Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Southern Dems disappearing

A key causualty from the Democratic party being taken over by radical liberals, via special interest groups and big money hollywood type donors has been the Southern conservative democrat.

Conservative Southern Dems disappearing:
According to Congressional Observer Publications, only one current House member voted against his party at least a third of the time last year. That was Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota.

In 1998, there were 13 in that category, including eight Southerners, and three of them opposed Democratic leaders more than half the time.

Virtually all those maverick-more-than-not lawmakers have either joined the Republican Party or retired. Most dramatic of all was retired Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, the keynote speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention, who voted with President Bush's party a staggering 94 percent of the time last year.

Merle Black, an Emory University political scientist, says more than 80 percent of white conservatives in the South now belong to the Republican Party, and only 10 percent are Democrats.
Note in a typical AP article style most of the rest of the article goes on to detail how the Democrats should try to win back the south.

But the writer doesn't get it at all. It really shouldn't be surprising that southern democrats have become republicans. Reasons? One, Southerners like good people and the Democrats can no longer get away with demonizing anyone they want with the help of the mainstream media. Two, most southerners live conservative lifestyles. So when the Democratic party starts embracing far left liberals like Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Michel Moore they don't see a party that stands for what they do. Case in point: Toby Keith; a registered Democrat for many years(like his father before him) but there's not a liberal bone in his body. Third, Southerners are also patriotic in general, they love their Country, they love their flag, they love their soldiers. This does not jive welll with the blame-America-first attitude that liberals have embodied since Vietnam and all through the cold war.

The fact is that the Democrats need the south to have any sort of power. And Serving their miriad of special-interest group constituencies or playing to their far left base is not an effective way for Dems to win southern elections. And now thanks to the rise of the New Media, calling Republicans names won't work either. So what's left for the Dems in the south? Use the Judiciary to legislate a liberal lifestyle. Read the news, you'll see it happening.

(Tip O'the Fedora to PoliPundit)