Why did Little River County, AR swung so hard to the Republicans in 2008?

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

Racism + more yellow dogs dying off + Hillary supporters angry that she lost the primary would be my guess.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

LMAO @ Red Avs saying racism. Do you people ever get tired of bringing race into everything?

I'd like to hear what other reasonable explanation you have for a county in the Deep South swinging 30 points to the right as the rest of the country swung almost 10 points to the left - especially considering the only really difference between John Kerry and Obama is the color of their skin. racism is clearly the biggest factor here.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

LMAO @ Red Avs saying racism. Do you people ever get tired of bringing race into everything?

People don’t vote for what they want. They vote for who they are.

And who they are, are yellow dogs finally waking up to the democratic party being too socially liberal for their interests. Race was not in these peoples heads at the voting booth.

This is delusional. John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama and he did pretty well with yellow dogs. keep in mind he was also painted as a "Massachusetts liberal", a "coastal elitist" and so on. as I said before, there are very few logical explanations for why so many voters would switch from Kerry to McCain other than racism.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

LMAO @ Red Avs saying racism. Do you people ever get tired of bringing race into everything?

People don’t vote for what they want. They vote for who they are.

And who they are, are yellow dogs finally waking up to the democratic party being too socially liberal for their interests. Race was not in these peoples heads at the voting booth.

This is delusional. John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama and he did pretty well with yellow dogs. keep in mind he was also painted as a "Massachusetts liberal", a "coastal elitist" and so on. as I said before, there are very few logical explanations for why so many voters would switch from Kerry to McCain other than racism.

You are missing the point. Sure, Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama, but it's all about the time and how long of a time trends take place over. 2000-2004 R swings were just as strong in these areas. It's not about race, it's about policy realignment.

Sure, it's just a coincidence that polls showed Hillary winning states like West Virginia and Arkansas vs McCain in 2008, and then they overwhelmingly rejected a black man - but surely not because he was black and had a scary sounding name.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

LMAO @ Red Avs saying racism. Do you people ever get tired of bringing race into everything?

People don’t vote for what they want. They vote for who they are.

And who they are, are yellow dogs finally waking up to the democratic party being too socially liberal for their interests. Race was not in these peoples heads at the voting booth.

This is delusional. John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama and he did pretty well with yellow dogs. keep in mind he was also painted as a "Massachusetts liberal", a "coastal elitist" and so on. as I said before, there are very few logical explanations for why so many voters would switch from Kerry to McCain other than racism.

You are missing the point. Sure, Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama, but it's all about the time and how long of a time trends take place over. 2000-2004 R swings were just as strong in these areas. It's not about race, it's about policy realignment.

Sure, it's just a coincidence that polls showed Hillary winning states like West Virginia and Arkansas vs McCain in 2008, and then they overwhelmingly rejected a black man - but surely not because he was black and had a scary sounding name.

LMAO, did you even pay attention to 90s and early 00s politics? Hillary was seen as similar to Bill on the issues which made southern dems more comfortable. Obama was different and was unarguably more socially liberal than Clinton was.

Except Obama and Hillary were virtually the same on every issue...

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama

How?

He supported gay marijuana before Obama did.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

John Kerry was more socially liberal than Obama

How?

He supported gay marijuana before Obama did.

gay marijuana?

Gay marriage, stupid autocorrect

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

It's a cancer that Lincoln and Grant and Sherman should've eradicated, but now we're stuck with it, sadly.

Lincoln came from a family of poor white trash in the border states.

Nope. Lincoln came from a family of MA puritans — Yankees — who migrated westward. Try again.

His base did yes, but he did not.

He was born in Kentucky (The definition of a border state) and his family was struggling so they moved to Indiana and then to Illinois.

What part of that is incorrect?

I think there's a big difference between the values of the Lincoln family and the Calhoun family, for instance. Being poor doesn't make you 'white trash' — it's more a belligerent, anti-intellectual attitude. It's akin to poor white Southerners in the early-20th century vs. equally poor immigrant Jews. Obviously, one group succeeded, the other continues to bitch and whine and leech and scapegoat, despite holding considerable political power (unlike non-whites). Lincoln was an autodidact, but being a moron — e.g., Trump — is an admirable character trait for many white evangelicals. So Lincoln doesn't belong to WV or KY, he belongs to MA and IL.

Calhoun was from the Deep South not the border states and there was very different ethos between the Mountain, Hill and Border state poor whites and the Planter dominated Deep South. This is overlooked now but there is a long history of them being opposed to each other. For instance strong Mountain Republicanism while the Deep South was the Solid South. Also the border states voted for Clinton while the Deep South went to Dole, and so on. Mountain counties trended towards LBJ because Goldwater pandered too much to the Deep South and blackbelt/urban/low country whites. This is discussed in Kevin Phillips, "The Emerging Republican Majority" from 1969.

These days, there's very little difference between white trash from MS and TN. At one point, there may have been, but nowadays, they're all just uneducated white bigots.

What you said was factually inaccurate on its face. Regardless of any concept of some irrelevant assessment of mentality and temperament, Lincoln's family was one of poor white farmers from the hill country of Kentucky, a border state.

Nope. It's 100% accurate. If my family moved to AL, we wouldn't all suddenly become racist, evangelical, anti-intellectual white trash. We'd feed the animals at the petting zoo, but we wouldn't become them.

Finally to further drive a nail into the coffin of the point I was originally responding to, Lincoln's moderate temperament meant that Lincoln was rather gentle in his plans to deal with the defeated South. His words to Grant were "Let them up easy".

Pfffft. Oh, yes, the South regarded Lincoln as a moderate. He was so moderate, they organized a racist insurrection before he even assumed office. So stupid. No, Lincoln was HATED by the same Southern white conservatives who hated the Civil Rights movement and Barack Obama.

BTW: Lincoln made a mistake. He should've exterminated Southern whites. To paraphrase Trent Lott, we wouldn't have had all of these problems all of these years.

lol dude calm down.

LOL — you think I'm kidding. No, American politics has revolved around race since its inception. I'm suggesting that if we had removed the villains of the story, the world would be a better place. You, for whatever reason, are in denial. I'm sorry, but John Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, Bull Connor, and Strom Thurmond were trash. They contributed nothing to civilization, and deserved to die.

Cool story bra.

I mean, he's not really wrong that those people contributed nothing good to society and deserved to die.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

When you start exterminating people because you disagree with them, you have surrendered the very ideals that made America a country worth fighting for to begin with.

To quote Lincoln, "Might as well move to Russia or some other place where they are honest about their despotism".

I absolutely don't believe in exterminating anyone, I'm against the death penalty in all cases and certainly in cases where the person's only crime was holding despicable views. that doesn't mean that they didn't deserve to die, however.