Thursday, September 28, 2006
An Appeal to My Friends In The South
The Republicans and their media take the South for granted.
This is the footnote to a piece I posted last Saturday:
"Wilson, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Gore, and arguably Truman are Southerners who the Democratic Party has nominated as President within the past century.
Other than Lincoln I’m hard pressed to remember a real Southerner who has gotten the Republican nomination for President. George I and II are the Republican Party’s idea of Southerners to give their Presidential nomination. These products of New England Yankeedom always seemed to me rather more in the tradition of carpetbaggers than genuine Southerners. I’ll tell you, they tend to lose their Southern accents when they’re here in Maine. If Southerners want to overlook their provenance that’s their business, but why the exception for the Bush clan?
Since Southerners are the primary target audience of this Republican regionalist garbage they might also wonder why are the Southern contenders for the Republican nomination in 2008 so completely ignored by the media in favor of McCain and Romney. That’s Governor Romney from Massachusetts. Now that he’s decided to not be from Utah where he was also considering running. Maybe the media is quite atypically just going on history to decide who has a chance in which party. Mark Warner of Virginia and John Edwards of North Carolina are certainly getting a lot of attention for the Democratic nomination as is Al Gore."
So, why the media and the Republican establishment are taking Southerners for granted is an excellent question to ask in this run up to the Presidential campaign, don’t you think?
Please ask this question of other Southerners, especially Republican Southerners. Please point out that other than these two retrofitted New England Yankees the Republican Party hasn’t run a Southerner as President. You can look at the list. They’ve, in fact, not run a single Southerner that I can identify. If you want to go out on a limb and count Abraham Lincoln of Springfield Illinois as a Southerner they’ve not run a single one in about a hundred-fifty years.
The Republican Party has courted the South starting in 1948 and it’s gotten the Southern vote in most of the recent Presidential elections, but they know they can count on the Southern vote and so they take it for granted. Maybe Southerners would like to show them they can’t make that assumption.
I’m counting on you, friends. You can clearly see the advantage of Southerners being convinced to not put up with this situation, you can get the job done.
The Republicans and their media take the South for granted.
This is the footnote to a piece I posted last Saturday:
"Wilson, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Gore, and arguably Truman are Southerners who the Democratic Party has nominated as President within the past century.
Other than Lincoln I’m hard pressed to remember a real Southerner who has gotten the Republican nomination for President. George I and II are the Republican Party’s idea of Southerners to give their Presidential nomination. These products of New England Yankeedom always seemed to me rather more in the tradition of carpetbaggers than genuine Southerners. I’ll tell you, they tend to lose their Southern accents when they’re here in Maine. If Southerners want to overlook their provenance that’s their business, but why the exception for the Bush clan?
Since Southerners are the primary target audience of this Republican regionalist garbage they might also wonder why are the Southern contenders for the Republican nomination in 2008 so completely ignored by the media in favor of McCain and Romney. That’s Governor Romney from Massachusetts. Now that he’s decided to not be from Utah where he was also considering running. Maybe the media is quite atypically just going on history to decide who has a chance in which party. Mark Warner of Virginia and John Edwards of North Carolina are certainly getting a lot of attention for the Democratic nomination as is Al Gore."
So, why the media and the Republican establishment are taking Southerners for granted is an excellent question to ask in this run up to the Presidential campaign, don’t you think?
Please ask this question of other Southerners, especially Republican Southerners. Please point out that other than these two retrofitted New England Yankees the Republican Party hasn’t run a Southerner as President. You can look at the list. They’ve, in fact, not run a single Southerner that I can identify. If you want to go out on a limb and count Abraham Lincoln of Springfield Illinois as a Southerner they’ve not run a single one in about a hundred-fifty years.
The Republican Party has courted the South starting in 1948 and it’s gotten the Southern vote in most of the recent Presidential elections, but they know they can count on the Southern vote and so they take it for granted. Maybe Southerners would like to show them they can’t make that assumption.
I’m counting on you, friends. You can clearly see the advantage of Southerners being convinced to not put up with this situation, you can get the job done.
Comments:
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This turns the democrats take blacks for granted meme on its head, doesn't it. It might work to stop McCain but I don't think he has much of a chance any way.
# posted by 
: 11:46 AM
: 11:46 AM
These products of New England Yankeedom always seemed to me rather more in the tradition of carpetbaggers than genuine Southerners.
I'm not so sure about that -- I always thought of the carpetbaggers as the sorts of people who helped to rebuild the South in more the image of the North but who were emphatically not wanted by the powers that be in the South.
OTOH, the Bushes and their ilk fit right in with the powers that be and are sort of imported aristocracy complementing the native aristocracy just fine. To put it another way, they ain't livin' out of whatever they can carry in a carpet-bag but from whatever they can carry in a private jet. They have no intention of bringing the South up to date, but, while not Southrons themselves, are very much in the tradition of the Southern aristocracy even if they pretend, veyr badly to be sure, to be in the tradition of the Southern proles.
Meanwhile, in my part of the South, I'm not sure how well it'll play out to point out that the GOP folks are not real Southrons -- most of us are not from 'round these parts in the first place!
Also, FWIW, I'm not sure where in AZ McCain's from, but parts of AZ were Confederate territory in the Civil War and the whole place was actually contested. So if Truman's a Southron, so's McCain, even if he don't have no funny Southron accent.
I'm not so sure about that -- I always thought of the carpetbaggers as the sorts of people who helped to rebuild the South in more the image of the North but who were emphatically not wanted by the powers that be in the South.
OTOH, the Bushes and their ilk fit right in with the powers that be and are sort of imported aristocracy complementing the native aristocracy just fine. To put it another way, they ain't livin' out of whatever they can carry in a carpet-bag but from whatever they can carry in a private jet. They have no intention of bringing the South up to date, but, while not Southrons themselves, are very much in the tradition of the Southern aristocracy even if they pretend, veyr badly to be sure, to be in the tradition of the Southern proles.
Meanwhile, in my part of the South, I'm not sure how well it'll play out to point out that the GOP folks are not real Southrons -- most of us are not from 'round these parts in the first place!
Also, FWIW, I'm not sure where in AZ McCain's from, but parts of AZ were Confederate territory in the Civil War and the whole place was actually contested. So if Truman's a Southron, so's McCain, even if he don't have no funny Southron accent.
Oh but very interesting and oft forgotten point about Lincoln (and even more so about his much maligned, never trusted but, IIRC, in fact more abolitionist than he was, wife).
Oh, come on alberich, I've never met an Arizonan who thinks they're from "the South". They're West'ners. And after putting up with all that complaining about New England all these years I'm not giving an inch on the Bushes. If they hate Yankees so much then they can't adopt two of them without me commenting on it.
Besides, this could be a lot of fun.
Anonymous, that was kind of the idea, yes.
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Besides, this could be a lot of fun.
Anonymous, that was kind of the idea, yes.
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