Jimmy Carter was an actual Southerner type Christian. He STILL teaches Sunday School at a little church in Plains, Georgia.
Post LBJ the Republicans were infiltrating the fundies in the South who didn't give a DAMN about politics because they were devoted to the "Kingdom of Heaven". These were thousands and thousands of people who never voted before. All of the sudden you had fire and brimstone preachers screaming for "God's People" to "take back America" and the ethereal world was merged into the real world.
Those preachers also told you who the enemy was. Instead of loving your neighbor and setting an example for them of a kind and gentle soul (like Carter,...or Mr. Rogers) they wanted you to recognize the enemy amongst your own neighbors and blame them for the HELL that the country was in.
Look at the map from when Carter got elected.
Ford would have won if Carter had lost New York and Ohio. Just look at the "Left Coast". In fact, a lot of people at the time thought The South had given America "a Hayseed".
Billy Carter was even on "Hee Haw".
It was essential for The South to have a case of collective amnesia about them voting for a "D". The Carter years HAD to be remembered as a complete disaster and to this day there is a shock factor when you show someone from The South the map above.
Or the fact that the only modern president that served more time in the military than Jimmy Carter was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
(Reagan's time doing war movies doesn't count.)
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