Good point. The bailout surely helps to explain some of the difference between working class whites in the Midwest and elsewhere.

The most recent U.S. census, on which congressional representation is based, was conducted by the cronies of ACORN and their ilk. For workers (white or otherwise) to move out of Democratic strongholds will simply cede key swing states to the Democrats. Walking off the playing field because the game is rigged may feel good in the short run, but it is not a winning strategy.

The GOP leadership is, however, too stupid to recognize the long-term failure of their strategy and too cowardly to ever press the offensive. Voters would do well to keep in mind that you can generally nudge a politician in the direction you would like him to go with enough money and grass roots pressure, but it is nigh impossible to transplant testicular fortitude into a crybaby compromiser.

But if it’s a myth that the white South is Republican as a result of racial and cultural issues, why did it move so decisively toward the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the emergence of the abortion/religion issues. One would think that if the economic views of white Southerners were more in line with those of the GOP, they would have discovered this sooner. Instead, the vast majority of white Southerners voted for Democrats before 1964, and soon thereafter, the vast majority of them voted for Republicans. Did they go from advocating big government to small government over the course of a few years? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Nixon’s political adviser Kevin Philips wrote the following in 1969: “Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more [blacks] who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the [racist] whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.” (I changed words that some may find offensive.)