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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Friday, July 31, 2009

The ignorance and stigma of the Southern drawl

DailyKos bought a poll on the "birther" question. The headline is that 58% of Republicans polled don't believe (28%) or are not sure (30%) about Obama's citizenship which is a really frightening bit of ignorance....

However, I found the really interesting bit in the internals. If you look at the breakdown, almost all of that comes from the South....

So maybe it's time to directly ask the question: Has the GOP completely associated the southern drawl with their most ignorant elements? Has the southern drawl become an identifier and turnoff to everyone else across the country?

Also, why, in this supposedly totally southern GOP are almost all the presidential candidates and rising leaders not tainted with the south and the drawl? (Huckabee certainly has it, and Jindal's southern, but not quite template, but run through the rest of the list: Romney, Palin, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Cantor, Pence, etc.... Not much southern there.)

(PS. For a party where a majority "don't believe" in evolution, selling a birth certificate scam isn't all that surprising.)

8 Comments:

  • "Has the southern drawl become an identifier and turnoff to everyone else across the country?"

    with me? yes - 100%! the drawl just drips ignorance in my mind...I guess I'm a bigot.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:07 AM  

  • Yeah, well the south has long been something of a very broad ignorance joke, but this really does seem to be having an impact as it's now not just southern, but Republican extremes that are the association and joke.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:15 AM  

  • I will continue to say it: Lincoln should have let the South go...

    By Blogger -epm, at 11:44 AM  

  • Well, aside from anything else, slavery would have continued for quite some time.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 12:22 PM  

  • But remember, the Emancipation Proclamation would have PRESERVED slavery in states that re-joined the union, no?

    Look, there's a lot of "if's" and "but's" in predicting what might have happened.

    By Blogger -epm, at 3:59 PM  

  • Agreed.

    (But just to continue the time paradox argument. If there was no civil war, there wouldn't have been an emancipation proclamation.)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 4:43 PM  

  • Well, maybe. But the abolitionist movement pre-dated the Civil War and we don't know where the political process would have led to in a New United States, sans the Confederate states. Are you saying the 13th Amendment would not have happened if not for the Civil War?

    To some degree -- and I know I'll catch shit for this -- it's like saying there wouldn't be a "free" Iraq if we didn't invade and occupy the country. We're liberators of Iraq. We're emancipators of slaves.

    Yes, we "liberated" the slaves. But 150 years stretching from lynching and segregation to ration profiling "Southern strategies" we still have a black man arrested in his home for getting uppity with a white cop...

    I'm getting in way over my depth here, and far too astray. Sorry if I've offended anyone. It's out of ignorance, not ill-will.

    ... I'm going on vacation now :)

    By Blogger -epm, at 5:25 PM  

  • No. I'm saying the secessionist south would have still had slavery.

    And, this argument isn't really that germane. Since you're leaving, just let it go and have a nice trip.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 6:42 PM  

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