State run by Democrats turning into a Third World Country

[RINO Tom]

So we're just going to ignore the parts of WV, MS, AL and KY that have been 3rd world countries for a long time and will only get worse?

Why don't we give Republicans any meaningful time having any power in KY and WV before we chalk up their problems to GOP policy, LOL.  MS and AL are better examples, though it's worth pointing out that both were arguably in even worse shape when Democrats controlled them.

[RINO Tom]

So we're just going to ignore the parts of WV, MS, AL and KY that have been 3rd world countries for a long time and will only get worse?

Why don't we give Republicans any meaningful time having any power in KY and WV before we chalk up their problems to GOP policy, LOL.  MS and AL are better examples, though it's worth pointing out that both were arguably in even worse shape when Democrats controlled them.

Yeah, all those conservative Democrats that became Republicans should be ashamed!

Democratic Governors of Alabama since 1964, the YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED (year they became Republicans in parentheses)
Don Siegelman (Never)
Jim Folsom, Jr. (Never)
George Wallace (Never)
Fob James (1994)
Albert Brewer (Never)
Lurleen Wallace (Never)

Democratic Governors of Mississippi since 1964, the YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED (year they became Republicans in parentheses)
Ronnie Musgrove (Never)
Ray Mabus (Never)
William Alain (Never)
William Winter (Never)
Cliff Finch (Never)
William Waller (Never)
Jon Bell Williams (Never)
Paul B. Johnson, Jr. (Never)
Ross Barnett (Never)

So, out of all of those Democratic governors, one became a Republican.  Mostly false?  Obviously the state legislatures changed at some point during the last 20-30 years, but governors is one of the better proxies for who had control, given Democrats controlled those legislatures for decades.

Moving on to your next claim that all of these Democrats who resided over the governance of Alabama and Mississippi were "conservatives" (a subjective term in its own right), I guess I will just let you believe that.  They all ran against and beat Republican challengers, and something set them apart from their opponent.  I would argue it is that their opponent was more conservative than they were.  To go all third grader and suggest that the South hasn't gotten more CONSERVATIVE over the last 30 years as opposed to just more Republican is below this site.

Anyway, sorry to derail the thread!  MAYBE, just maybe, some places have troubles that have very little do with which party is currently winning their electoral votes ... crazy, I know.

[RINO Tom]

Moving on to your next claim that all of these Democrats who resided over the governance of Alabama and Mississippi were "conservatives" (a subjective term in its own right), I guess I will just let you believe that.  They all ran against and beat Republican challengers, and something set them apart from their opponent.  I would argue it is that their opponent was more conservative than they were.  To go all third grader and suggest that the South hasn't gotten more CONSERVATIVE over the last 30 years as opposed to just more Republican is below this site.

Alabama and Mississippi (among other Southern states) were one-party states until the early 80s, when Reagan's fanning of racial tensions dragged the states into competitiveness. The real election was the Democratic primary, where conservatives generally beat out moderates and liberals. Before Reagan, Republican candidates were not "challengers", they were just paper candidates who were not in any way politically relevant. So what you are saying only starts resembling what actually happened after at least 1980, and really only truly becomes the rule after around 1990.

In any case, why are you upset that all racists became Republicans in 1964? From that base of racists, the GOP managed to grow the tent to eventually even include "totally not racist but only have white friends" people like you.

I get trolling me every once in a while, dude, but I do post some serious things.  You don't have to derail everything.  Obviously, in a one-party region you are going to have a wide range of ideologies in that one party, but to use the term "conservative" as it is used to define their Republican successors is misleading, as NC Yankee pointed out and the poster I quoted oversimplified.  As for your somewhat offensive characterization of me, people like that obviously existed in the GOP well before, so your tongue-in-cheek comment, while clearly an attempt to be funny and insult me, doesn't make any sense.  When you live in an area that is almost all White, you tend to have White friends (though, not that you give a shlt, not all of my friends are White ... that would be ridiculous).  Now go try to have a better day than arguing with me, eh?

[RINO Tom]

Moving on to your next claim that all of these Democrats who resided over the governance of Alabama and Mississippi were "conservatives" (a subjective term in its own right), I guess I will just let you believe that.  They all ran against and beat Republican challengers, and something set them apart from their opponent.  I would argue it is that their opponent was more conservative than they were.  To go all third grader and suggest that the South hasn't gotten more CONSERVATIVE over the last 30 years as opposed to just more Republican is below this site.

Alabama and Mississippi (among other Southern states) were one-party states until the early 80s, when Reagan's fanning of racial tensions dragged the states into competitiveness. The real election was the Democratic primary, where conservatives generally beat out moderates and liberals. Before Reagan, Republican candidates were not "challengers", they were just paper candidates who were not in any way politically relevant. So what you are saying only starts resembling what actually happened after at least 1980, and really only truly becomes the rule after around 1990.

In any case, why are you upset that all racists became Republicans in 1964? From that base of racists, the GOP managed to grow the tent to eventually even include "totally not racist but only have white friends" people like you.

I get trolling me every once in a while, dude, but I do post some serious things.  You don't have to derail everything.  Obviously, in a one-party region you are going to have a wide range of ideologies in that one party, but to use the term "conservative" as it is used to define their Republican successors is misleading, as NC Yankee pointed out and the poster I quoted oversimplified.  As for your somewhat offensive characterization of me, people like that obviously existed in the GOP well before, so your tongue-in-cheek comment, while clearly an attempt to be funny and insult me, doesn't make any sense.  When you live in an area that is almost all White, you tend to have White friends (though, not that you give a shlt, not all of my friends are White ... that would be ridiculous).  Now go try to have a better day than arguing with me, eh?

Second part was trolling, first part was fact, sorry you disagree.

I would be happy to actually engage in conversation, how are you defining "conservative"?  If it means opposition to civil rights, maybe this conversation isn't worth having, as I think that is a ridiculous thing to politicize.

[RINO Tom]

Moving on to your next claim that all of these Democrats who resided over the governance of Alabama and Mississippi were "conservatives" (a subjective term in its own right), I guess I will just let you believe that.  They all ran against and beat Republican challengers, and something set them apart from their opponent.  I would argue it is that their opponent was more conservative than they were.  To go all third grader and suggest that the South hasn't gotten more CONSERVATIVE over the last 30 years as opposed to just more Republican is below this site.

Alabama and Mississippi (among other Southern states) were one-party states until the early 80s, when Reagan's fanning of racial tensions dragged the states into competitiveness. The real election was the Democratic primary, where conservatives generally beat out moderates and liberals. Before Reagan, Republican candidates were not "challengers", they were just paper candidates who were not in any way politically relevant. So what you are saying only starts resembling what actually happened after at least 1980, and really only truly becomes the rule after around 1990.

In any case, why are you upset that all racists became Republicans in 1964? From that base of racists, the GOP managed to grow the tent to eventually even include "totally not racist but only have white friends" people like you.

I get trolling me every once in a while, dude, but I do post some serious things.  You don't have to derail everything.  Obviously, in a one-party region you are going to have a wide range of ideologies in that one party, but to use the term "conservative" as it is used to define their Republican successors is misleading, as NC Yankee pointed out and the poster I quoted oversimplified.  As for your somewhat offensive characterization of me, people like that obviously existed in the GOP well before, so your tongue-in-cheek comment, while clearly an attempt to be funny and insult me, doesn't make any sense.  When you live in an area that is almost all White, you tend to have White friends (though, not that you give a shlt, not all of my friends are White ... that would be ridiculous).  Now go try to have a better day than arguing with me, eh?

Second part was trolling, first part was fact, sorry you disagree.

I would be happy to actually engage in conversation, how are you defining "conservative"?  If it means opposition to civil rights, maybe this conversation isn't worth having, as I think that is a ridiculous thing to politicize.

Can't a conservative mean different things regionally? There's clearly an element of opposition to Civil Rights among Southern conservatives. Not nearly as much northern ones

Sure, but Master Jedi's post that I quoted initially implied that there was no difference in the conservatism of Republicans and the conservatism of Southern Democrats that preceded them, and I think that's not only false but a deliberate narrative to discredit modern conservatism.

[RINO Tom]

RINO Tom, the southern Democrats in Congress who blocked the New Deal literally called themselves the "Conservative Coalition". It's pure revisionism to claim the US South wasn't conservative until Reagan.

I never said that it wasn't at all "conservative," I am disputing that there is any meaningful connection to today's conservatism of the GOP.  Republicans who gained control in Dixie didn't just keep business as usual with a different letter next to their names, they tried to cut waste where they saw it, tried to create more business-friendly states, etc.  The Southern Democrats were "conservative" in the sense that 1) they were more politically consrevative than their Northern counterparts and 2) they were actually looking to "conserve" quite a lot (especially White supremacy in the South), but that second definition is rarely if ever used to describe the conservatism of the GOP today.  If it were, it could be argued that Democrats are "conservative" on abortion because they want to uphold a decades-old ruling and precedent on abortion, for example.  I am not acting like these politicians were liberals, but they had in much in common with national Democrats as they did objectively more conservative national Republicans, and that's all I'm saying - they aren't the political ancestors of modern Southern conservatives so much as they dinosaurs.

[RINO Tom]

There was obviously a massive switch, but it didn't happen overnight (i.e., "in 1964" or "in 1980"), and there wasn't ONE event that caused White Southerners to ditch the Democrats.  I'd also argue that DWN scores show that once those politicians switched parties, they almost always actually had more conservative voting records, so they weren't "the same old conservatives."

Whatever, sorry for derailing the thread about how modern Democrats are driving certain states into ruin with tales of previous ones.

[RINO Tom]

All I know is that if I see another suggestion that the ancestors of the racist white southern Democrats (or still living white former conservadems) aren't mostly present-day Republicans I'm goin to start slamming my head on my desk

NO ONE SAID THAT.  It's obviously not a simple topic.  Yes, the White voters in these states that used to be Democratic are now very, very Republican, and many have even switched parties in the last 10-20 years.  So what?  Is that supposed to have some meaningful impact on today's politics?  Are you insinuating that modern White Southern Republicans support the same things their Democratic grandparents supported or something?  I don't know why it makes people so angry to point out a few basic things like:

1. Southern Democrats were absolutely to the left of Northern and Southern Republicans on economic issues, for the most part.
2. As the South got less agrarian and more industrialized, it became more Republican.
3. The vast majority of elected Southern Democrats never changed parties.
4. The Republican South is objectively much less racist than the Democratic South was.
5. There wasn't a clear "switch" moment, and a HUGE component of the GOP gaining power in the South was old Dixiecrats dying off and retiring.

None of this absolves modern Southern Republicans of anything or legitimizes the GOP or whatever, it simply points out that this was a complicated change in power (I thought that is partly what this site is for) that can't be explained in a sentence or two.  The Arkansas that voted for Wallace is night and day different than the one that voted for Trump, just as the Vermont that voted for Reagan is night and day different than the one that voted for Clinton, and that has to at least get airtime during these conversations, and it rarely does.  All I have done here is reject the narrative, "The old Southern Democrats became the new Southern Republicans!" and it's frankly amazing that having some intellectual curiosity about such an interesting topic is met with being shouted down and an insinuation that I'm distorting history or in denial about my party or whatever other chip-on-your-shoulders BS you guys usually throw my way, LOL.

[RINO Tom]

All I know is that if I see another suggestion that the ancestors of the racist white southern Democrats (or still living white former conservadems) aren't mostly present-day Republicans I'm goin to start slamming my head on my desk

Ancestors? Don't you mean descendents?


If they were ancestors, they would be racist, Jacksonians or Jeffersonians.

Yes descendants. My bad. Now my point stands. Sorry for not pretending that the Republican base is just a bunch of 9-5 businesspeople and Evangelical suburban families with 2-4 kids and a dog as has been suggested on here before.

"The Republican base" seems to be whatever any given angry non-Republican wants it to be.

EDIT: As always, great posts, NC Yankee.

[RINO Tom]

Ah yes I forgot the GOP was the party of sophisticated, business-friendly college educated suburbanites who are really Susan Collins fans at heart

... What?  LOL.  No one has ever said that, go have your cup of coffee and chill the  out!

[RINO Tom]

Lol just go back to every single post you reply to when anyone suggests that college educated whites are trending Democratic and your ensuing rant about somethin somethin West Virginians are still democrats at heart somethin somethin the GOP's base is the business class and always will be somethin somethin the GOP aint gonna be the party of Trump somethin

God, you're an asshole.  I don't do that, I simply provide (IMO) more context than a kindergarten-level summary of political trends like, "College Whites will become Democrats," and point out that things like diversifying counties, generational displacement (and the prevalence of a college degree among Millennials compared to Boomers) is probably more influential, as opposed to a narrative that it is the GOP's anti-intellectualism in and of itself that is simply causing a mass exodus of once-sensible Republicans into the arms of the Democratic Party.  It clearly annoys you, so feel free to put me on ignore if you think I'm that shltty of a poster.

[RINO Tom]

Isn't the general gist of trends based on age-group displacement lol? so I don't know why it's necessary to add in that addendum if the trendlines for college-educated whites --> Dems are largely because of differences in age, not 55+ year old college alums who've voted R their whole lives. I don't think I've seen anyone ever suggest that the swing to Clinton in places like metro Atlanta or Orange County was solely college-educated white driven either. I don't think I've seen a post on here argue that except for Non-Swing Voter lol. I would think most the people on this site intuitively understand that concept of trends; if not, maybe they shouldn't be posting here.

Okay, but if this shift is mostly driven by other factors, and the college degree in and of itself is nothing more than a lurking variable, this elitism some red avatars have on here about "who Republicans really are" or whatever is really misguided, and it's rampant.

[RINO Tom]

Isn't the general gist of trends based on age-group displacement lol? so I don't know why it's necessary to add in that addendum if the trendlines for college-educated whites --> Dems are largely because of differences in age, not 55+ year old college alums who've voted R their whole lives. I don't think I've seen anyone ever suggest that the swing to Clinton in places like metro Atlanta or Orange County was solely college-educated white driven either. I don't think I've seen a post on here argue that except for Non-Swing Voter lol. I would think most the people on this site intuitively understand that concept of trends; if not, maybe they shouldn't be posting here.

Okay, but if this shift is mostly driven by other factors, and the college degree in and of itself is nothing more than a lurking variable, this elitism some red avatars have on here about "who Republicans really are" or whatever is really misguided, and it's rampant.

Maybe, but so is pretending the GOP is this party of college educated whites where the so-caled rednecks from bumville don't belong

I mean, the GOP is "the party of college-educated Whites" in the sense that college-educated Whites are more Republican than they are Democratic, but the group comprised only 37% of the electorate in 2016 ... obviously no party can be the party of ONLY college-educated Whites.  I have never once said that every voter for one of our two major political parties was some enlightened, educated individual, as that would be mathematically insane.  I have contended, and will continue to contend, that the idea that the GOP voter base doesn't include at least as "upscale" of people as the Democratic one is an odd assertion pulled out of Atlas' ass.

[RINO Tom]

This Thread needs cleansed with fire, starting with the Breitbart style title.

LOL, well quit checkin' in, my superiors!

[RINO Tom]

This Thread needs cleansed with fire, starting with the Breitbart style title.

LOL, well quit checkin' in, my superiors!

He's challenged.

Very, very offensive.

[RINO Tom]

You two seriously need to get a room.

I very rarely engage Santender until he, well, insults me.