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Go Home Is The South Too Republican For Republicans?

THE STUMP MARCH 12, 2012

Is The South Too Republican For Republicans?

BY ALEC MACGILLIS

The year before his 2010 retirement from the Senate, Ohio Republican George Voinovich offered one of the more candid and colorful recent assessments of what had happened to his party. Asked by The Columbus Dispatch what his party's biggest problem was, he answered: "We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns. It's the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

Granted, a year after he said this, the Republican wave made the party look a little less regionally boxed-in—a Republican (Rob Portman) won Voinovich's seat, a Republican (John Kasich) became governor of Ohio, and another Ohioan, John Boehner, became Speaker of the House. Still, Voinovich's broader point was right on—the profile of today's GOP is inextricably linked with the party's rise to dominance in the South. The party's Southernness helps explain its potent mix of evangelism, strong support for the military and visceral opposition to taxes and social programs. It also helps explain its striking racial homogeneity, a feature that is causing no end of concern for party strategists like Karl Rove.

But it also raises a question regarding today's Republican primaries in Alabama and Mississsippi: If this year's GOP presidential candidates have all year been making such a conservative pitch in order to appeal to a party shaped by the South, why have they been having such a hard time connecting with voters in the most Southern states of all? I was unable to cover these two primaries—too bad, because I know from prior visits that early spring's a fine time to be in that corner of the country. But from the coverage on the ground, one gets the sense that voters in the two states have not known what to make of these candidates, despite the fact that their stump speeches have, it would seem, been tailor-made for them. In Monday's Washington Post, David Fahrenthold and Krissah Thompson reported: 

It sounded like a perfect match, red meat for red states. But, instead, everybody seemed a little uncomfortable. At rallies in Mississippi and Alabama, which hold primaries Tuesday, the candidates awkwardly fished for something they might have in common with Southern audiences. Newt Gingrich talked about gun racks but got his facts wrong. Mitt Romney announced, “I like grits.” Rick Santorum tried to describe a connection to Alabama but admitted he was not a frequent visitor. [The connection was his citation of the old quip about his home state, Pennsylvania, being Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.]

In small towns, many voters said they had noticed a cultural disconnect between themselves and the three East Coast-based candidates vying to lead their party. The candidates talked about conservative values, of course.

But, to people in pine-woods towns, it didn’t seem like they were living them out in the same way. “Southern people are conservative by need. You know, if you lived in the South 40 years ago, you’d know what I’m talking about,” said Donald Crocker, who has cut hair in tiny Leakesville since 1966. He meant that Southerners had learned to live poor, relying on their churches and their neighbors and not expecting government help. Even when their forebears received government handouts — cheese and powdered milk — they scrimped and saved and used it all. He still tries to live that way, charging just $9 per haircut and $10 for a flattop.

He felt strongly that President Obama would destroy this way of life, displaying a bumper sticker that said: “If you voted for Obama in ’08 to prove you’re not a racist, vote for someone else in ’12 to prove you’re not an idiot!” But he suspected none of the GOP candidates knew what he was talking about. “I will vote for them” against Obama, Crocker said. “But they don’t understand it like I do.”

In The New York Times, Campbell Robertson suggests that if voters still thought that adopted Southerner Newt Gingrich had a shot at the nomination, they'd rally around him as happened in South Carolina.

In a booth at Jean’s Restaurant in Meridian, Miss., Burnie Berrey, a 50-year-old elevator service technician, had some choice words for the Obama administration. Like many here, he is essentially a one-issue voter: the man who can beat President Obama is the man for him, even if that means eventually voting for Mr. Romney. The antipathy toward the current administration among Republican voters, described here in terms ranging from the vulgar to the apocalyptic, can hardly be exaggerated.

But he is hardly more complimentary of Mr. Romney. “He’s just Obama all over again,” Mr. Berrey said. “I would prefer Newt get it. He knows how the government runs, and he’s damn smarter than the rest of them.”

Nobody taps into the old fighting strain of Southern politics like Mr. Gingrich, who styles himself as an intellectual brawler who can outsmart the know-it-alls in Washington. If the primary had been held a month ago, Mr. Gingrich would probably have won in a walk, and even those who are leaning away from supporting him are not quite ready to let go completely. “In the back of your mind you know what’s coming,” said Chandler Castle, a 32-year-old from Meridian who works in construction. “But,” he added wistfully, as if speaking of an aging prize fighter, “I just want to see Newt and Obama in a debate.”

Still, even Newt is not capturing the imagination of voters as much as he would like. So what's going on? What is the "it" that the Republicans "don't understand" as well as Donald Crocker does, despite their conservative platform? 

Well, here's one thing to think about. What if the South has become so monolithically Republican that actual conservative proposals and argument of the sort that Santorum and Romney have been offering don't actually resonate all that much? 

Consider: Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi reside in a universe where virtually all white voters vote Republican. And no, this isn't just an Obama thing—Obama only got 11 percent of the white vote in Mississsippi in 2008, but that was barely worse than the 14 percent John Kerry got four years earlier. Increasingly, being a Democrat in the Deep South—a Democrat when it comes to national politics—means being African-American. This means that political polarization in the Deep South is of a different sort than it is elsewhere. It is very much aligned with the region's deep racial divides, but it is also arguably less ideological than it is elsewhere. For Rick Santorum, being a Republican and conservative in Pennsylvania and northern Virginia where he now lives means standing up for what he believes in amid the liberal, secular hordes who are pressing around him. For Mitt Romney, being a Republican in Massachusetts has been a less combative stance, but still one that sets him apart from many of the people he moved about with. Whereas in Mississippi, being Republican these days basically just means being ... a white Mississippian. To the extent that daily life still remains racially segregated (not just in the Deep South, of course) that means that most Deep South Republicans are interacting with other Republicans.

Such isolation, political science suggests, leads to more extreme positions, on either end of the spectrum (see the poll Monday showing that GOP primary voters in the two states are evenly divided on whether Barack Obama is a Muslim and are only marginally in support of interracial marriage.) But it also could make voters less attuned to the sorts of arguments and sound-bites that Romney and Santorum have become used to offering to Republicans who are more used to having it out with people in their own communities.

Take Santorum's pitch for home-schooling, which may not resonate as much in a place like Mississippi. In other states, he casts home-schooling as the prerogative of parents who want to remove their children from the secular factories of the state schools. But in the South, white parents started pulling their children out of the public schools long ago—not for home-schooling but for private and parochial schools, and less because of godless teachers than because of Brown vs Board of Education. Or take Romney's railing against what he calls Obama's "crony capitalism"—loans for Solyndra and other favored green-tech companies. As TNR contributor Ed Kilgore pointed out during the Rick Perry boomlet, the South has long been enamored of doling out tax breaks and cash to companies who set up shop there, a form of industrial policy that is considered a-ok because it's done by local Republicans. In this context, ideology matters less than culture and group identity, which is perhaps why both men have been reduced to making such excruciating cultural panders.

In a sense, it's all water under the Pascagoula High Rise Bridge, given that either man will easily win the two states come November. But it might explain why both of them will seem far more comfortable campaigning in states that they will have a far harder time carrying in the fall—states where the trees are the right height, and not every white voter is a Republican.

Follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis

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34 comments

"Well, I lie when I have to, And I cry when I can. But I die a little slower On that train to Birmingham." John Hiatt

- ironyroad

March 13, 2012 at 3:42am

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Pretty scary.

- paskunac

March 13, 2012 at 7:08am

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Pretty scary.

- paskunac

March 13, 2012 at 7:08am

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"[T]he South has long been enamored of doling out tax breaks and cash to companies who set up shop there . . . . But it might explain why both of them will seem far more comfortable campaigning in states that they will have a far harder time carrying in the fall—states where the trees are the right height". Michigan's trees might be the right height (so sayeth Romney), but the South comes in a distant second (to Michigan) when it comes to doling out tax benefits to the car companies. For those not familiar with Michigan, its tax base was almost completely eroded by local governments granting various tax breaks (can you say TIF) and providing low cost loans (can you say UDAG and zero interest loans) to the car companies to keep them in Michigan. Poking fun at southerners may be considered sport to my yankee friends at TNR, but let's be fair and make it an equal opportunity sport.

- rayward

March 13, 2012 at 10:03am

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I am so sick of Red Staters - this includes the South, and that giant ward of the U.S. Government, Alaska - professing what flinty independent souls they are while suckling at the Federal teat. As many studies show, the Red states bring in a lot more in Federal dollars than they pay out. While Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana vie constantly for 48th, 49th, and 50th place in just about any quality of life ranking, Southeners fear that the Muslim Kenyan threatens their "way of life". And Mr. Castle illustrates the maxim that Newt Gingrich is a dumb person's idea of what an intellectual sounds like.

- dubyadoubte

March 13, 2012 at 10:09am

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What does "errrr, errrrr" mean? Could any of you yankees translate? :)

- ATLeft

March 13, 2012 at 10:26am

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The issue is race-- always has been. All this talk about social values and independence from the government is just that. Talk. These States get enormous amounts of subsidies from the rest of us-- not just in social program expenditures, but all the federal projects, including military bases, that have been poured into them because of the House and Senate seniority system. I'd like to see a three pronged attack-- (1) Register every potential black voter in these States and then make sure they vote. We had huge registration drives in the 1960s, when it was dangerous to do so. I'd like to see the Obama campaign - or the Super PAC - replicate those efforts this year. I bet there are thousands of college students (and retirees!) who would sign-up to help. (2) I think there are enough sympathetic white and Hispanic voters in these States to make a race of it everywhere, but we need to involve them, as well, so they know they aren't alone. I'd perhaps start on the university campuses and at those high tech companies (Yes, there are some), and spread out from there. And let's have Barak make some forays into these States-- make speeches at some major universities to rally the troops and provide a recruitment vehicle. (3) I'd find a credible political figure who would start messaging about how the South gets more then it gives to the U.S. This would surely start an argument-- which is exactly what we need. If we do these things, we will have a better chance of holding North Carolina, actually winning South Carolina and making the GOP sit-up and take notice in the rest of the confederacy, including the near South of Kentucky and Tennessee.

- CABChi

March 13, 2012 at 11:12am

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Hey Southerners: I'm with Dubyadoubt and CABChi. I have an idea of something you could consider instead of whining for yet another generation that no one gets you and incessantly demanding that we (anyone not Southern) accept, worship, kow-tow to your loathing of everyone but you. How about if YOU try learning about and accepting US? How about if YOU consider having the humiity to *join America* rather than feeling entitled to judge, ignore and damn the rest of it? How about you you quit the martyr shtick and get on with it? We Californians do it all the time. Try it. Oh, and buy your own effing stop signs while you're at it.

- WandreyCer

March 13, 2012 at 11:47am

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One more point Mr/Mrs/Ms Southern primary voter - there isn't a dime's worth of difference between you and the voters who kept Marion Barry in office as mayor of DC for a dozen years. Think about it. Pure resentment and racial paranoia makes for crappy governing, at least think of your kids.

- WandreyCer

March 13, 2012 at 11:50am

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Wandrey, Southerers aren't like other Americans -- they lost what they thought was a war of independence and didn't have anything to take their minds off that loss for a very, very long time. If you can't be distracted from the searing pain of such a loss, you might as well cultivate a fantastical sense of victimhood as a salve. As many other defeated peoples around the world can relate, victimhood is the best thing you can hope for if victory isn't yours.

- wildboy

March 13, 2012 at 12:21pm

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As an example of Alabamians, I present the following: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/13/148499300/romneys-rivals-try-woo-undecided-southern-voters "Judy Sellers came to the forum with her young daughter. 'Everybody in America needs to pray, and just do what God has you to do as far as voting in the election,' said Sellers, a nurse who said she is frustrated by Obama's signature health care law. Romney is a Mormon, an unfamiliar faith here. But his religion didn't come up among the dozen attendees I spoke with. Instead, for people like Judy Sellers, it was Obama's faith that was an issue. 'I really don't think that a nation that falls on Muslim leadership, potentially, is going to be a nation that's going to survive,' she said. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. It's an issue that came up four years ago when he ran for president. And it's not the only topic that made a return appearance last night. John Gentile of Crossville, Tenn., still doesn't believe Obama is allowed to be president because his father was born in Kenya. 'I just don't like the directions that he's headed in, and personally I don't think he qualifies to be president under the "natural born citizen." In the Constitution it states that you have to have two parents that were born in the United States, so that there's no alternative allegiance by any member of the family,' Gentile said. The Constitution actually doesn't say that." Most Southerners would lose a battle of wits with a rock.

- zardoz67

March 13, 2012 at 12:24pm

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Well this post has certainly brought out the bi-annual / quadrennial mudslinging that the Yankees and Southerners part-take in every election cycle. As a Westerner from Colorado (that truly gritty, boot-strappin', horse ridin', purple swing sate) who lived in that politically & culturally schizophrenic area known as the 'DC Beltway' I can honestly say the 'Southern way of life' doesn't stop at the Carolina borders. There's a reason the Mason-Dixon line is so far North. I've met many white folks in those small town that had their 'The South Will Rise Again' bumper stickers and flew their rebel flags with pride while going on about them 'libruls' that ruin America with all that welfare crap for black folks and illegals. So I was thoroughly prepared for ass-backward thinking when I relocated to New Orleans. I've met folks from other parts of LA, AL, MS, and TN and the level of willful ignorance is breathtaking. I'm surprised I have still have a tongue left from having bitten it so many times from fighting the urge to clarify their ignoramus statements. Louisiana stands out as a state that, miraculously, has not collapsed from the inside due to corruption, graft and the kleptocratic business practices of 'old money' families, oil & gas, gambling, shipping, and timber. It's ability to cut itself off at the knees is only outdone by Alabama and Mississippi. YET...things are changing. MacGillis pretty much nails most of his observations about the political divide in the South as being a result of the cultural and racial divides that predates the current GOP's apoplexy. They give no rational reason for 'hating' Obama. They can't specifically name policies that have ruined their way of life or turned America into some sort of Commie gulag. Only that he's not 'Christian' might be a foreigner and black. Point out that, if it were it not for FEMA pouring billions into the Gulf States after Rita and Katrina, the Southern Gulf States would be far worse than they are and some of these Conservatives get a blank look of confusion on their faces and the thought bubble appears "Wait, FEMA dollars is payin' my construction company to repave that there road, you can't call me a welfare recipient!" About the only good thing happening as a result of those FEMA dollars pouring in is an influx of "Yankees" moving south. New Orleans and other major metropolitan areas in the South have had a influx of people moving in from northern & western States and foreign countries for various reasons the last 5 years. This will slowly begin to erode the hold on the GOP in the South along coastal areas. The Red strong holds will concentrate on the center states and mid-West but I won't predict any turning purple for another 10 years.

- singlspeed

March 13, 2012 at 12:39pm

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Except for Virginia and North Carolina, the southern states have always had an historical animus to the concept of public education. If TNR was fair-minded, they would invite former Congressman Gene Taylor, D, Mississippi, for his analysis. Taylor very ably represented his CD for twenty years until he was swept away with the other fiscal conservatives from North to South in 2010. Gene Taylor could have won the Presidency if he had not stayed a Democrat, now a political party that goes out of it's way to demonize pale-skinned people. “If you voted for Obama in ’08 to prove you’re not a racist, vote for someone else in ’12 to prove you’re not an idiot!” is a terrific bumper sticker, except for the possibility that Romney or Santorum might actually be the nominee. It is the Obama Presidency that is increasing racism in America. Most of us are tired of being falsely smeared as 'racist' when we disagree with his policies, absence of leadership, and race-baited cynical campaigning. I got enough of that from Charles Barron of Brooklyn and Farrakhan's hate-fueled screeds. Victimhood is THEIR domain. 03/13/2012 - 9:26am EDT | ATLeft " What does "errrr, errrrr" mean? Could any of you yankees translate? :) " I grew up in the still-poor from Reconstruction's carpetbaggers South, but came north for college and stayed north, now a regrettable decision. Could tell the difference between a Charleston and Savannah accent. I think Voinovich is being misquoted here. I think Alec MacGillis needs to stop seeing America as black and white. I think Mitt Romney needs to be force-fed bar-be-que in Tuscaloosa, Alabama before he ever says the words "cheesy grits" again. (disclaimer: I am on the tomato/molasses side of the B-B-Q sauce wars, and still avoid Spartanburg, SC where I got in trouble complaining about the vinegar-base B-B-Q sauce. Had no idea there was a sauce war that still divides the South!) Now, excuse me while I research where the cooperage in Kentucky gets wood from sugar maples for the barrels for the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

- K2K

March 13, 2012 at 12:58pm

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wildboy - my husband has a term for whiners who are blind to how much they have in life: cryin' the white man blues. A real bummer to be an American compared to most of the world isn't it? So they lost the civil war - try being of Mexican descent in California. I don't much like regionalism, but damn it, I didn't start it. Like I've said before, I'm a westerner - a proud Californian to be exact - and you'd be hard pressed to find a state with more ignorance spouted about it or a state that's more villified and/or mocked. We just laugh. Who cares? We're the seventh largest country in the world. We're not perfect by any stretch, our political culture is even more hopeless than DC, a neat trick. But here's the trick Southerners: here's what we do have: breathtaking beauty, one of the most profitable, safe and fecund farming cultures in the world (number one business in CA is still farming), Silicon Valley, beaches, the most influential entertainment industry on the planet and a culture that has always been revolutionary and prefers to dismantle all conventions. Look our history ain't pretty, we were Mexico 100 years ago and now somehow MEXICANS are the interlopers, give me a break already. (White people. Man, what can I say? Effing violent morons). I deal with snobbery and regionalsm all the time when I tell people where I grew up, so what? Do we cry in to our Jack Daniels every time some east coast toff sniffs at us? I mean, really. Get a life Southerners. Grow up! Stop gorging yourself on food that makes you obese and gives your kids diabetes at emergency rates - and whining like big babies when you're asked to take responsibility for yourselves! It's simply wrong! Stop ignoring the fact that you take more govenrment handouts than anywhere while claiming to be indepedent of the gubnint (how galling is this?), stop being so fucking racist! Grow up! Humbly and openly join the rest this country - I'm ready with open arms, I love the South - or stop demanding that the rest of us indulge you in the the sort of nonsense you'd spank your four year old children for. We're not putting up with it for one more minute!!!

- WandreyCer

March 13, 2012 at 1:03pm

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"...ideology matters less than culture and group identity." Alec hit it with that phrase about white southerners. Most of them are tribal, no matter where in the U.S. they reside. I grew up in Flint, MI, and almost everyone on my street was from Paragould Arkansas. My neighbors migrated to Flint to work in the GM and Standard Cotton plants there. They kept to themselves. They also kept some of their Ozark Mountains customs, like incest (I'm not kidding--Juanita, the Girl Next Door, was impregnated by one or more of her male relatives--her little brother, Herbie, a product of inbreeding, looked like the banjo-strummin' kid in Deliverance). I mentioned inbreeding because, while almost no southern people (from the hills or elsewhere) inbreed these days, white southern culture in general is very clannish, no matter where you find it. And, hey, I liked Herbie a lot. We were best pals for a while while I was growing up. I still think about him occasionally and wonder how he's doing. rayward, white culture is Michigan, because of all the southern migrants in the state, has a very strong southern flavor, which dominates the state north of the bigger cities (George Wallace did very well in Michigan, even as an Independent). You can't go anywhere in public, all the way up to the UP, without encountering folks like singlespeed described--stubborn, single-minded, clueless when it comes to political dialogue. And do they hate Obama? You betcha!

- magboy47.

March 13, 2012 at 1:43pm

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"the still-poor from Reconstruction's carpetbaggers South"????? That one has to take the cake, K2K! They're not poor because the Civil War (which they started) ravaged their land, decimated their male population and took away their main source of income (slaves) -- they're poor because of those durn carpetbaggers!

- wildboy

March 13, 2012 at 2:10pm

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aaaarrrrggghh.

- WandreyCer

March 13, 2012 at 2:47pm

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"victimhood is the best thing you can hope for if victory isn't yours." As you say, wilboy. And the truth is that defeat can be a lot more interesting, in an artistic sense, than victory. The culture of southern loss produced novelists like William Faulkner and Carson McCullers, poets like Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, and there is no northern equivalent to the popular power of Gone With the Wind. And "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" shows that even liberal 1970s folk-rock could be seduced by the Lost Cause.

- ironyroad

March 13, 2012 at 3:09pm

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wildboy: try reading Columbia U History professor Eric Foner on Reconstruction. Lincoln's vision died with him, as did his words "with malice towards none". Or try Frederick Law Olmsted's "The Cotton Kingdom" (yes, Olmsted was a journalist before 1860, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr re-published this in 1984). Slavery was already understood to be bad economics by 1860 - it would have ended on it's own, although I guess maybe the USA would have imported coolies from India as the British did for their former slave plantations in the West Indies - cheaper to pay Asian peasants than own slaves. According to detailed government stats, cotton exports from 1866-1930 accounted for the entire USA export surplus (sorry - I cannot post that data in TNR's format), thus paying for the post-1865 railroad expansion and industrialization that somehow mostly avoided the former states of the Confederacy. Mostly wildboy, please stop inventing history for your odd campaign to smear me. Better when I ignored your personal attacks.

- K2K

March 13, 2012 at 3:13pm

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irony: Margaret Mitchell wrote GWTW after she graduated from that Yankee bastion of radical :) feminism, Smith College.

- K2K

March 13, 2012 at 3:17pm

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Damn straight WandreyCer! (Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.) The South sounds...mental.

- IggyPop

March 13, 2012 at 3:28pm

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Well you know, K2K, a lot of people see more than a touch of feminism in GWTW -- it's disguised, but it's there. As Stephen Colbert said last night, the South is like a boy beginning puberty: You talk in a funny way and your testicles secede from the north.

- ironyroad

March 13, 2012 at 3:51pm

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K2K, I'm glad to leave aside personal attacks when you bring in sources for your views of the South and its history. Unfortunately, those sources don't support your rather tired old hypothesis that slavery was dying on its own as of 1860 or that Lincoln's malice-free Reconstruction would have made everything good again if only he wasn't killed. Let's start with the Lincoln trope, and your citing Eric Foner to back up your assertion. As Foner has pointed out in numerous works (including his magisterial "Reconstruction - America's Second Revolution"), Lincoln's Reconstruction policies were premised on the creation of a new, pro-Union class of Southern citizens and voters in the aftermath of the Civil War. That class would consist of freed slaves and Unionist whites, who were a combination of upcountry Appalachian small farmers and tradesmen who resented the pre-war political domination of the planter class and a relatively small number of urban merchants and planters who were pre-war adherents of the Whig and National Union Parties and distanced themselves from the Confederacy as soon as Union troops occupied their territories beginning in 1861. Lincoln's policies during the dry run for Reconstruction while the Civil War raged were primarily designed to preserve the loyalties of the Unionist whites and to protect communities of free blacks, while tamping down the efforts of more Radical Republican Army commanders to expropriate white property and redistribute it to blacks in occupied areas on the grounds that this was counter-productive to the war effort and hopes for Southern Unionist loyalty. Had Lincoln lived, most respected modern historians -- including Foner -- believe that he would have continued to pursue these policies along with their logical corollary, the direct or indirect disenfranchisement of Confederate sympathizers and their ban from active participation in state politics as Southern states returned to the Union. As it was, the Reconstruction policies of Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson represented a concious shift away from this vision and toward one of a conciliated South in which white Unionists and all but the most blatant Confederate partisans were tasked with quickly returning Southern states to the Union on the basis of reconstituted white privilege and severe restrictions on black labor and mobility (the infamous "Black Codes") that effectively replaced slavery with peonage. In addition to discrimination embodied in the new laws, Johnson's lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" created a security vacuum in the South where ex-Confederates were free to form the original Ku Klux Klan and other secret, violent associations to terrorize free blacks from exercising their new rights without much interference from occupying Federal troops. In short, as Foner pointed out, it was Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction that was a betrayal of Lincoln's promise to the nation and the freed slaves. And, when Johnson's political power was finally curbed by impeachment and the election of US Grant in 1868, Radical Reconstruction unfolded across the South in the manner substantially envisioned by Lincoln and his lieutenants. Blacks and poor whites were enfranchised and economically elevated, terror groups like the KKK were suppressed and government in the reconstructed Southern states passed into the hands of white Unionists and blacks who pursued (with a good deal of corruption ) expansionist economic policies and the modernization agriculture and infrastructure. This state of affairs persisted until the Compromise of 1876 resulted in the abandonment of Reconstruction as a Federal policy and the return of white supremacy in the South -- first de facto and, later, de jure through Jim Crow laws. As for slavery dying in 1860 -- most Civil War historians (including Foner, and especially James McPherson) could tell you that this is nothing more than a post-facto justification from the memoirs of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens and other ex-Confederate leaders to justify the Civil War as a conflict about something other than slavery. There was no sign of slavery dying anywhere in the American South up until 1860, or any thoughts among Southerners or that era that slavery was not a viable economic model for the American Territories. Slavery flourished in the Deep South throughout the 1840's and 1850's, as cotton, sugar and other slave-produced products made up the major part of America's export economy in that era. Slavery also flourished in the Upper South, both in the existing agricultural economy of food and tobacco and in a major market in selling slaves from Upper South states to the plantations of the Deep South. And, not content with slavery's growth in existing states, Southern politicians in the period between the Mexican War and the Civil War were aggressively pushing slavery's expansion into Kansas and potentially the Southwest (there was much talk of plantations in New Mexico) and into territories not yet controlled by the United States - Sinaloa and Chihuahua in Mexico, Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central America, the Dominican Republic and especially Cuba, where Southern "filibusterers" supported Narciso Lopez's abortive revolt against the Spanish in the 1850s. Lincoln's Republican Party staunchly opposed these initiatives and refused to countenance them, even as potential expansion for slavery into Latin America was floated as a compromise by John Bell's Constitutional Unionists during the 1860 election. And, while some idiosyncratic Southern commentators such as Hinton Rowan Helper bemoaned the stranglehold of slavery on the Southern economy and its backwardness compared to the North, the majority of Southern opinion up through 1860 was that slavery was the prime economic engine of the South, that ownership of a plantation and slaves was the economic apogee to which all educated Southern whites should aspire and that any attempts to limit slavery to its current states (much less to outlaw it there) was absolutely unacceptable as a matter of economic and political right. In fact, publications like DeBow's Review and the Charleston Mercury agitated in the 1850's for the resumption of the transatlantic slave trade. The 1858 case of "The Wanderer" in Savannah is instructive -- the ship illegally brought slaves from Africa and dumped them on Jekyll Island to escape US Navy ships enforcing the ban on the slave trade, which had been reinvigorated by the Buchanan Administration in an effort to blunt perceiptions of its otherwise pro-slavery policies. Though caught red-handed, the captain was prosecuted by the US Attorney in Savannah but the Federal grand jury refused to indict him and the case was dropped amid public condemnation of the Federal authorities. It is safe to say that, had the Confederacy succeeded in winning its independence (or if the Civil War never took place), the American prohibition on the transatlantic slave trade would have withered away and slaves would again be brought to work on American plantations in the 1860's and beyond.

- wildboy

March 13, 2012 at 4:07pm

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K2K says "It is the Obama Presidency that is increasing racism in America. Most of us are tired of being falsely smeared as 'racist' when we disagree with his policies, absence of leadership, and race-baited cynical campaigning." K2K it's one thing to disagree with Obama's policies but when pressed, typically a low-information voter doesn't know enough to tell you what "policy" they disagree with but couch their objections in language like "kenyan muslim" when complaining about Obamacare or making stereotypical references to Black culture like fried chicken and watermelon. I think criticism of Obama's policies is legitimate but when someone's arguments are based on cultural biases (regardless of skin color) their arguments loose weight. I don't agree that Obama's Presidency has increased racism so much as simply amplified what existing racial prejudices had already existed. It's not like people suddenly became racists once Obama took office. That goes for blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc. Keep in mind that despite what the Right tells us, the White man is not fading away into obscurity with its "culture" being over-run by 'brown people' speaking 'Mexican' or Blacks shooting each other over turf in the housing projects any time soon, or Muslims inhabiting the White House. Demographically speaking America is still a white nation. What bothers me really is the Right's 'victim' pity party it throws for itself every election cycle. The Chicken Little routine gets old after a while. I find that most of the racism i run into today tends to take the subtler form of bigotry. A difference in many respects to but it's the way people talk about certain groups. When first moving to the South and white people found out I was from Colorado, they would ask if we had a 'Mexican problem' like they have a 'Black problem' in the South. I asked what they meant and the explanation was their problem with 'welfare' folks gaming the system. I responded that no. There wasn't a "Mexican problem" but we did have lazy people. All of the Hispanics I have as friends, grew up with, and worked with were hard working, family oriented, Catholics that didn't like lazy people either. I have a good friend of Spanish descent dating back to 1600s by way of Mexico (last name is Chavez) that hates 'wet backs'. I worked with a black guy who couldn't stand to be around "Mexicans" yet loved Mexican food. Go figure. I don't care for people making racist comments, I hear it all the time and typically I respond with a non-response. Feeding the stray dog only makes it come back. I just choose to clarify to people that because a small % of a minority group of people that you've interacted with behaves a certain way doesn't mean that everyone from that minority group is that way. Imagine if I said every white person from the south was an inbred, ignorant cracker because I met some inbred, ignorant crackers that were just dumb and ignorant. And I say this as a white guy. I'm not one to defend the South but it's cultural imprint on America is far greater than many Westerners and Yankees dare to credit. The South is indeed a strange place of contradictions, flaws and beauty both in the people, food, music and culture. Of course I also think it's sense of self-importance and self-pity is as inflated as the Californians, Texans and New Englanders. Every region has their cultural biases and we tend to overlook what each has to offer while at the same time contributing their unique crapiness to the U.S. Of course, I say this as a native Coloradan so I pretty much think a majority of the states suck monkeybutt. But that's my unbiased opinion of course.

- singlspeed

March 13, 2012 at 8:04pm

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What on earth is the "race-baited cynical campaigning" K2K is referring to? This is a president who has gone out of his way not to use race or racial identity in either his campaign or conducting his public office. Quite frankly, I wonder speculatively how K2K might view the statement, had Gore won in 2000 and Lieberman in 2008 and he was attracting some antisemitic resentments, "It's the Lieberman presidency that's increasing antisemitism in America."

- ironyroad

March 13, 2012 at 9:30pm

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Thank you wildboy, that was great! I love TNR, the comments are the best part

- Idefix

March 13, 2012 at 9:36pm

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"a party that goes out of its way to demonize pale skinned people" Oh good grietf. there's really no end to the victimhood of some white folks. And Farrakhan. Now there's a timely reference.

- miceelf

March 14, 2012 at 12:03am

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God, you are loathsome, K2K. Nice smackdown, wildboy.

- bunthorne

March 14, 2012 at 12:15am

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Wandrey, WTF? I came in late to this one and I might have missed something, but what Souterner was whining here? And what's with the nasty stereotypes? Condemning an entire region for eating greasy food and by extension for being fat? What's that about? You make yourself sound like some parochial, appearance-obsessed gym fanatic from Brentwood. Before I left the USA ten years ago, I lived my entire life in the Upper South, and my father was grease-lovin' fat man (BMI 40) from the Deeeeep South who loved to take me fishin', who bought me a .22 for my twelfth birthday and who took me on driving tours of our home state's many Civil War battlefields--and if from those facts you think you can determine anything of importance about my or my father's politics, awareness if he broader world or philosophy of life, you need to take a good hard look at yourself and the unconscious assumptions under which you operate.

- AaronW

March 14, 2012 at 9:15am

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I am certainly glad that death approaches so that I can finally forget all the antisemitism, reverse racism, and ageism I have personally experienced by living as a minority in every part of America these past sixty years. btw, I had a very close friend, a Manhattan architect originally from South Carolina, in the mid-90's. He started listening to Farrakhan's radio broadcasts wherein all Jews were blamed entirely for the sin of African slavery. My friend believed Farrakhan, and ended our friendship.

- K2K

March 14, 2012 at 10:22am

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K2K, can I share the story of the white relatives who disowned me for the grievous sin of marrying outside my race? I still have the letter from one of them where he stated that what I was doing was "worse than bestiality" What does that prove, one way or the other, about white people in general? or is it only prejudice against white people or Jewish people that matters?

- miceelf

March 14, 2012 at 10:56am

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Sorry K2K but I don't see much daylight between "all Jews are responsible for the sin of African slavery" and "it is the Obama Presidency that is increasing racism in America." Both comments are pernicious nonsense.

- ironyroad

March 14, 2012 at 12:43pm

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Oh, poor K2K! What a hard life you've led! It's all just a conspiracy against you, the center of the universe. Here's a thought: if you behave in real life like you do in these threads, then the reason that nobody likes you is because you're an asshole. Really, a "minority in every part of America?"

- bunthorne

March 14, 2012 at 1:05pm

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miceelf asked "is it only prejudice against white people or Jewish people that matters?" My point, that invites a level of cyber-bullying usually associated with middle school, is that ALL prejudice is pernicious. Alec MacGillis, and pundits elsewhere, expend great effort to paint white Southern Republicans as racist. Farrakhan broadcasts on the radio, in the mid-90's based on what my former friend was quoting to me, that Jews were 100% responsible for black slavery. TNR commenters take great pleasure in cyber-bullying those who dissent. No worry - I watched "A Time to Kill" for perhaps the tenth time last night, and, since I also drive a Saab as does the brave white lawyer Jake Brigance, I assume I can note that 1) racism is as alive in Mississippi as it is in Westchester County New York real estate (in 1998, I had a realtor steer me AWAY from a majority black neighborhood until he finally admitted that he did not think a 'white' person would be interested - I wound up buying there once that realtor finally showed me one home where the seller refused to sell to me for being Jewish, but, a lovely black couple one block away, about to retire from New York to their home state of Alabama, was delighted to sell to me.) Since TNR commenters find my independent observations so odious, I shall spare y'all any more distress. Except to point out to bunthorne that, yes, I have lived as a minority in every part of America. Jews are a tiny minority in America, even if the Federal government does not think so. And, in addition, most of my life, I have lived in majority dark-skinned and/or Hispanic neighborhoods. I do not believe in the concept of 'race' in that skin color is solely a genetic blip like eye color. Since I have zero intention of living past 2012, I am transitioning to at least avoiding any more cyber-bullying from the intolerant "liberals" of the TNR choir. Middle school was far less brutal - back then it was the Cubans spitting "Christ-killer" at me, but I just cursed back in Yiddish. Now, I no longer want to live in the dust-bin of America. Congratulations TNR readers! You just convinced a registered democrat that death is preferable to YOUR America.

- K2K

March 19, 2012 at 9:54am

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