Originally posted by SirLoin
That is very interesting history for sure then.I find it hard to believe JFK would send the National Guard against a senator of his own party.
The South remained a very strange mix of party and ideology after the Civil War in the United States up until the late 1980s/early 1990s. While the national Republican and national Democratic parties found their own ideological niches (left of center for Democrats, right of center for Republicans ideologically), the South remained staunchly Democrat and strongly conservative. Lincoln, after all, was a Republican, and much of the post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction South wasn't about to elect a Republican regardless of his ideology. Virginia, for example, didn't elect its first Republican governor until 1969.
The result was that, over time, the Democratic party, long associated with racism and segregation in the South and elsewhere, liberalized and began including the classic constituencies now associated with them. In the meantime, the Republican party began gravitating toward a conservative constituency. All the while, the South remained out of step with the national ideologies of their parties... so much so in fact that by the 1950s and 1960s, northern Republicans were more "liberal" than most Southern Democrats. The 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed over the vehement opposition of conservative Southern Democrats by a coalition made up of Northern Democrats and Northern Republicans (Republican congressman Everett Dirksen of Illinois was essential to bringing Republicans to the table on civil rights).
Throughout the Reagan era into the Bush Sr. administration, regions began a long overdue partisan "realignment" in America. Conservative Southern Democrats converted to the Republican party, and the South largely began voting Republican. For the most part now, states and regions in the United States tend to vote "accurately," so to speak. Conservative constituencies North and South vote for Republicans, and more liberal constituencies vote Democrat... as we'd expect.
Hope that helps, SirLoin.
-- Todd/Leviathn
