--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I see no indication that Republicans are abandoning > Nixon's Southern > strategy. It doesn't make sense. From an economic > standpoint, lower middle > class whites belong in the Democratic camp. > Republicans can get them by > appealing to their nervousness about pushy > minorities.
See Dan, this is where we disagree, because you're an old Marxist at heart :-) While I don't happen to agree with your economic standpoint, for now I'll accept it as a debating point. So what? There Are More Important Things Than Economics. Always have been, always will be. Right now, of course, that issue is national security. Lower middle class whites are smart enough to realize that when someone is trying to kill them, it's probably a good idea to defend yourself - something that distinguishes them from a fair amount of the Democratic Party, apparently. During the Cold War and after they voted Republican in large part because of national defense issues. Social issues are at least as important. It's true that behaviors that, in an earlier time, might have been called indicators of social deviance are no less likely to happen in that group. They are, however, more likely to be condemned by large members of that group. Again, social values trend Republican. More important than any of those is secularism, in my opinion. The Democratic Party has a remarkable ability to have leaders who are fairly secular (Mondale, Dukakis) or actively disdain religion (Dean, if he wins the nomination). Americans are, on the whole, quite religious. Lower middle class whites are _really_ religious. Bill Clinton, who spoke the language of faith well, was able to neutralize much of the traditional Republican advantage on this issue, do fairly well among lower middle class whites and, not by coincidence, win the election. Other Democrats have been unable or unwilling to do this, and paid the appropriate penalty for that. "The Southern Strategy" was certainly based on race at one point. But racism is something that's evenly distributed among the parties and the states. Actually, if you redid the empirics given the rise of anti-semitism on the left, I'd bet it's _more_, not less, common among Democrats. But I haven't seen numbers which postdate 1995 or so on that topic, so that's uninformed speculation and not worth much. If the southern strategy was a raced-based appeal _today_, it wouldn't be Southern. It would work every bit as well in the North and the West. But it doesn't, because it's not about race any more. It's about culture - and culture is always more important than economics. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
