State run by Democrats turning into a Third World Country

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

To argue that the Democrats controlling these states were conservative, how about we look at the adoption of "right to work" laws? I believe we can agree that a state adopting and sustaining rtw laws is not being governed by liberals.

Arkansas - 1944
Florida - 1944
Virginia - 1947
Tennesse - 1947
North Carolina - 1947
Georgia - 1947
Texas - 1947
Alabama - 1953
Mississipi - 1954
South Carolina - 1954
Louisiana - 1976

https://nrtwc.org/facts/state-right-to-work-timeline-2016/

So 10/11 former states of the Confederacy had adopted right to work laws by 1955. Louisiana Followed suit in 1976. They all did this under Democratic control.

(Of course, two states mentioned earlier in this thread, Kentucky and West Virginia, are recent adopters of RTW laws and clearly had a stronger organized labor presence.)
 
While this metric is not the end all be all of everything, it demonstrates a level of economic conservatism, especially when considering the role organized labor has played in American Liberalism.

That is because these states were mostly one party states and their establishments were deeply tied to the Business interests since they were ones in power. Once that began to change in the 1950's, you began to see more of a drift of business aligned interests towards the Republicans.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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!

The last Democratic Governors of these Southern states were people who got elected a by a coalition of African-Americans and Yellow-Dog New Dealers. They were either New South Democrats like Sanford and Carter or New Democrats like Bill Clinton. A lot of people switched parties out of convenience and then evolved to match their parties after doing so, this certainly happened with a number of State Legislators and Congressman, but I would note in terms of education policy and other issues these Democratic Majorities were leagues different than their Republican successors. And I would note that opportunists aside, and while certainly more moderate on social issues, it is over generalization in the highest to label all of them as Conservatives and frankly MasterJedi, you know better.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Say what you want about Bill Clinton, but it's true that New Democrats like him were the last to build biracial coalitions in the South, and today he's considered literally the devil, worse than Hitler.

Well he has no one to blame, but himself and his appetites.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

To argue that the Democrats controlling these states were conservative, how about we look at the adoption of "right to work" laws? I believe we can agree that a state adopting and sustaining rtw laws is not being governed by liberals.

Arkansas - 1944
Florida - 1944
Virginia - 1947
Tennesse - 1947
North Carolina - 1947
Georgia - 1947
Texas - 1947
Alabama - 1953
Mississipi - 1954
South Carolina - 1954
Louisiana - 1976

https://nrtwc.org/facts/state-right-to-work-timeline-2016/

So 10/11 former states of the Confederacy had adopted right to work laws by 1955. Louisiana Followed suit in 1976. They all did this under Democratic control.

(Of course, two states mentioned earlier in this thread, Kentucky and West Virginia, are recent adopters of RTW laws and clearly had a stronger organized labor presence.)
 
While this metric is not the end all be all of everything, it demonstrates a level of economic conservatism, especially when considering the role organized labor has played in American Liberalism.

That is because these states were mostly one party states and their establishments were deeply tied to the Business interests since they were ones in power. Once that began to change in the 1950's, you began to see more of a drift of business aligned interests towards the Republicans.

That is consistent with the point I was making. I also agree with your later post regarding this issue being more complex than "party switching". My main objection was the idea that the old South was a hotbed of progressive policy or that the Democrats who dominated it were largely liberal.

It varies based on state. There were certainly progressive factions in some of those state's Democratic parties, but the same thing that held down black voting, also held down poor whites in some cases so that meant that turnout was low and corruption was rampant. I think there was a saying that the windows were always open in the MS legislature so they could throw in the bags of business money.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

I think this bleeds more into a philosophical discussion of what it means to be 'conservative'. Conservatism (and the right in general) is best defined as a support of hierarchy, as opposed to the left, which is egalitarian. It's a philosophical orientation toward hierarchies of the family, the nation, the workplace, of race and gender, rather than something as nebulous as being 'business-friendly' and cutting government waste (which, by the way, were arguments conservative Democrats used to oppose the New Deal).  

The South was more conservative than the rest of America in the English Civil Wars, when New England was settled by dissenters and Virginia was full of cavaliers; during the American Revolution when the Tories were strongest in the southern colonies; and during the ACW when, well, slavery. So I don't find the takeover of the region by the more conservative party during the period when the two US parties coalesced into ideological blocs a particularly novel development.

And yet the Federalists and Whigs, both with centers in New England, was far more hierarchical then the "egalitarian" Jeffersonians and Jacksonians. And yes there were slave owning planters who were members of the Federalists and the Whigs. You also cite Calvinists in New England and Anglicans in Virginia. Except their were also Calvinists in the south and Anglicans in the North as well. It should also be noted that such "dissidents" were so because they were more doctrinaire and saw the Anglicans as "too Catholic". Many of these colonies had taxes to support the Congregationalist church making it a "hierarchical structure", that was opposed by the like of Jefferson.

One big factor in that changing was that the last "Awakenings" in the early and mid 20th centuries were largely centered on the sunbelt, while religious fervor collapsed in the NE, first among protestants and then among Catholics.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Dude in the Senate alone right now there's a former conservaDem State Treasurer from Louisiana, a former conservaDem Congressman from Alabama who switched parties after the '94 thrashing, a homophobic judge who used to be a Dem about to be elected to another seat in Alabama, and most the Republican statewide officials in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana used to be Democrats. Stop pretending like there wasn't a massive switch of allegiance. These are literally the same conservatives, just different parties.

He claimed to be a liberal in 2004 and supported John Kerry. Kennedy is very much an opportunist.

In many cases these "opportunists" were moderate Democrats who switched parties for self-advantage or self-preservation and then moved right to secure the deal. This would certainly apply to Kennedy and Shelby.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellison_D._Smith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Talmadge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Manifesto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_G._Bilbo#U.S._Senate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition

It's quite ridiculous to even attempt to argue that Southern Democrats weren't primarily conservative, on all issues, not just civil rights.

That is a rather narrow and selective list. It leaves out progressives like the Longs, Ralph Yarborough and Estes Kefauver.

Also Bilbo was on the more "progressive side" of Mississippi politics on economic issues.

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This is literally from the link you posted.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The simple fact of the matter is, the Progressive ascendency within the Democratic Party is entirely rooted in the allignment of poor white farmers in the South and West to the Democratic Party and the election of people dedicated to their economic interests under that label.

It just so happens that said people were militantly racist and their representatives reflected that.

of course the Bourbons were hardly any better, but it was the maturity of militant lost causers like Bilbo that led to the Constitution of 1890 in MS. They were thus far more aggressive in removing black voting, then the previous generation of Bourbon oriented types who also used the title "Conservatives", I would note in the 1870's in some states.

Southern politicians throughout history, love to appropriate titles and terms and philosophies to justify their peculiar institutions, and politics is necessarily skewed substantially by the presence of the single party state from the 1870's until the mid to late 20th century.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

Ah yes. The opposition to child labor laws, opposition to the new deal, the hatred of organised labour and the slavish support of the cotton industry are all noted left wing economic policies.

Do you deny that Bilbo supported the New Deal? The wikipedia article you linked to, to claim that he was a "Conservative" on "all issues" said he did.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The simple fact of the matter is that Progressivism is an amalgamation of successes by two different political traditions into one, with the unsavory aspects of both ret-conned out of existence.

It is just as bad as Republicans denying their role in the Southern Strategy.

Both Parties have horrendous records on race and civil rights. There is a modern desire on the left that seeks to obtain absolution by latching on to "progressive" 19th and early 20th century, New England Republicans that were progressive in that they wanted to abolish slavery and give women the vote, but also just so happen to want to repress catholics, kick all the immigrants out and ban everyone's booze.

The one's who really should be concerned about this is the Sanders' crowd. The further the Democrats get away from its working class roots and the closer it seeks to become an "Eisenhower Republican" Party, the less and less it will champion those ideals. William Jennings Bryan was a religious fundamentalist, Wilson was deeply racist Virginian, and FDR locked up the Japanese. Yet Bryan championed the poor, Wilson pushed to end Child Labor, and FDR pushed the New Deal through by compromising with Segregationists.

The idea that "Southerns opposed the New Deal" is flat out bullsh**t. The way you know that is because after Speaker Cannon was thrown out, the Committees were empowered and the Speaker diminished. And guess who had all the seniority, the ones who didn't ever have to worry about general elections, and didn't get wiped out in 1920, 1924 and 1928, The Southern Democrats. Not a single piece of New Deal Legislation would have made it out of committee, without some backroom deal, quid pro quo or open support from Segregationist Committee Chairs.

Was there a Conservative faction that eventually revolted? YES, because it was a one party system in each of these states. But that revolt came in 1937 and 1938, and only the significant gains by the Republicans in 1938, enabled these conservatives to control the balance of power. Meaning a majority of the Democrats were pro-New Deal, including a large number of them in the South. The heirs of Bryan and Wilson and including people like, you guessed it, the prize winning most racist Senator of all time, Theodore Bilbo.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

Who do you think you are dealing with here? You might be able to overwhelm RinoTom but you won't do so with me.


I have posted posted more than anyone else on this forum, explaining the shift of the GOP's "center of political gravity" from Orange County, CA to Kentucky, Indiana and yes, West Virginia.

It is becoming a Rust Belt+Appalachia+Northern Mts party. With solid bases in rural areas, small towns and exurbs, and among non-college educated whites. College Educated Whites and the middle ring suburbs is basically where the "hand to hand combat" (as John King put it on CNN during the MI Dem Primary), occurs. 

I have also posted repeatedly on just how out of touch the Republican leadership and movement conservatism has become with the average Republican voter and the need for Republican Politicians to start pushing policies that are in line with understanding who their voters are. That more than anything underlies the deep seated distrust and anger Republican voters have towards their politicians, that so many have co-opted on one extreme or another to oust an incumbent or an establishment politician. The biggest example of all is President Donald Trump.