The recent GOP victories have all had one thing in common: the successful candidates have campaigned claiming to be moderates and tried to avoid social issues dear to the GOP base which is increasingly focused in the Deep South. Whether or not these winning candidates will act as moderates now that they are in office is another issue and a danger for the GOP if they do not govern with moderate position since if they do not, hopefully the electorate will learn that lying during campaigns is the GOP norm. Virginia governor Bob McDonnell is a case in point. Every position he has taken since being sworn in tends to confirm that he is no moderate regardless of a well run campaign that stayed on a false message of moderation. The Financial Times looks at the problem the national GOP will likely face as it tries to win independent voters yet not alienate the bat shit crazy base, especially in the South. Here are some highlights: *
The south is the spiritual and – along with the mountain states of the west – electoral base of the Republican party. And yet, as the party struggles back into national relevance with recent gubernatorial triumphs in both New Jersey and Virginia and a genuinely shocking upset last month with the victory by Scott Brown in the race for Ted Kennedy’s former seat in Massachusetts, the south has become as much a curse as a blessing. If the “Grand Ol’ Party” wants to win nationally in 2010, it must attract voters who do not identify with southern values. And if it wants to harness, as it did in Massachusetts, the power of the anti-Washington “tea party” protests – the grassroots movement that emerged in 2009 in opposition to Obama’s tax and spending plans – it may have to distance itself from the southern establishment. The great paradox of recovery, then, is that it now seems that the fastest way for the Republican party to return to its broader base of the late 1990s and early 2000s is at the expense of its most loyal and ardent followers.
*
The south is still defined by the spaces in between its cities, the rural expanses separating Charlotte, Atlanta and Birmingham. While this world is changing – a drive through the south today offers few glimpses of the grime-faced, dungareed cotton pickers of old – some elements of life here remain intractably linked to the impoverished Reconstruction years following the civil war. Southerners are still poorer, more conservative, more religious and less educated than their northern peers.
*
Everyone to whom we spoke placed great stock in the unique intersection of religion, tradition and grassroots politics that plays out in their communities every day. Such fierce local engagement has a corollary: fear of change and interference. These fears manifest themselves in an underlying anxiety about life and livelihood in the south.
*
This is the constituency who lack “the resources and social capital to rebound from illegitimacy, broken homes, and failed marriages” – and many of them are southern. For these voters, issues such as abortion and gay marriage are not simply political questions but moral ones – indicators of their insecurity about changing social and economic structures.
*
[F]rom South Carolina to Louisiana, we encountered a general distaste for such politicking. Asked about gay marriage, abortion or gun control – all strategy-shaping issues key to Republican victories in the past 20 years – southerners sighed and explained that their views on these didn’t define them and never would. We met many southerners who cared deeply about these topics and whose vote depended upon them; what they resented was the suggestion that their worldview could be boiled down to a singular cause, their political power caricatured away.
*
Even more troubling than these polling numbers were the demographics of the group that identified as Republican. A base that was once geographically and economically diverse had largely been whittled down to a single constituency. The question for the Republican party, then, is how to address southern anxiety about a changing world – and an endangered heritage – while also managing to appeal to voters in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and across the nation.
*
All across the south we hear similar views. One man in tiny Oneonta, Alabama, told us “there are more Mexicans than white people”, even though, across the region, evidence suggests otherwise.
*
The Republicans can’t win in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey for that matter, with a southern-themed party, but now they have proven that they can win on a pragmatically themed, economically conservative platform. Ultimately, Brown triumphed because he rejected Obama’s big spending, on healthcare and beyond. But, tellingly, he ran less as a Republican than as the alternative to Obamanomics; just try to find the word “Republican” on his website.
*
By the end of our journey it was clear to us that the south is up for grabs; the southerners we spoke to are as disenchanted with Republicans as they are with Democrats. If Republicans walk away from the southern voter, the Democrats may have a chance to regain ground in a land they once dominated.
*
The irony is that in many parts of the South - outside the large cities of Atlanta, Charlotte, Birmingham and New Orleans - it is exactly the conservative social beliefs and "anti-other" mindset that keeps the area more impoverished and less likely to see modern businesses and industries relocate there. Many companies and employees simply do not want to move to a bigoted and intolerant region. Thus, many Southerners are ultimately their own worse enemy. Having lived in Alabama myself, I have seen the phenomenon first hand. Thus the challenge for the GOP is how to retain this voting block without alienating everyone else
The south is the spiritual and – along with the mountain states of the west – electoral base of the Republican party. And yet, as the party struggles back into national relevance with recent gubernatorial triumphs in both New Jersey and Virginia and a genuinely shocking upset last month with the victory by Scott Brown in the race for Ted Kennedy’s former seat in Massachusetts, the south has become as much a curse as a blessing. If the “Grand Ol’ Party” wants to win nationally in 2010, it must attract voters who do not identify with southern values. And if it wants to harness, as it did in Massachusetts, the power of the anti-Washington “tea party” protests – the grassroots movement that emerged in 2009 in opposition to Obama’s tax and spending plans – it may have to distance itself from the southern establishment. The great paradox of recovery, then, is that it now seems that the fastest way for the Republican party to return to its broader base of the late 1990s and early 2000s is at the expense of its most loyal and ardent followers.
*
The south is still defined by the spaces in between its cities, the rural expanses separating Charlotte, Atlanta and Birmingham. While this world is changing – a drive through the south today offers few glimpses of the grime-faced, dungareed cotton pickers of old – some elements of life here remain intractably linked to the impoverished Reconstruction years following the civil war. Southerners are still poorer, more conservative, more religious and less educated than their northern peers.
*
Everyone to whom we spoke placed great stock in the unique intersection of religion, tradition and grassroots politics that plays out in their communities every day. Such fierce local engagement has a corollary: fear of change and interference. These fears manifest themselves in an underlying anxiety about life and livelihood in the south.
*
This is the constituency who lack “the resources and social capital to rebound from illegitimacy, broken homes, and failed marriages” – and many of them are southern. For these voters, issues such as abortion and gay marriage are not simply political questions but moral ones – indicators of their insecurity about changing social and economic structures.
*
[F]rom South Carolina to Louisiana, we encountered a general distaste for such politicking. Asked about gay marriage, abortion or gun control – all strategy-shaping issues key to Republican victories in the past 20 years – southerners sighed and explained that their views on these didn’t define them and never would. We met many southerners who cared deeply about these topics and whose vote depended upon them; what they resented was the suggestion that their worldview could be boiled down to a singular cause, their political power caricatured away.
*
Even more troubling than these polling numbers were the demographics of the group that identified as Republican. A base that was once geographically and economically diverse had largely been whittled down to a single constituency. The question for the Republican party, then, is how to address southern anxiety about a changing world – and an endangered heritage – while also managing to appeal to voters in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and across the nation.
*
All across the south we hear similar views. One man in tiny Oneonta, Alabama, told us “there are more Mexicans than white people”, even though, across the region, evidence suggests otherwise.
*
The Republicans can’t win in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey for that matter, with a southern-themed party, but now they have proven that they can win on a pragmatically themed, economically conservative platform. Ultimately, Brown triumphed because he rejected Obama’s big spending, on healthcare and beyond. But, tellingly, he ran less as a Republican than as the alternative to Obamanomics; just try to find the word “Republican” on his website.
*
By the end of our journey it was clear to us that the south is up for grabs; the southerners we spoke to are as disenchanted with Republicans as they are with Democrats. If Republicans walk away from the southern voter, the Democrats may have a chance to regain ground in a land they once dominated.
*
The irony is that in many parts of the South - outside the large cities of Atlanta, Charlotte, Birmingham and New Orleans - it is exactly the conservative social beliefs and "anti-other" mindset that keeps the area more impoverished and less likely to see modern businesses and industries relocate there. Many companies and employees simply do not want to move to a bigoted and intolerant region. Thus, many Southerners are ultimately their own worse enemy. Having lived in Alabama myself, I have seen the phenomenon first hand. Thus the challenge for the GOP is how to retain this voting block without alienating everyone else
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