Newt Gingrich wins South Carolina primary

[Alcibiades]

84. And don't discount SC progressives

The folks who did not leave the party, the folks who changed along with the Democratic Party, and folks who never had to change in the first instance, to include the black community. School desegregation made a real difference in racial attitudes: when I entered kindergarten in Columbia in 1973, our school had only been integrated for three years, and then only through the intervention of the DoJ, but today there are whole generations that never knew officially sanctioned white supremacy. Many South Carolina families have integrated as well, especially among the working class, to include my own family. Despite the stereotypes, there are plenty of white folks who you might expect to be Kloset Konfederates, folks who speak as though they had marbles in their mouths and are southern to the bone, who are, I believe, far less racist than much of the rest of the country, and who have much more real social contact with black folks than the typical yuppie urban professional we assume to be the typical progressive.

That being said, thee are still plenty of what I call the "George Wallace people" out there. Back when the schools integrated, they pulled their kids out and sent them to the new "Christian Academies" than sprang up like weeds, in South Carolina and elsewhere. A lot of these folks do have money, and wield an outsize infludence in South Carolina politics, especially within the GOP.