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The South Vs. Obama
Phil Sandlin / AP Photo
The votes against Obama’s stimulus package came from a Southern confederacy of Republicans and conservative Democrats. Their message to America? Drop dead.
On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, President Barack Obama’s $819 billion stimulus plan passed the House of Representatives, despite the solid opposition of the Confederates.
By the Confederates I mean the Republican Party and their allies among Southern conservative Democrats. The battle in Washington is not between liberals and conservatives; it is between the Union and the South.
The Republican Party that voted unanimously against the stimulus bill is, in essence, the party of the former Confederacy. In the House of Representatives, there is not a single Republican representative from New England. In the U.S. Senate, there is not a single Republican from the Pacific Coast.
The battle in Washington is not between liberals and conservatives; it is between the Union and the South.
The Republican congressional delegation is disproportionately Southern. Half of the four congressional leaders of the Republican Party are Southerners: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia). (Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl is from Arizona and House Minority Leader John Boehner is a relic of the dying Midwestern wing of the GOP). The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, is from Kentucky. Half of the candidates for the RNC chairmanship are Southerners: Duncan himself, Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, and Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Republican Party of Tennessee. (The other three are Michael Steele of Maryland, Ken Blackwell of Ohio and, Saul Anuzis of Michigan.) If you think most GOP spokesmen on TV seem to speak with a drawl, you’re not imagining things.
In addition, a majority of the 11 House Democrats who voted against the stimulus bill are Southerners or from states that border the South: Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith, both of Alabama; Gene Taylor, of Mississippi; Heath Shuler, of North Carolina; Jim Cooper, of Tennessee; Allen Boyd, Jr., of Florida; Frank M. Kratovil, of Maryland; and Brad Ellsworth, of Indiana. (The other three are Walt Minnick of Idaho, John Peterson and Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.) Congressman Boyd, a prominent Blue Dog Democrat, was the only Democrat to support President Bush’s bill to partly privatize Social Security, which he co-sponsored. Appropriately, his 2nd Congressional District in the Florida Panhandle near Georgia and Alabama includes Dixie and Calhoun counties.
Do you see a pattern here?
The vote about the stimulus package was not about economics. It was about nullification. It was the bipartisan Confederacy sending a message to the rest of America, stricken by the greatest crisis since the Depression. That message? DROP DEAD.
Those who think that the Democrats could have won over more Republicans by making more concessions do not understand the neo-Confederate/Dixiecrat mentality. There was no one to bargain with on the other side. The Republiconfederate “alternative”—a joke of a bill consisting almost entirely of tax cuts—would not be taken seriously by any mainstream conservative economist. It was pure provocation.
The rest of the country needs to understand. This is not the nation-minded Republican Party of Lincoln and McKinley, Eisenhower and Dole. Nor is it the party of Herbert Hoover who, if he were alive, would be denounced by the Southern Right as the flawed but public-spirited Progressive he was. No, this is the party that was hijacked after the civil-rights revolution by former Democrats on the Southern far right. Its spiritual ancestors are the old states’ rights Southern conservative Democrats, like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and Strom Thurmond and Orval Faubus. The slogan of the segregationist Democrats—“massive resistance”—characterizes today’s Southern conservative resistance to necessary federal economic action, just as it inspired yesterday’s Southern conservative resistance to equal rights for black Americans.
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My goodness. Did it ever cross the writer's mind that perhaps the Obama stimulus bill was nothing but pure democratic ideological lard? What in the world would any conservative support such a bill. I know fairness is not part of the modern day journalistic ethic, but perhaps a look at the Republican alternatives (House and Senate) might be appropriate. I am not from the south, but maybe southern voters and taxpayers have an entirely different view of what constitutes an appropriate and conservative economic stimulus.
Michael,
Thanks for your defense of faulty liberal thinking about the rights, abilities and motivations of Southerners. You assaulted the reasonable ideas of a minority that is essential in balancing political power in Washington. "Dixiecrats" are not motivated by hate as you seem to repeatedly hint at through your piece. Those in Dixie are more open-minded about race and politics than most anyone I've encountered in Manhattan.
But fundamentally you seem to latch onto the idea that dissension shouldn't be based on regional politics, which is entirely implausible. Americans elect representatives, who, shocking though it may be, are on the Capitol to, you got it, represent. Sometimes this has proven to be a failure (see: post 9/11) but other times a representatives increased responsiveness is needed. For example, when the government wants to spend $800 billion - $1.6 trillion on condoms and sod.
This vote was just the Zone of Irrelevance checking in---WVa to OK plus a couple of western states where nobody lives.
Oh now I see. Anyone who voted against this bill is a filthy racist. Thanks for explaining that, Mr. Lind. I doubt that anyone else on earth would have come to that conclusion on their own. You are quite the intellectual.
The Republicans of Lincoln's time were actually ideologically today's Democrats. The ideology flipped in the 20th century. The Democratic party used to be the right wing, and the Republicans the left.
Yes, brilliant strategy tax cuts -- I am sure that all of the recently unemployed are thrilled....oh wait, probably the only benefit of unemployment is that you do NOT pay taxes....
This article is beyond moronic.
Is this what we are in for the next four years? Racially-tinged demonization of any who speak their mind in opposition to the "Dear Leader"?
Thanks for reminding us how stupid partisans can be.
BORN IN WISCONSIN, LIVE IN CALIFORNIA.AMAZING HOW MANY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE THERE ARE AROUND.
COMRAD OBOMO WILL GIVE MONEY TO PEOPLE SO THEY CAN GO TO WALLMART AND BUY CHINESE GOODS.
------WE HAVE TO CLOSE THE BORDERS---------NO IMPORTS,
SEND FOREIGNERS HOME AND AMERICANS WILL BUILD GOODS FOR AMERICANS.
HAVEN'T SEEN THE REAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE YET.
I'm from Connecticut and I agree with the Southern Representatives. They can see thru the falsehoods of the stimulus program. 39% of it goes to the state governments so they can maintain their bloated budgets. 16% goes to health care (much of which is Medicaid a welfare program). Around $100 bn is for infrastructure and energy and other green projects. Tens of billions are for pork progjects that the Congress will deliver to their home constiuencies. Its spend spend spend.
Sadly, at least these Southerners recognize that nothing is for free. In a few years, we will have the largest tax increase in the history of the United States to fund the largest spending bill in the United States. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that the 3 million jobs estimated to be created are going to cost $275,000 per job. Why not just handout $25,000 to 33 million people instead! They would know how to stimulate the economy better than the "pork" laden Congress.
this is, at best, a dangerous idea to spread.
and man...i get a little bothered when i hear people saying "lincoln was a republican!" when it's pretty common knowledge that a republican during the 1800s was what a democrat is today. their ideologies flipped years later...wasn't one of the major differences between lincoln and (democrat) douglas the fact that douglas wanted states to decide whether or not they wanted slavery, and that he (unlike lincoln) didn't think that congress should be able to impose upon them?
either way, i agree just about 100% with everything else you said:)
Another way of framing it is the traditionally agrarian mindset against the industrial way of life. In an agrarian, feudalistic mindset, each man should have a plot of land and survive by the sweat of their brow and the bounty of the earth - with the aid of, you know, serfs or slaves who are not men and women but essentially livestock. Today maybe the bounty of the earth is replaced by the bounty of the free market, but the risks are similar.
In the industrial mindset, each man should have the opportunity to contribute to productivity and share in the bounty of collective effort. Sure you gotta pay more taxes and there's a greater chance you'll stay in your gig for the rest of your life as a worker-bee, but at least you'll have honey when you need it.
It's a zeitgeist thing in my opinion. People who like the idea of their independence from Machine and those who find their purpose in it.
Also, being from Virginia and having gone to school in Richmond where the visages of Confederate generals still line Monument Avenue, good 'ole boys fly the Dixie colors proudly on the back of their Ford trucks and re-enact lost battles on the weekends - linking the past to contemporary issues isn't that big a stretch for me.
Oh please. There are some backwards hicks still wandering around the South but this article smacks of the southern discrimination I've heard all my life (I live in SC). Southerners arn't all confederate-minded, ignorant, republican, conservative or rural.
Consider also that NC, VA and FL all went blue last year and without South Carolina democrats Obama may well have lost the nomination.
I'm a 100% progressive and I agree that this bill is NOT a stimulus package. It's the same old, same old.
But Reaganomics are just as irrelevant, and even more culpable.
Let's see what becomes of the rest of the TARP.
There are conspiracy theorists out there saying this crash was engineered to create a single world currency. That's how weird it's getting in the blogosphere.
This article makes no sense .... unless you have read your political history. Lincoln's brand of Republicanism does not exist today in the Republican Party. That's not a critcism, just a fact.
Funkdome:
Figuring out how to get the Inquisition back is probably next on these guys' list.
I agree, nothing is free though for the past 8 years we have been told (from Cheney's lips): a deficit is fine (as long as it is for the right reason evidently) in fact we have been told we do NOT need to pay for any program/war/etc --- instead we cut taxes.
What those who did not vote for this stimulus did NOT bring to the table was anything other than tax cuts....it's as brilliant a strategy as drill baby drill
This piece is so far-fetched it's almost not worth addressing.
Almost.
When taken in concert with Lind's December Salon piece - better written, just as wrong-headed - it seems Michael Lind is waging a one-man campaign to villify the region of his birth.
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/12/18/third_reconstruction/)
While I could point to the list of non-Southern Republicans who voted against the stimulus package, instead I'll stick with this: Southern Republicans are fiscal conservatives, who have voted against big-money, big-government intervention from the Wall Street bailout to the stimulus bill.
While I think their principles are wrong, at least they have 'em. Changing your core economic philosophy out of the blue isn't a trait I'd like my elected representatives to have.
Writers like Lind (and the author of an *extremely* similar auto-bailout focused piece last month in Salon) are just as guilty of the divisive regionalism they accuse Southerners of fomenting.
Hey, Mr. Lind, here's an idea - maybe *you* can start acting like the South is part of the United States. You know, set a good example for those poor, illiterate slobs? Divisive exploitation of 19th-century sectionalist angst is *so* 2008. Find another drum to bang; I for one don't relish seeing this already-tired theme trotted out every two months.
Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be journalism?
Since when are Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania considered part of the Confederacy?
And to roger37, do you even know how to read? Where was mention made of West Virginia and Oklahoma except in your post?
Furthermore, what is a "Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation", and what credibility does that bestow upon such a specious, and implausible piece of drivel?
If I had read this two or three days ago, I would have quickly forgotten it. But, as I have watched in disturbed bemusement at the opposition to the stimulis plan in the last few days, it seems all too accurate.
Get used to this rhetoric. You challenge obama or his Regime .. you either a racist or a looney. Welcome to the Peoples Republic of The United States of America !!
A courageous and critical piece that every adult American should absorb to help understand current politics...which as we suspect is not what we see on the surface. Lind tells a clear story: the states rights debates of early 1800's involving Calhoun etc continue in disguised form. America's progress into the future will be continually hindered by the backward looking, drag-anchor that this group/fraction imposes on national planning and responses to modern times. What is worse is how deliberately cynical the Southern cabal manipulates American democratic institutions, themologies and principles, to exert by fault, an disproportionately heavy influence on the progress and well being of the rest of the world.
A courageous and critical piece that every adult American should absorb to help understand current politics...which as we suspect is not what we see on the surface. Lind tells a clear story: the states rights debates of early 1800's involving Calhoun etc continue in disguised form. America's progress into the future will be continually hindered by the backward looking, drag-anchor that this group/fraction imposes on national planning and responses to modern times. What is worse is how deliberately cynical the Southern cabal manipulates American democratic institutions, themologies and principles, to exert by fault, an disproportionately heavy influence on the progress and well being of the rest of the world.
What a ridiculous article. More Senators should be protesting this package - it is a breathtaking amount of money and I can't believe Congress is just breezily approving it. Didn't anyone seen Navarette's column today? These so called Southern "racist" "confederate" Republicans are just doing the job that everyone else should be doing - taking off the rose-colored Obama glasses and looking at this stimulus package with a critical eye and common sense.
I would feel more confident about the Southern Republicans and Blue Dog Dems if their recent campaigns had included discussion of any contemporary issues or problems. Instead, in lock step, they all ran "I am pro-life and pro-gun" ads. And why were their opponents bad guys? "He/She has accepted money from pro-abortion groups and gays." The old "they'll take your guns away" hasn't lost any strength as an argument either, irrespective of the Supreme Court's recent affirmation of the right to bear arms. So most of the conservative Southerners were elected to or returned to office based on their NRA rating.
What the Republicans seem to be telling us now is that it's okay to borrow and spend in Iraq, but not here at home. No matter how desperate the situation. They are mean-spirited and proudly ignorant, and they're not dying off fast enough.
Thank you.
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