The South bashing is getting really old.

[starroute]

29. Can we blame Nixon and Karl Rove for making the South a conservative stronghold?

Nixon started it with his Southern strategy, of course. Just as the South was starting to emerge from a hundred years of isolation and become part of the modern world, Nixon told them that he loved them just the way they were. So not only did Southerners move over the the Republican Party in large numbers, but they brought their most regressive attitudes with them. That didn't have to happen -- it happened because it was to the Republicans' advantage.

Then starting twenty years ago, Karl Rove determined that it should be possible to systematically eliminate the remaining Democratic office holders in the South and turn it almost solidly Republican, with the exception of a few isolated areas that are rural, black, and desperately poor. This isn't something people generally pin on Rove -- but I became aware of it when looking into Rove's connections with the US Attorney scandal and the prosecution of Don Siegelman.

Once again, the South doesn't have to be the way it is. It doesn't have to be poor and backwards and anti-union and ready to whore itself out to any corporation looking to build auto factories or atomic power plants. But it's been kept that way because it's to certain people's advantage -- not just in economic terms but also in terms of building a power base and insulating it against any progressive impulses that might crack the system wide open.

The South has been victimized over and over. It's flaws have been exploited ruthlessly and its virtues have been used against it. And until we start asking who benefits by that and where the lines of power run, we won't be able to understand what's been going on in the country as a whole.