Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Southern Eloquence

Via Glenn Thrush, retiring Senator George Voinovich names the biggest problem with his party:
“We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). 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?’ ”
"errr, errrrr"? While that may be a noise devoid of linguistic content, it's more politically astute than some actual sentences DeMint has uttered lately. Anyway, it's good to see a Midwestern Republican openly attest to the cultural differences between his state and the more conservative South.

2 comments:

Petey said...

Southern Whites have suddenly assumed the role in American national politics that Blacks played from 1966 to 2006.

Too big to ignore. Too out of the mainstream to play a part in a majority coalition.

It's the 1860 to 1932 alignment redux.

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I love me a two party political system. It makes the game theorist in me actually relevant.

low-tech cyclist said...

Speaking of the regional support (or lack thereof) for the GOP, seen the crosstabs from the latest DailyKos poll? Support for Congressional Republicans looks like this:

NE 4 85 11
SOUTH 22 55 23
MIDWEST 5 82 13
WEST 6 79 15

That's right - single digits everywhere outside the South. And similarly for the Republican Party itself:

NE 6 92 2
SOUTH 40 45 15
MIDWEST 12 81 7
WEST 12 79 9

12% or less, everywhere but the South.

Let 'em secede - all they're doing is preventing us from dealing with things like climate change, health care, and the like.