paragraph excerpt is perhaps too brief a snippet of the article, the basic point the author is making is that the "solid GOP South", just as real and "solid" now as in 2000 and 2004, is more of a liability than an asset going into 2008 and beyond, because it's polarizing, and the GOP has been pretty much driven out of the Northeast, is getting driven out of the West, and out of some previous Midwest strongholds like Ohio, and perceived alignment of a candidate like Thompson with the wingnut South and all it's come to stand for in the last decade or two will further drive away voters in those NON-Southern states.

I disagree with his contention that it's the Democrats who've painted the GOP Southerners as bigoted and provincial. The GOP, Bush, and Rove have embraced and promoted those aspects of their Southern base. They've taken their sweet, narrow, electoral victories from it, now they must taste the bitter.

[Phredicles]

1. The Publicans have succeeded in presenting theselves as the

Confederate Party. The Democrats aren't the one's who decided to give such unholy prominence to The Newt, Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, Trent Lott, George Allen Jr., etc., topped off by Commander Codpiece Guy himself. And even among non-southern Publicans, you have the likes of Pat Buchanan, who once braggingly compared himself to the ass-rapist from "Deliverance".

If the nation has an idea of Publicans as the party of "Southerners Bible belt Christians, homophobes, narrow minded racial bigots, a bit dim witted", I submit that the aforementioed individuals have a lot to do with it.

[TwilightGardener]

2. I agree, after Bush, the southern (or fake vague southern) accent

will be an uphill climb. Edwards, tone it down, LOL! A brisk northern/midwestern accent will probably win, IMO.

[Clark2008]

6. No it won't.

It's not even pleasant to most people. That's why folks go for the Southern accent - it sounds more trustworthy and relaxed.

Go anywhere in the country - I get treated special because of my Southern accent. People are nicer to me than to my very Yankee husband. It's the accent. They think I'm more "gentile" (which is funny because my husband defers to me for the kids' discipline and to get workmen's asses in gear.)

Fred Thompson's accent isn't as overly pronounced as Bush's fake one and Edwards, who has one, but thickens his considerably (I know it's not as thick as he let's on - in Wisconsin during the 2004 primaries, he did an ad that didn't have nearly the twang).

Fred Thompson simply sounds like an educated Southerner - he has a bit of a drawl, but he doesn't sound like an imbicile, like Bush does.

[Moses2SandyKoufax]

8. No way man!

Don't you know Thompson will win the nomination and breeze to the White House?! 45 state landslide victory!!!! That twang just does it for me! I love me some right wing candidates from the least educated, most backward region of a pretty backward country. Then after his first 100 days in office we will put that sumabitch on Mount Rushmore! Come on wienerdoggie everybody loves that accent! I'm hyp-no-tized!!! :Sarcasm:

The source leaves a lot to be desired, but many southerners on this board have no idea of the pending backlash candidates from the south will face this election. I have been saying it since 2005, the Democratic party need not worry about becoming a regional party, the GOP does. With the tide turning in Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada the south is the last grasp of today's Republican Party.

To all southerners, I realize the plains states along with Utah and Idaho are more "republican" but with the electoral college those states don't add up to much. Quite frankly your religious fundamentalism, way of life, and the direction right wing southerners want to take the rest of the country scare the hell out of a lot of people. Southerners need to remember this one important fact: Not everyone wants to be a southerner!

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I dispute that the south has become more like america --

if anything, america has become more like the south.

If in no other way, the one-time southern trait of wearing your religion on your sleeve has spread across the country to a degree I would never have expected 30 years ago. It used to be in most parts of the country that a person's religion was his own business, and nobody knew or particularly cared what church their neighbor or co-worker belonged to. I never used to see religious bumper stickers or license plates or window decals on the road in the midwest, northeast or west, except maybe in the central valley in California. Thirty years ago many southerners were rightfully ashamed that only their part of the country was known for making evolution illegal - now the anti-science poison has reached into Pennsylvania and Washington and Kansas and seems to spread further every year.

Sometimes, I get depressed.

[Clark2008]

7. Actually, I've found that the anti-science position is worse

in Pennsylvania and Kansas than in the South, but what I HAVE noticed is the tack country music takes in appealing to a certain group: they actually sing songs to make it seem as though it's "cool" to be a redneck. And I don't mean a farmer. I mean what redneck has come to mean: a backward, shiftless, ignorant fool.

When I was growing up in the South, the term redneck was reserved for white trash, racists and thumpers. It was NOT something desired to be.

Now, people are proud to be rednecks.

What the GOP did to win the South wasn't necessarily to promote racism or any other kind of "ism." What they did was make Southerners and mid-Westerners believe that they represented their "values." They stood up for against the Southern bigots and those who thought that all of us - rednecks or not - were backward and stupid. THAT'S how they won the confidence of Southerners. THAT'S why they persist in painting Democrats as only representing New England and the west coast. The wedge they drove was as a result of real stereotyping that went on in New England and the west coast regarding Southerners - they took that real stereotype and railed against it, publically.

Now, they don't really represent Southerners and never did - they care more about the wealthy elite than most Democrats and most Southerners aren't wealthy elites. But, they certainly gave enough lip service to our alleged values here to make them the "party" of the South.

It wasn't Nixon's "Southern Strategy," let's make that clear, because the South didn't vote in a block for Republicans until 1994 (and even still re-elected Clinton president in 1996), so, unless that was the slowest-moving strategy ever, it wasn't that. It was precisely as I said: it was Republicans pretending to defend Southerners against real bigotry from other parts of the country.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. Kick

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. kick

[Arugula Latte]

9. Hey, Repukes --

YOU are the ones who consciously painted yourself as the party of rednecks, NASCAR dudes, bigots, religious freaks, Southern racists (that was your Strategy -- remember?), misogynists, anti-environmentalists, Bible-thumping nutcases, red state fanatics, and so on.

You lie down with the dogs, you get fleas.