The Great White Last Gasp

For weeks, I've been trying to come up with a better title. Something that "sings". Forget getting around to the article itself -- writing about how the Republican Party has become the Party of the Confederacy, how it is falling apart and how it will leave the South politically isolated.

 I've procrastinated long enough that someone else has written it for me. Never mind the few details where we differ. Gene Lyons has the big picture correct and he actually got around to writing his article (unlike me.)

 Thanks to my friend Tommy for pointing it out. Yes, I noticed that The Arkansas Times misspelled "Strategy". But they'll actually let you read the column, unlike most other newspapers. By the way, if you're new to the game and haven't heard of the Southern Strategy, you can get an education here.

The end of the Southern Stategy 

"Nor, however, are their fears entirely irrational. Because if the polls are right — and a disinterested observer would have to say that professional pollsters have grown increasingly accurate at predicting recent contests — the 2012 presidential election may not bring about "The Rapture," but it could definitely mark the definitive end of a political era. 

Specifically, it doesn't matter how badly President Obama loses the five Deep South states won by Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1968 — along with, say, South Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma. Should he prevail in most of the nine "swing states" where everybody agrees that the contest will be decided, and where Obama currently appears to lead by strong majorities, the white, GOP-accented South will find itself politically marooned.

Again." 

This part is only to show you this guy isn't pulling any punches.

"The temptation for Southern Republicans would be to double down on the crazy, because "conservatism," so-called, can never fail, only BE failed. Also because religious melodrama is really what an awful lot of them are really about. That, and Koch Brothers money. They're not actually conservatives at all, in the classical sense, but sentimental fanatics seeking to purge the nation of sin; adepts of "limited government" with their noses buried in women's panty drawers; apostles of a lost Utopia located in a non-existent past, most often in Sixties sitcoms like the "Andy Griffith Show.""

 Don Brown
October 12, 2012