Southern Strategy Surprise

Guy at Slate claims no two ways about it, the Republican Party is racist. Institutionally & structurally, like; he doesn't accuse socially tolerant country club types of being Klan members.

Very long. (Skip pg. 1, even.)

And all those poll-analysis geek websites that continuously report vast majorities for the GOP in the South among white voters (far greater than those in the North) somehow can’t see their way to be forthright about why this is.

I’m not saying that the vast majority of Southern whites vote GOP only because of race. But I think Rick Perlstein’s argument, based on careful polling data, suggests that it is a crucial factor that makes an electoral difference.

Let me put it this way. Is it just an accident, a coincidence, that in presidential elections ever since 1964, the core states of the Confederacy—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina—and their hundred or so electoral votes have been solidly Republican?

Is it any accident that they fly Confederate flags from their statehouse, as in South Carolina, or incorporate Confederate flag symbols into their state flags as in Mississippi and Alabama, or allow them to be flaunted on state-issued license places, even passing laws that declare they must be respected. If you’ve traveled much in the South (as I have), you see them flying too from courthouses, municipal buildings, and other private establishments. If it’s not unconstitutional, it is, frankly, disgusting.

More righteousness follows. Good alliterative adjectives. ("Rancid racist history," for ex.) Fuck the South, as they say.

This may be why Rosenbaum's so irked:

It’s not just an intellectual exercise deciding whether Southern racism is still a factor. The current Supreme Court could rule the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional this term, on the grounds that all states are morally equivalent and history should play no role in assessing their behavior. They would be wrong to do so.

News to us. Is a Tenth Amendment A.G. from the sticks suing to overturn the V.R.A.?

And the Bob Dylan ending (Not kidding.) is a letdown. Who does he think he is, Saul Alinsky?