Maybe John Kerry was right: he doesn't need the South to win the Presidency. So says Curtis Wilkie in today's Boston Globe. The prototypical Southern voter isn't a pick-up driving good 'ol boy waving the Confederate flag, but a socially conservative Rotarian, says the ex-Globe political writer and Mississippi-based journalism scholar. Let the GOP play to this religiously-motivated base; against gay marriage, and against choice on abortion, and for firm gun rights and the death penalty. A few Buchanan moments could result at the GOP convention. Something like that would disgust enough swing voters to vault a Democrat into the White House as in 1992, says Wilkie.

(Mmmm, if Kerry's success hinges on that level of GOP stupidity, he really may be crisp and buttered).

And Wilkie's description of the real South today still seems a charicature of small-town life. Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Austin, and Dallas are full of Northern transplants, secular humanists, immigrants from all corners of the globe, even gays.

The prevailing winds in the South have always been conservative, but Southern conservatism no longer reflects an allegiance to the Confederacy or a red-necked, know-nothing opposition to racial integration. Southern politics is now dominated by a faith-based devotion to the values taught in the fundamentalist Protestant churches that occupy important street corners in every town. In the ministry of these white Southern churches, gay rights are abhorrent and no woman is entitled to the right of abortion. The death penalty is an Old Testament-proven means of punishment. The Constitution's Second Amendment, which speaks of the right to bear arms, is preferable to the First, which guarantees freedom of speech. Drinking is forbidden, and dancing skirts close to the sins of the flesh. Biblical injunctions against race-mixing are occasionally cited to justify private church schools that enable local whites to circumvent integration in the public schools. At the same time, separating the affairs of church and state is thought of as a Godless device designed to deny schoolchildren prayer. The fundamentalist doctrine is strong and sometimes administered by angry preachers as fevered as Middle East mullahs.

Phew! Wait a minute, did this guy cover seven presidential campaigns for an, uh, Boston, paper? Wilkie says his socially-conservative Southern Babbit is better than a "Deliverance"-style redneck, but not by much, it appears.

If Kerry's going to write off the South, he'll have to unclench his butt and mix it up in the Plains states and the Southwest. More gun photo-ops, JFK! And how about a coherent stand on Iraq, terrorism, and national security?

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 8, 2004 09:09 AM

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