CLOUT DOUBT. In their book, Foxes in the Henhouse, my bete noir, Mudcat Saunders and his more level-headed co-author, Steve Jarding, express indignation that too many Democrats "can't count." You don't need an abacus, they argue, to realize the South is simply too big to dismiss. For a moment, let's put aside the South's electoral count in favor of its financial clout. The Institute for Southern Studies has analyzed the contributions to the top five Republican and Democratic campaigns during the first two quarters of 2007. The results? Although the southern states -- the ISS defines them as a baker's dozen, pooling Kentucky and West Virginia with the former Confederate States -- account for 31 percent of electoral votes, southern donors contributed just 16 percent of all monies. Trust me when I say it won't take a tote board to count the number of times facts like these are mentioned when the political conversation turns, as it always does in every electoral cycle, to the South's critical role in American politics. --Tom Schaller
