“He has a message that is just made for the southern and mountain states”
Which Southern state do you live in that qualifies you to make that statement, please, enlighten me, because I do live in a Southern state, and a few months ago, our paper, which for all intents and purposes, is a Republican paper, published a poll taken statewide that said that more than half of the residents in the state now are in opposition to the war in Iraq. There are a few kinds of Southern voters that are Republicans, but I think the best way to describe them are, people who actually voted for Republicans in general elections before Ronald Reagan, and people who did not become Republican voters for general elections (on a non-presidential level) until the Reagan era, and then the people who joined because Clinton angered them.
The people who have been Republicans the longest are the people who Paul’s message is going to appeal to. They by in large live in affluent areas in the major cities or in very affluent suburbs. They tend to be college educated, and they were long drawn to the Republican Party because it was not a party that historically pushed class antagonisms and at one time, it was the party of fiscal responsibility. In otherwords, these are the people who Barry Goldwater’s message resonated with.
The other kind of Southern Republican is the kind that is generally stereotyped in the media. In general, these people didn’t vote for Republicans in state elections in large numbers until the 1990s. They tend to support governments role in a variety of areas, considering their political heritage is populist and New Dealer. In large part, these voters make up the Religious Right coalition. They tend to reside in more working class and rural areas, areas that in this state were reliable for Democratic candidates on a state and local level until about a decade ago.
I personally know that I would prefer Ron Paul to appoint supreme court justices over any other candidate because he is the only one in the race with a concept of what the constitution is supposed to be. And this is how he can run. His message won’t sell with people who in 1976 voted for Jimmy Carter, it will have a chance of selling to people who voted for Gerald Ford that year.