Southern man

[ensho]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/11/southern_man.cfm


IT HELPS to be outside the South to realise this, which is why perhaps my colleague in Austin forgot to mention it. Southerners haven't lost their country, but they have lost power—a power they disproportionately enjoyed for nearly the entire Clinton-Bush II era.

I'm a southerner myself, but I've spent the past 12 years outside the region (in Britain and in New York). When away, I realised in a visceral way, watching news from home, just how southern the top tiers of Washington had become. Everyone had the drawl of my high-school teachers. Bill Clinton (Arkansas) and Al Gore (Tennessee) duked it out with a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich (Georgia, who admittedly has no drawl), Dick Armey (Texas) and Trent Lott (Mississippi). Then Mr Clinton gave way to George Bush (Texas), and after the Senate went briefly Democratic, it went Republican again, with Mr Lott giving way to Bill Frist (Tennessee) and Mr Armey to Tom DeLay (Texas). It was southerners in every position of power for an unusually long time.

In 2006, things started to go wrong. Nancy Pelosi (California) and Harry Reid (Nevada) took over the top jobs in Congress. Then Barack Obama (Illinois) was elected president, and declined to balance his ticket regionally by picking a southerner.

But the Republican leadership shifted too. The party ran two non-southerners for president and vice-president in John McCain and Sarah Palin. The RNC is now run by a black Marylander, Michael Steele. The House minority leader, John Boehner, hails from Ohio. The whip's job has gone to Eric Cantor who, though Virginian, is an atypical southern Republican in being Jewish. Only Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the Senate majority leader, is the stereotypical white Protestant southerner. His whip and assistant, John Kyl, comes from Arizona.
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the writer thinks the swing away from the south won't last.

[Warpy]

1. He could be right, although I see the midwest

from Texas northward as being their real stronghold. Like it or not, the south is changing slowly and becoming more purple than red.

Whether or not this is reflected in their leadership in years to come is moot. They might go back to the south as a way of returning to what worked in the past, certainly consistent with their basic conservatism. They could also follow their real base and develop midwestern leadership.

It's their party. They have never made sense to me and will continue to fail to do so.

[valerief]

2. The south offers us three things:

1) Jesus on Capitol Hill
2) Tax cuts for the rich
3) White-only rallies

These are things that won't be missed by most Americans, if, indeed, we get the opportunity to miss them.

[pecwae]

3. Yeah, we're all racist skinheads

and that's why NC went blue.