Alec MacGillis, Is the South too Republican for Republicans?

Well, here’s one thing to think about. What if the South has become so monolithically Republican that actual conservative proposals and argument of the sort that Santorum and Romney have been offering don’t actually resonate all that much?

Consider: Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi reside in a universe where virtually all white voters vote Republican. And no, this isn’t just an Obama thing—Obama only got 11 percent of the white vote in Mississsippi in 2008, but that was barely worse than the 14 percent John Kerry got four years earlier. Increasingly, being a Democrat in the Deep South—a Democrat when it comes to national politics—means being African-American. This means that political polarization in the Deep South is of a different sort than it is elsewhere. It is very much aligned with the region’s deep racial divides, but it is also arguably less ideological than it is elsewhere….

Or take Romney’s railing against what he calls Obama’s “crony capitalism”—loans for Solyndra and other favored green-tech companies. As TNR contributor Ed Kilgore pointed out during the Rick Perry boomlet, the South has long been enamored of doling out tax breaks and cash to companies who set up shop there, a form of industrial policy that is considered a-ok because it’s done by local Republicans. In this context, ideology matters less than culture and group identity, which is perhaps why both men have been reduced to making such excruciating cultural panders.