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Where exactly does “The South” begin, anyway? At Harpers Ferry? Just left of Philadelphia? What is the crossroads that divides “Southerners” from the rest of us, those of us in the East, Midwest, Southwest and West who don’t talk with corn in our mouths? Somebody please buy Ohio Sen. George Voinovich a ticket to the real South, preferably on a slow-moving train, so he can observe the country he helps govern. Last month, Voinovich charged that Southerners are what’s wrong with the Republican Party. “We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” he told the Columbus Dispatch, talking about...

My 2nd great-grandfather was a Civil War Soldier. Grandpa LuckyBogey, Sr., and his two brothers are listed in the muster roll of Company B, 49th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A. of Telfair County, Georgia, known as the Telfair Volunteers. 4th Sergeant LuckyBogey, Sr. was wounded and captured at Petersburg, Va. in April 1865. Grandpa Luckybogey , Sr. escaped from Jackson Hospital in Richmond the next day and as General Lee surrendered, Grandpa LuckyBogey, Sr., , on his own, made his way back home to Georgia. See the History of the 49th Regiment and the 35th Georgia...

...In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party... Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong...

Southern Republicans — the backbone of the GOP — are not sold on any of their party’s possible high-profile presidential candidates in 2012, a finding that could be good news for S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford. Sanford rubbed shoulders at a Columbia health care forum Thursday with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who remains highly regarded by many in the Republican Party. It was another moment in the spotlight for Sanford, who has generated buzz about his 2012 presidential prospects with his frequent television appearances and outspoken opposition to Democratic President Barack Obama’s federal stimulus plan. Southerners overwhelmingly back Sanford’s...

Is there any political caricature more threadbare than casting the Republican Party as "the Confederacy?" CNN analyst Gloria Borger tossed that one on Thursday, with all its pejorative assumptions about hidden or not-so-hidden racial animus, noting New England states had no House Republicans.

Official results for the next census will not be released for a few years. But it’s never too early to predict how population changes will affect the makeup of Congress through the next reapportionment. A report released Monday predicts significant changes in the makeup of the House of Representatives in the next decade that could see a continuation of the trend of the South gaining even more seats. The report also cautioned that current economic factors could affect some of the population trends driving the most recent predictions. After each decennial census, the 435 seats in the House are reallocated...

Though none of the candidates openly admit it, the Mason-Dixon Line has emerged as a key fault line in the race for the Republican National Committee chairmanship. As the GOP wrestles with criticism that it is in danger of becoming a regional party rooted in the South, rather than one with broad appeal across the nation, the contest for chairman is shaping up in no small part as a referendum on just how much Southern flavor the party should have at the top in the wake of a sound electoral defeat in every other region of the country. Since no...

Democrats gained two US Senate seats in the South this year, three if Jim Martin (D) defeats US Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) in the December 2 runoff. In two years, however, the GOP will have little opportunity to reverse the Democratic trend in Dixie’s senate delegation. Of the nine Southern members of the US Senate up for re-election in 2010, eight are Republicans, only one, Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln, is a Democrat. So numbers alone indicate that the Democrats have a major advantage going into the next election two years from now. The political battlefield may have a set of issues...

Win or lose, some liberal pundits seem constitutionally incapable of civility toward conservatives. Four years ago, the people and states that reelected George W. Bush were branded en masse as “dumb” and as ignorant denizens of “Jesusland” — the kind of stereotyping supposedly only Republicans engage in. Bush won 31 states in that election, encompassing most of the interior of the continental U.S., over intense — some might say deranged — liberal opposition, and so perhaps their being sore losers was somewhat understandable. But even in victory liberal commentators can’t seem to show any class; now the slander of the...

In a nation turned blue, the South remains largely red. That's the takeaway from the 2008 election, and the Republicans' best hope for resurrecting their party. John McCain — for all his political waffling and personal idiosyncrasies — still held on to the South. Except for Virginia and Florida (two states heavily infiltrated by Northerners) and North Carolina (a race so close it couldn't be called until three days after the election), the South remained solidly in the GOP column. From Florida's Panhandle to Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, McCain actually garnered a higher percentage of votes than George W. Bush...

The only place where Republicans are flourishing in national elections is the Deep South. There is reason to fear that if Republicans do not alter their present course they will be relegated to a permanent minority in Congress and be stuck below the 200 electoral vote mark in presidential elections. Emphasis on social conservatism does not appear sufficient to affect votes for federal offices, even in states where voters approve of socially conservative policies (e.g., Florida voted overwhelmingly against a gay marriage proposal but for Barack Obama). The challenge for Republicans is to maintain a distinctive alternative to liberalism but...

TUSCALOOSA | Don't tell Bill Maher, but the vote among the white electorate in Alabama for president elect Barack Obama was the lowest in the county at only 10 percent. From an analysis by MSNBC: "We took a look at Obama's performance with white voters in all 50 states. In 13 of them, Obama received less than 35% of the white vote. His three lowest performing states: Alabama (10%), Mississippi (11%), and Louisiana (14%). The other 10: GA (23%), SC (26%), TX (26%), OK (29%), AR (30%), UT (31%), AK (32%), WY (32%), ID (33%), and TN (34%). On the...

VERNON, Ala. — Fear of the politician with the unusual name and look did not end with last Tuesday’s vote in this rural red swatch where buck heads and rifles hang on the wall. This corner of the Deep South still resonates with negative feelings about the race of President-elect Barack Obama.

The South, Now With More Racism! (according to the NY Times) And, once again, the South is labeled racist. The New York Times has once again labeled the South racist, crediting the shocking tendency of the South to vote Republican. This time, it’s obvious because the South voted as much as 10% more in favor of the Republican party than in ’04’s election. The title of the article is “For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics,” but it should have been “The South, Now With More Racism!” because it was nothing more than a thinly-guised attack on the South,...

Alan Wolfe, announcing the end of the culture wars with the election of Obama, accuses the South of voting against Obama because Southerners are racists: “The single most disturbing aspect of last night’s election is the transformation of the Republican Party into the party of the Confederacy. Yes, Republicans remain strong in states such as Wyoming and Idaho, and Obama won Virginia and is leading in North Carolina. But both these latter two states flipped to the Democrats because they contain large numbers of white professionals who moved there from other parts of the country and because blacks came out...

Tennessee Republicans served notice Wednesday that the legislature is under new management, all but promising to replace the three state constitutional officers and challenging Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen to open talks on state budget issues. Although Republicans won a one-vote majority in the state Senate two years ago, they built it to a 19-14 margin Tuesday and, unexpectedly, won a 50-49 majority in the House, which Democrats held 53-46 until Election Day. Legislative historian Eddie Weeks confirmed it's the first time the GOP has held a majority of both chambers since 1869, during Reconstruction after the Civil War. Both parties...

WAKE FOREST, N.C. --Barack Obama hardly marched across the South like Sherman. But he certainly made some inroads. The Illinois Democrat failed to win a majority of white votes in any Southern state, and exit polls indicate that a deeper racial divide may persist here than in other regions. But he won Florida. You could argue that Florida - with its snowbirds and ice hockey franchises - is not really "Southern," but that doesn't change the fact that a Northern, liberal Democrat hasn't taken the state since FDR. And it's hard to overstate the symbolic importance of Obama's comfortable victory...

John McCain now leads Barack Obama 54% to 42% in Tennessee, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state. The latest numbers represent a modest slip for the Republican, who led 58% to 39% in late September. However, McCain has held double-digit leads since tracking began in April, with his lowest level support at 51% in June.

FAYETTEVILLE - John McCain enjoys a solid lead in Arkansas, according to a statewide poll. McCain leads Barack Obama 51 percent to 36 percent among polled registered voters, according to the Arkansas Poll. That leaves 14 percent of Arkansas voters undecided, and those still undecided tend to be voters who identify themselves as Democrats, according to poll results. If Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic nominee, 54 percent of participants would have voted for her. The poll interviewed 1,628 people via telephone between Oct. 1 and Oct. 21. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percent.

Please pay attention Roger Wicker and Greg Davis There are many myths in southern culture. One of the latest is the myth of the modern day, "conservative" Mississippi Democrat. Currently, Senator Roger Wicker (R) and Greg Davis are locked into real battles with former Governor Ronnie Musgrove (D) and Rep. Travis Childers (D), respectively, for federal contests. Let's start this conversation with two basic facts. First, Mississippi is overwhelmingly conservative. That's a given. To even have a prayer (pardon the pun), a Democrat for statewide office must be conservative on God, guns and abortion. That's just a fact. A "true...

Debate to happen...

A new poll shows that Republican John McCain might win South Carolina as handily as George W. Bush did four and eight years ago. McCain had a 59 percent to 37 percent lead in this state over Democratic rival Barack Obama, according to a recent American Research Group poll. Four percent remained undecided.

Yet another poll shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain with a commanding lead over Democrat Barack Obama in Georgia. The new survey — commissioned by WXIA-TV (11Alive) in Atlanta and WMAZ-TV in Macon, and conducted by SurveyUSA — puts McCain at 57 percent , with Obama trailing at 41 percent.

McCain 2:1 Atop Obama in Alabama: In an election for President of the United States in Alabama today, 09/18/08, seven weeks from Election Day, Republican John McCain defeats Democrat Barack Obama by 30 points, 64% to 34%, according to this exclusive WKRG-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA.

ATLANTA --- Democrat Barack Obama's campaign in Georgia is in the midst of a deep slide, according to a poll released Thursday. A new InsiderAdvantage/Poll Position survey of likely registered voters indicates a steep decline for Mr. Obama. It shows Republican John McCain with the support of 56 percent of the respondents to Mr. Obama's 38 percent.

WSFA 12 News has a look at the results of one well-known Alabama political poll in the Presidential race. It appears undecided voters are making up their minds and they're choosing Republican John McCain. According to the Capital Survey Research Center poll of likely voters, McCain has a commanding 20 point lead over Barack Obama, 55% to 35%. When you look back at the last four polls, Obama has stayed virtually flat from 34 to 36%. While McCain started strong in June, dipped in July and August and regained his lead in September. Voters who favored neither candidate dropped significantly...

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign has pulled ads running in Georgia and shifted some of its paid campaign staff from Georgia to North Carolina while contending that it's not surrendering the state to Republican John McCain.

Obama campaign shifting some people out of Georgia Will continue voter-registration drives By JIM GALLOWAY, AARON GOULD SHEININ asheinin@ajc.com The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Nearly three weeks after dropping its TV ads, the Democratic presidential campaign of Barack Obama will shift personnel out of Georgia into more competitive states like North Carolina, staffers confirmed Tuesday. The movement of resources reflects a quickly tightening, state-by-state race for the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House. Campaign officials declined to specify how many of approximately 75 paid Obama staffers will be redeployed, and denied that the move signaled...

No matter how much I hooted and mooed when Bill Clinton slithered on stage last night to nourish his ego afresh, I couldn't help cracking a smile of recognition when Bubba brought out his slowest drawl to declare, "I looove Joe Biden." I have been hearing that exact same phrase, drawn out just the same way, from Southern delegates all week when I asked them about Obama's number two. "Oh, we looove Joe Biden," they say, almost always adding that they love him because he just comes on out and says it, consequences be damned. It's been a while since...

John McCain now leads Barack Obama in the Volunteer State by twenty-four percentage points in Tennessee. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Volunteer State shows McCain with a 56% to 32% margin. That’s essentially where the race stood in April although Obama managed to close the gap to fifteen points in June, shortly after wrapping up the Democratic nomination. When “leaners” are included, McCain now leads Obama 60% to 35%. Leaners are survey participants who initially indicate no preference for either major candidate but indicate that they are leaning towards either McCain or Obama. Fifty-seven percent (57%) say...

Republican Sen. John McCain enjoys a 16-point lead -- 51 percent to 35 percent -- among Southern voters over rival Democrat Sen. Barack Obama, a new poll by Winthrop University and ETV shows. And, the further into the South you go, the larger McCain's lead grows, the poll of likely voters in 11 Southern states shows. Likely voters in the Deep South -- those in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina -- preferred McCain by a 25-point margin, 56 percent to 31 percent. Southern voters said what they want most in a president is honesty, experience and shared values....

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Georgia spent the weekend training more than 2,500 volunteers for a statewide push to register voters and boost Election Day turnout, a massive grass-roots mobilization that is part of the campaign's national strategy to drive up the mostly Democratic black vote and capture longtime Republican strongholds. Mr. Obama has vowed to increase black voter participation by 30 percent, which likely would redraw the electoral map by reclaiming once-Democratic Southern states - including Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia - that turned Republican in 1964.

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party's few...

A July 27 Washington Post analysis pointed out the actual numbers involved in a Barack Obama victory in some of the Southern states. These numbers make it very clear that it is all but impossible. We will hear over and over about how Obama will be competitive in some Southern states and Virginia will always be mentioned. Nevertheless, here’s the truth: In order to win Virginia he has to A) hold ALL the White votes John Kerry got in Virginia. THIS ALONE IS A GAME ENDER, but there’s more; B) He has to increase the Black turn out by 30%...

Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey recently returned to the U.S. South, where his family has roots, and found that George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the region deeply: "the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language." In the August 11 Newsweek cover, "The End of the South" (on newsstands Monday, August 4), Newsweek looks at the race issue head-on in the region that has fought the longest and the hardest, and suffered the most, trying...

The US should avoid suggesting that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be followed by a surge of troops in Afghanistan, according to Jim Webb, senator for Virginia. Ruling himself out as a possible running mate for Barack Obama, Mr Webb’s comments come as an implied criticism of the Democratic party’s orthodoxy on Iraq and Afghanistan – including Mr Obama’s own stance. "The dynamic is that terrorism works the seams of international law. We can’t create stable societies in places like Afghanistan;that can’t be our objective.”Mr Webb’s background as a “Reagan Democrat” – the group of working-class Democratic supporters...

THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South. Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the...

Looks like McCain is headed for a southern sweep, as predicted I might add. Coming soon my first official Electoral College recap. I remind you that in 04 I only missed New Hampshire. Ignore all other Electoral College recaps but mine.

THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South. Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the...

Watch this news report on MS-1 special election, it's hilarious. Obama is rapidly becoming democratic candidates' nightmare. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE1oN4bYjyg

While the eyes of the political world were focused on Pennsylvania last week, I played hooky for a day at the invitation of the Lee County Library and bumped into a story as revealing in its way as the latest round in the struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Among other things, it explains why John McCain found it useful to spend last week touring poverty-stricken areas in the South, where Republicans rarely go. On the same day that Pennsylvanians gave Clinton a victory that still left unclear who will eventually be the Democratic nominee, voters in Mississippi's 1st...

Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday. The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee. McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago. The four-term Arizona senator has moved up in matchups with each of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama....

McCain Can Carry the South by Martha Zoller (more by this author) Posted 03/10/2008 ET Updated 03/10/2008 ET “Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat. They oughta get a rich man to vote like that.” -- Song of the South, Performed by Alabama Ever since The Great Depression, the South has been trying to gain respect from the rest of the country. In every presidential elections since 1968, the winning candidate carried the Old South, and in 2008, John McCain must do so if he is going to win the White House. McCain came south last week to begin to...

Days after he'd been nominated by Democrats for president in the summer of 1988, while enjoying a double-digit lead in the polls, Michael Dukakis took what he fancied as a Trumanesque whistle-stop train tour. The train dipped into the northeastern corner of Arkansas for one quick depot stop. It wasn't clear why. Maybe he and his advisers surmised as follows: Since Dukakis's National Governors Association pal -- a fellow named Clinton -- was the governor there, then Dukakis might have a shot at those six Southern electoral votes. He didn't. I was plopped on this train and granted an interview...

First, let me get the obligatory “sorry for the vanity post” out of the way, although truthfully I am not sorry, this is something that I need to get off my chest and needs to be discussed. The purpose of this post is to address those who are upset at Fred Thompson’s performance in last nights debate because he 1. Did not attack John McCain 2. Was mean to poor old Mike Huckabee. It is time for a lesson in Southern Politics 101 : As has been said ad nauseum on here already, Fred Thompson has always planned on employing...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007712090318

A narrative has been constructed by Democrats and their media allies castigating Republicans as purveyors of a racist "Southern strategy" to explain the transition of the South from solidly Democrat to solidly Republican. If a tree can be judged by its fruit, this narrative is backwards. Bobby Jindal, a second generation Indian-American, is going to be the new Republican Governor of Louisiana.  Although governors who are black have been elected in Virginia and Massachusetts, this election marks the first time the support of white Southern voters has propelled a non-white governor into office.  Jindal's election is evidence that the much-reviled...

Fred Thompson's road to the nomination, his advisers say, begins with a bridge to South Carolina. Now -- a bridge has two ends, and it looks like the anchorage is Iowa. But how can Thompson possibly compete with Rudy Giuliani** on Feb. 5? New York? California? New Jersey? Thanks to a quirk in the Republican delegate allocation schema, conservative, Republican candidates have an edge. The Republican National Committee awards bonus delegates to states based on their performance in general elections. States that always vote Republican get additional delegates; states like New York that vote Democratic do not. Bonus delegates account...

L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who made history as the nation's first elected black governor, is preparing to campaign aggressively for Barack Obama, and predicted in an interview that the charismatic young candidate could shatter the Republican Party's virtual lock on the South. "He's not race-less," Wilder said of Obama, "but the skin color is of no moment. I don't think he would be an easy target for the Republicans." The unstinting embrace by Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, could be important in Virginia and other southern states, where his reputation still looms large and the African-American vote could...

L. Douglas Wilder, who in 1989 became the nation's first elected black governor, said in an interview published today that Sen. Barack Obama could loosen the Republican Party's grip on the South.Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, said in an interview with The Politico that he doesn't think Obama "would be an easy target for the Republicans," adding that he will campaign for the first-term Illinois senator.The 76-year-old Wilder, known for his candor, criticized African-American activists who have questioned whether Obama is "black enough" in his style and political leanings. Wilder said the rift has arisen because Obama is not...