Video - Haley Barbour's new fake history of the south.
NYTimes | Traditional Southern Republicanism is socially conservative and assertively pro-business, characterized by an aversion to taxes, regulation, abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.
But while its politicians have long held forth against the federal government, the South remains heavily dependent on federal largesse in the form of farm subsidies, defense contracts and aid for its large concentrations of poor people. More than a few Southern Republicans who railed against the federal stimulus package accepted the money anyway.
The Tea Party brand of conservatism is less tolerant of this wink-and-nod approach to government spending and places a lower priority on social issues.
It has some echoes of the small-government gospel that was preached by Mr. Yerger and other pioneers of the modern Republican Party in the South, who found few Southerners sympathetic to their condemnation of the New Deal. Many of them initially viewed social issues like segregation as tactical stands worth taking to draw disaffected Democrats to their free-market agenda, according to Joseph Crespino, a professor at Emory who has studied the rise of conservative politics in Mississippi.
How the small-government fundamentalists of the Tea Party fit into the mainstream Southern Republican Party remains to be seen.
“This could be a very fleeting experience for the Republican Party, if they ignore us,” said Kevin Desmond, a director of the Patriots of East Tennessee, a local Tea Party group. “When Lamar Alexander, the senator here in Tennessee, comes up for election in 2014, I think he’s going to have his hands full.”
There are other signs that the realignment might not be permanent. Growing Latino populations in Florida and Texas, and in Georgia and South Carolina, could rearrange the political map again before too long.
NYTimes | Traditional Southern Republicanism is socially conservative and assertively pro-business, characterized by an aversion to taxes, regulation, abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.
But while its politicians have long held forth against the federal government, the South remains heavily dependent on federal largesse in the form of farm subsidies, defense contracts and aid for its large concentrations of poor people. More than a few Southern Republicans who railed against the federal stimulus package accepted the money anyway.
The Tea Party brand of conservatism is less tolerant of this wink-and-nod approach to government spending and places a lower priority on social issues.
It has some echoes of the small-government gospel that was preached by Mr. Yerger and other pioneers of the modern Republican Party in the South, who found few Southerners sympathetic to their condemnation of the New Deal. Many of them initially viewed social issues like segregation as tactical stands worth taking to draw disaffected Democrats to their free-market agenda, according to Joseph Crespino, a professor at Emory who has studied the rise of conservative politics in Mississippi.
How the small-government fundamentalists of the Tea Party fit into the mainstream Southern Republican Party remains to be seen.
“This could be a very fleeting experience for the Republican Party, if they ignore us,” said Kevin Desmond, a director of the Patriots of East Tennessee, a local Tea Party group. “When Lamar Alexander, the senator here in Tennessee, comes up for election in 2014, I think he’s going to have his hands full.”
There are other signs that the realignment might not be permanent. Growing Latino populations in Florida and Texas, and in Georgia and South Carolina, could rearrange the political map again before too long.
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