WRASSLING WITH DIXIE. Tom's right. His non-Southern Strategy thesis drives people nuts. I know this because I alienated no less than three (3) separate people by mentioning it this weekend, and then finding myself unable to escape the resultant firestorm of offense and anecdote. You can't focus your resources in the Interior West because that person grew up in the South (albeit in a university community), and they know, just know, that the South would greet Democrats as liberators, showering them with chocolate and flowers, if only they'd make a play for their affections. Tom can ably argue against that impulse, and I'd like to see him go a bit more into the racial politics than he's been doing. It's worth noting that the South, as an aggregate region, disagrees with the Democrats on a variety of issues areas (mainly national security, civil liberties, and cultural issues), and it is not in any way irrational or immoral for southerners to vote based on those preferences. But as a more general strategic note, the southernization of the GOP will have pretty massive effects on the Republican Party -- effects Democrats will find fairly congenial. As a combination of Californian emigration, Hispanic immigration, and economic fluctuation continue diluting the Interior West's libertarianism, the region will cease exerting its current pull on the Republican Party's ideology. And as the Elephant becomes ever more reliant on the South, the concerns of the region's dominant constituence -- economically insecure whites -- will continue permeating the top levels of the Republican coalition, eventually forcing a leftward shift as their base continues to demand entitlement security and public spending. None of this obviates the need for Democrats to craft a message that speaks directly to some southern concerns -- if only because Democrats need to force the GOP to respond to a progressive economic appeal (which I argue more fully here). But as someone convinced by Tom's data that the South is Republican for the foreseeable future, I'm surprised by the sparse attention given to the implications of this for the GOP.
--Ezra Klein