Sullivan Has A Good Point

Andrew Sullivan says that:

With George W. Bush's ascent and a fully-evolved policy of not merely coopting the South, butbecoming a Southern party first and foremost, Republicanism shifted with speedily away fromits previous principles and balance. War accelerated the process. The GOP is now afundamentalist, Christian, Southern party first - and tries to cobble some more slices of the pieonto that base. With war behind it, and gay-baiting for good measure, it still managed to pulltogether barely 51 percent of the electorate in 2004.

I agree with this analysis whole-heartedly. What's more complicated are the consequences of it. The debate between the DLC and "Kos" wings of the Democratic Party has in large part been between trying to split the difference in the South in order to stem our losses there (the DLC option) or isolating the South, consolidating our hold on the Northeastmaking and making a play for the West (the "Kos" option). Obviously it would be nice to do both at once, because a simple-minded pursuit of either option has serious liabilities. Competing in the South could be a waste of resources and inevitably shifts the entire political balance in the direction of Southern conservatism - not a direction liberals want to go. Abandoning the South means that Dems concede a huge political playing field, and it ignores the creeping southernization of the country at large.

But fear not! I think it might be possible to appeal to Southerners who aren't fundamentalist white nationalists, Southerners who have something in common with the working class populist voters in the West who are concerned with globalization, big corporations, government corruption. People that the Republicans have managed to win despite conservative hostility to their way of life. It's a tricky strategy, but with potentially greater fruits than privileging the South or attacking it.