Sebastian Mallaby touches on an oft-mentioned obsession of mine, the impact the Southernization of the GOP will have on conservatism:
It's not just the values of the South that pose a problem. It is the region's appetite for government. The most solidly red states in the nation tend also to be the most reliant on federal handouts -- farm subsidies, water projects and sundry other earmarks. It's hard to be the party of small government when you represent the communities that benefit most from big government. George W. Bush tried to straddle this divide by pleasing libertarians with tax cuts and traditionalists with spending. The result is a huge deficit.
Right. This is a point I made at length in my "Rise of the Republicrats" article, but in addition to adoring pork and handouts, the South is economically insecure and downwardly mobile. It has the lowest median income in the nation and, between 2002 and 2003, was the only region to see its income drop. So Southerners, predictably, appreciate entitlements as much as subsidies. And the GOP, which needs Southern votes to retain any hope of electoral viability, will have to reorient itself towards Big Government to retain the South. It's no accident that George W. Bush, the first Southern Republican elected in generations, campaigned with a promise to secure Social Security and add a prescription drug entitlement to Medicare. What's anathema to the old GOP is nothing less than necessary to the new one.
