THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN MAY 25, 2011
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With Mitch Daniels officially out of the race, Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee now a distant after-thought, and Newt Gingrich’s campaign running on fumes, pundits of all political stripes are finding it hard to shake a persistent belief that there’s a gaping hole in the Republican presidential field. Indeed, the most frequent theme that keeps cropping up in smart analysis of the current state of play is that the contest cries out for a late-entering, credible southern candidate. The figure most often pointed to is Texas Governor Rick Perry, on the grounds that, well, southerners are especially inclined to vote for southerners, and no matter who wins Iowa or Nevada or New Hampshire, the real deal may go down in Dixie. But these analyses all suffer from the same flaw: They overestimate the pull of regional affinity and underestimate ideology. And while, in the past, significant regional differences existed when it came to ideological belief within the Republican Party, that era is sunsetting and, with it, so too are the built-in advantages of the southern Republican candidate.
As a South Carolina native, albeit an expat and something of a liberal scalawag, I’m always intrigued by Confeder-o-centric theories of national politics, particularly if they are advanced by Yankees who seem to be approaching the strange and atavistic characteristics of the region with oven mittens and tongs.
One such Yankee is The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, who comes at the subject while utilizing the highly suspect claim that the South is actually just a subset of a mega-region called the Sunbelt that stretches from Virginia to California, and that has dominated national politics in recent decades. With this axiom firmly in place, Cost can easily demonstrate that Sunbelt voters tend to support Sunbelt candidates for president. But if “Sunbelt” is a time-worn term for explaining political, demographic, and economic trends, it’s not actually meaningful at all when it comes to explaining southern cultural affinity. Southerners, white or black, do not tend to view Californians or Arizonans or Nevadans as part of their family. To the extent that you hear from real people about the Sunbelt in most of the South, it refers to an aspiring college athletic conference that is totally eclipsed by the SEC and ACC. Cost’s suggestion that southerners gravitated to Sunbelt candidates from outside the South like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and John McCain for reasons of regional solidarity is therefore dubious at best.
From a more defensible empirical foundation, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver looked at regional solidarity in Republican presidential primary contests and concluded that southerners (using a reasonable definition of the term) were more likely to support a local candidate than Republicans (or for that matter, Democrats) in other regions. But in discussing regional affinity issues, Silver underrates the external factor of ideology. Until fairly recently, southern Republicans were ideologically distinct from GOPers in other regions, but that’s hardly the case now. If you did a blind test today of the messages of Republican candidates for president, you would not have much reason to assume that this candidate or that was from this place or that. For decades, southern Republicans have been known for hostility to the very idea of unions. That is now an increasingly entrenched national GOP position, as demonstrated by the agendas of Republican governors in Michigan and Ohio. Hard-core southern conservative litmus tests on abortion, same-sex marriage, federal civil rights efforts, energy policy, and welfare (defined as any measure that redistributes income to help the poor) are now also standard national GOP fare. So do southern Republicans still need a southerner to preach their gospel these days? Not really.
Moreover, one can make a strong case that ideology, more than home cooking, has always been the deciding factor in southern Republican presidential preferences. The two deities of modern southern Republicanism are Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, neither of them southerners in any respect other than ideology. In 1980, Reagan nailed down the GOP nomination between March 8 and March 11 in four southern states—South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia—defeating southerners John Connally, George H.W. Bush, and Howard Baker in the process. In 1996, Kansan Bob Dole beat southerner Lamar Alexander throughout the South after establishing himself as the orthodox conservative favorite. And while George W. Bush beat John McCain in South Carolina in 2000, it hardly seems due to the fact that he was southern. Rather, it was because Bush was the candidate of the conservative establishment (especially its religious wing) that considered McCain a deadly threat to its power in the GOP. And did Mike Huckabee’s battle against McCain in the South in 2008 depend on his southern identity (compared to, say, me, Huck has little or no discernable southern accent), or on the fact that he is a conservative evangelical Protestant minister?
It seems likely, in other words, that southern Republicans tend to support the most conservative viable candidate in presidential primaries at least as much as they support fellow-southerners. This hypothesis more reliably explains the results in southern presidential primaries in years when both southerners (Bush 43) and non-southerners (McCain), Sunbelt (Reagan) and Midwest (Dole) candidates, have won. This could play out once again in 2012 if, for example, Rick Perry decides to run, but South Carolina’s Jim DeMint and Nikki Haley endorse Tim Pawlenty, a conservative evangelical beloved of anti-abortion activists. In that scenario, it’s very unlikely that Perry would win in the Palmetto State just because he is from Texas, as opposed to Minnesota. The limited appeal of regional identity would become even more obvious if Perry’s opponent in the South turned out to be Sarah Palin, who is from an area nearly as far away from South Carolina as you can get.
To be sure, it doesn’t hurt a Republican candidate running in the South to show some regional street cred, whether it’s through an accent or a familiarity with what to say in a Southern Baptist Church in Greenville or what to order at Lizard's Thicket in Columbia. But it’s not enough. More than anything else, Southern Republicans love conservative ideology, and they’ll take it where they can find it, even if it’s articulated in the alien tones of Minnesota or Alaska.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
Follow @tnr on Twitter.
16 comments
An interpretation of a dramatic, messy break-up once demographics & common sense finally one day tilt southeastern states away from the right wing: South: It seems we've been at cross purposes, doesn't it? But it's no use now. As long as there was a Bush, there was a chance that we might be happy. I liked to think that Bush was you, a little girl again, before the war and poverty had done things to you. She was so like you, and I could pet her, and spoil her, as I wanted to spoil you. But when she went, she took everything. GOP establishment: Oh, South, South, please don't say that. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for everything. South: My darling, you're such a child. You think that by saying, "I'm sorry," all the past can be corrected. Here, take my handkerchief. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a handkerchief. GOP establishment: South! South, where are you going? South: I'm going back to Charleston, back where I belong. GOP establishment: Please, please take me with you! South: No, I'm through with everything here. I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace. Do you know what I'm talking about? GOP establishment: No! I only know that I love you. South: That's your misfortune. [South turns to walk down the stairs] GOP establishment: Oh, South! [GOP watches South walk to the door] GOP establishment: South! [runs down the stairs after South] GOP establishment: South! South! South, South, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do? South: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
- Konstantin
May 25, 2011 at 12:51am
Which is why Pawlenty, who many deride as boring, would be a formidable candidate. As they say down here, he walks the walk.
- rayward
May 25, 2011 at 6:52am
Feh, Ray. He can walk the walk but when he balances budgets through Federal stimulus money and passing on tax increases to local government* and presides over a fatal bridge collapse, those of us outside the South don't have a hard time seeing him as a phony. And if Pawlenty doesn't have the rhetorical firepower to subvert that kind of message, he isn't going to win any states that McCain didn't win in 2008. * Same goes for Rick Perry and Chris Christie, BTW.
- wildboy
May 25, 2011 at 9:59am
George H.W. Bush wasn't a southerner. Pawlenty does not "walk the walk". He governed Minnesota (not particularly well) as a relatively moderate mainstream conservative, not a fire-breathing True Believer. He's been trying to sound more extreme recently in an attempt to get the support of the far right, but it doesn't ring true, and those folks can tell he's not really one of them. He's too much of an opportunist; with a smaller version of Romney's problems. He may be able to win the nomination as the only man with a remote chance of winning the presidency that the far right can tolerate, but he can't beat Obama that way, and tacking back toward the center is not an option in today's Republican party.
- K_Wilson
May 25, 2011 at 10:25am
Um, this article doesn't say what the subhead says it says. What the article says is that southerners will vote for a non-southerner if the ideology is right (when was that not true?), not that the South's grip on the Republican Party is over. If McCain had gone with his druthers in 2008 and chosen Connecticut Joe Lieberman as his running mate, he probably would have struggled to carry Texas. The evangelical grip on the Republicans is tighter than ever, and the South is the evangelical region par excellence.
- AlanVann
May 25, 2011 at 10:47am
Walk the walk is an evangelical Christian expression, taken from the Gospels, meaning to walk with Christ (Jesus). [One needs an evangelical to English easy translation book down here.] Most evangelical Christians equate piety with walking the walk, which is why GWB had such a bond with evangelicals. Same thing is likely to happen with Pawlenty. Read Pawlenty's book if you want to know what I am talking about. The fact that walking the walk as used in the Gospels has nothing to do with piety is, unfortunately, irrelevant. To walk with Jesus means giving up all of one's possessions (it's both a sacrafice and a release from bondage) and living one's life as Jesus lived His. For those wanting to know about the subject, there is no better book than Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship; Bonhoeffer definitely knew how to walk the walk. Evangelicals make up almost one-third of the population, so to ignore them, or, worse, belittle them, is a mistake. Moreover, the message of sacrafice comes far closer to what they believe than the message of self-interest that is coming from the Republican Party. The politician who is willing to listen to evangelicals has much to gain.
- rayward
May 25, 2011 at 12:21pm
I'm with Alan. The title does not fit the substance and in fact actually runs contrary. If southerners will vote for conservatives and the GOP is fielding conservatives what has changed?
- NR857175
May 25, 2011 at 12:25pm
There's a contradiction in this article...if the previously right-wing ideology of Southern evangelicals has spread to the GOP nationally, then that makes regional identity more salient, not less. If Pawlenty and Perry (or Jeb) are running--and if they are ideologically similar--then southerners are going to cotton to Perry because of cultural affinity. That's why I think Pawlenty will turn off some Southerners because his (to them) grating Minnesota accent and mousy demeanor. Of course, in the current field, there's no Southern candidate with evangelical bona fides, so I don't think it'll matter that much to Pawlenty's chances.
- polcereal
May 25, 2011 at 12:26pm
Konstantin -- nice piece of work, sir!
- ironyroad
May 25, 2011 at 1:00pm
Rayward says: "Moreover, the message of sacrafice comes far closer to what they believe than the message of self-interest that is coming from the Republican Party." Rayward...I have yet to meet very many pious Evangelicals and most of those leading the mega-churchs aren't leading a life of piety either. Their "walking the walk", I think, is a narrowed view of interpreting the New Testament and the act of being "reborn." It wasn't Bush's piety that they admired, it was his swagger and self-determined relationship with Jesus that they admired. I find the Evangelical and Born-Again crowds to be very self-centered when it comes to material issues and the preaching that "success" is what Jesus and God want for us and less so the piety that you refer to. ----- But with regards to Southerners voting for Conservatives because of ideology, that premise is based on the observed foundations of conservative Southerner thoughts and beliefs narrowed down to the following: Christian denomination - Evangelical, Protestant, Baptist, RC & Episcopal (these two split D&R) Abortion & Gay marriage "States' Rights" Wealth distribution aka giving their tax money to those shiftless _____. (Fill in your favorite minority, black or Hispanic) couple this with Immigration reform and you're golden. Any non-Southern state Conservative that kowtows to those 4 foundation blocks does well among conservative Southerners because the candidate is "walking the walk" as true Conservative. McCain failed in the South because he failed at immigration reform, being for it before he was against it but being white still was a plus. I've had a few white Southerners ask me (a Colorado expat in Louisiana now) if Colorado ever had a "Mexican" problem. Which was a euphemistic way of asking if we had the same issues with lazy Hispanics the way they have with lazy Blacks. Of course when I reply no, they act surprised. The complex contradictions inherent in day-to-day culture, especially the deep South is very different than the predominantly White Evangelical Southern culture that is currently driving the national political positions of the Conservative Right.
- singlspeed
May 25, 2011 at 1:25pm
The Republicans can't run Southerners with deep, traditional Southern conservative roots nationally (the Bushes being an exception because of their Southernness is moderated by deep Northeastern connections) for the same reason the Democrats haven't been able to run, and win, with candidates from the Northeast -- such candidates are seen as representing the ideological extreme of the party. That's why, with the exception of the Bushes, since the 1970s (when the South began to go Republican) the preferred top of the ticket has been a Western conservative like Nixon, Reagan, McCain, who could appeal to Southerners without scaring everyone else, and, as less desirable but adequate alternatives, more moderate Midwesterners like Ford and Dole. But, now that the party has, as Kilgore points out, entirely adopted the traditional positions of formerly Democratic and Dixiecrat Southern Conservatives, it remains to be seen if candidates from the West and the Midwest can capture "the base" and be viable as national candidates. Palin represents where Western conservativism is today -- which is; more populist and religious, less libertarian, and not very popular in the larger population, more socially libertarian states of the West, not viable in the more liberal Northeast, and, insufficiently tested in the Midwest. It's unlikely we'll see any more national Republican stars appear from California in the near future. For that reason, the GOP desperately needs to develop some star power in the midwest or the Northeast. The lastest round of elections gave them a chance to do so. It's too early to come to any conclusions, but, so far, their efforts to impose Southern policy and ideological preferences on states with very different economic histories (from the Southern states), and very different (in fact in some cases quite opposite) long standing political traditions isn't going all that smoothly. That's why they seem to be making limiting who can vote such a priority (Wisconsin may pass legislation that will disenfrachise 20% of voters in that state.)
- esmense
May 25, 2011 at 2:31pm
No, Bush 41 is not a Southerner. I would argue that Bush 43 isn't either. (He was born in Connecticut, and even if you give him credit for growing up in Midland, over here in Arkansas we don't recognize Texans as real Southerners.) Heck, Newt isn't a Southerner, either. All of which supports Kilgore's point. It's about ideology.
- rlpeterson
May 26, 2011 at 11:49am
ripeterson -- That is exactly my point. The Bushes aren't really Southerners. (My point was that the GOP can't successfully run a traditional Southern conservative for the presidency.) But, the Texas connection has uniquely innoculated the Bushes from the disadvantages a (perceived as more moderate and on some issues even liberal) candidate from the Northeast would face with their Southern and rural Mountain state base.
- esmense
May 26, 2011 at 12:26pm
ripeterson -- Another point; while it is true that it is "about ideology" it is also true that it is about ideology that has historically dominated on one unique region of the country. Can the Republicans sell that ideology nationwide? In regions with historically very different economic and political traditions? That remains to be seen. (The unpopularity of the new Midwestern governors indicates it may not be easy.)
- esmense
May 26, 2011 at 12:31pm
Above should read "only one" not "on one." Sorry.
- esmense
May 26, 2011 at 12:32pm
All Republicans are Southerners now so it doesn't matter if the GOP nominee is, ya know, actually from the South! The party of Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller has been replaced by the party of Strom Thurmond, which no doubt has two of the three spinning in their graves! Richard Jasper (Another expat, "something of a liberal" Southerner...) Oneonta, NY
- arpeejay
May 27, 2011 at 5:32pm