A Spirited Defence Against Liberal Bigotry of the South

These seem pretty rare but this has to be the most fact filled and stringent defense of the South against bigots from the "party of tolerance" that I have ever seen.

Oh, those dumb white Southerners! No other group in American society could possibly believe in preposterous conspiracy theories. Well, maybe one other group, the most reliably Democratic demographic in the whole U.S. electorate. A 2005 study by RAND and Oregon State University showed that a majority of blacks believed that a cure for AIDS was being withheld from the poor; that nearly half believed that AIDS was man-made, with a quarter believing that it was created in a U.S. government laboratory and 12 percent naming the CIA as its source. Black paranoia about AIDS is understandable, given the Tuskegee experiments. Even so, the theory that AIDS was created by the CIA to commit genocide against black people is wackier than the craziest Birther conspiracy theories. Would Kathleen Parker write, or the Washington Post publish, a column arguing that black Democrats "have seceded from sanity"? Would Kevin Drum applaud Parker's insult and extend to it to all African-Americans?

This part especially blows up the "angry white man" being against Obama due to his race instead of his policies. It seem white women don't like Democratic policies more then those so-called "angry white men." Also the supposedly socially backward South has many of the same social beliefs as the core-Democrat constituency of blacks and Latinos.

Curiously, the progressive punditariat, so voluble about "angry white men," is silent about the decades-old Republican bias of white women. Even more curious is the paradox that liberals routinely denounce white Southern Protestants for holding the very social views that are held by majorities or near-majorities of blacks and Latinos who form the electoral base of the Democratic Party.

This is another interesting part too about how the Dems may squander their new found majority by kicking people like the mostly-Southern Blue Dogs to the curb. I think liberals marginalize the Blue Dogs at their peril.

Also if Obama blows the immigration debate looming in 2010 as badly as he is currently blowing health care reform then they may lose the Latino vote in 2010 and 2012 as well. If the GOP can silence the anti-immigrant wing of their party they could easily bring many Latinos on board for decades. Remember that some of the strongest GOP supporters are Cuban-Americans in Florida and I can see socially conservative Latinos easily joining that group if given the chance.

Blacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues. This strategic logic should lead liberals to seek out and welcome the vote of white social conservatives in the South and elsewhere, as long as they vote for Democrats for reasons other than the social issues. Indeed, socially conservative white voters helped to create and to maintain the new Democratic majority in Congress. But many liberals, it would appear, would rather have a smaller Democratic Party than one that includes more white Southerners with typically "black" or "Latino" views about sex and reproduction.