Republicans: The Southern Regional Party

 
Republicans are at war with everyone other than their far-right Southern base. We all know what the Southern conservative base is all about, or should I say everything to which they are opposed. Southern Republicans are one very angry and disgruntled group of individuals, long on issues and short on solutions.

The list of the people and ideas Southern Conservatives
oppose is growing longer every day. They seem to hate recent immigrants, gays,
abortion, birth control, evolution, global warming, gun control, and separation
of church and state, and that is just a partial list.  Now, after last month’s Sandy Relief debacle we can add the entire Northeast to their hate list.

To the Republican members of the House, the Northeast is now
treated as if it were a foreign territory. The GOP seems to consider the States
of New York and New Jersey as ranking someplace between Israel and Pakistan as
a foreign aid priority.

Suddenly the Southern Republicans think that any emergency
aid to Sandy devastated areas should be offset with spending cuts in other parts
of the federal budget to avoid adding to the federal deficit. Republican
opposition to relief for a devastated area of our nation would have been
unthinkable back in 1972 after the Agnes Flood or 2005 after Katrina. But all
that has changed today under the dictatorial rule of Speaker Boehner and his
GOP Majority House.

On January 15, 2013, the House of Representatives finally
passed the Sandy Aid package for the victims of the October 29, 2012 storm. It
is a sad statement that most Republicans, 179 in all, voted against the final
package even after the so-called pork was removed. In the Southern States of
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee every single
Republican voted against or abstained the disaster relief bill for Hurricane Sandy
victims. By contrast, almost every Democrat who voted on the bill, even in
states far removed from harm, including California, Colorado, Missouri, and
Nevada, voted for it.

Is it any wonder that many political analysts believe the
GOP is destined to become a southern regional party. In the last 6 presidential
cycles the Republicans have gotten 79% of their electoral votes from the South.
The Republican strategy for years has been to carry the 11 states of the Confederacy, Oklahoma, the 8 states in the Mountain West, and spend the equivalent of the gross national product of Brazil to carry Ohio. The Northeast is no longer of any consequence to the GOP.

Reality is that this strategy will not work because Republican extremism regarding such topics as immigration and women’s reproductive rights have placed the Hispanic and women’s vote squarely in the hands of the Democratic Party. You can also bank on the fact that no amount of Fox News lies, Evangelical outrage, or skewed GOP election polls will make any difference.