The New Confederate States

A report on NPR this morning made me realize I've completely missed the narrative of this election cycle.

Yes, Donald Trump is not representing the Republican establishment, and yes the convention in Cleveland will be ugly and dirty.

But that's not the big picture here.  As Ben Domenech of The Federalist points out, all this comes at a time when the Republican Party is ascendant, they're at their highest level of elected office (top to bottom) since 1920 and the Democrats are at their lowest.  It's obvious, once this is pointed out, that the money/power behind the GOP (The Kochs, the Adelsons, the dark money) is concentrating on local and state races.  That's where the power is, that's where a small amount of 'influence money' can have a great deal of effect.

Dark money has given up the national stage.  While the public focuses on and is distracted by the circus in Washington, the Kochs are quietly outlawing abortion at a state level, removing women's rights at a state level, eliminating unions at a state level, and removing social safety nets at the state level.

If they can't limit the reach of the federal government through getting their candidates elected, they can at least increase the reach of the states and accomplish essentially the same goal.  Quietly, stealthily, without fanfare, without the liberals even noticing.  

They have proven, in the past eight years, that a Chief Executive can be made impotent through resistance in the Legislature.  National races do not matter in the new Confederate United States envisioned by The Heritage Foundation.

The federal government is being starved of talent, as surely as they wanted to starve it of funding.

Yep, ActBlue has come to the same conclusion:

ActBlue wrote:

The Kochs have abandoned the presidential race.

After trying and failing to buy up the presidential primary, they're switching gears to go back to what they do best: buying and paying for House and Senate seats. It's a move to throw their $900 million cycle budget behind races they know they'll win, to ultimately have control over GOP politicians in office.

Three leading Koch-linked groups spent nearly $4 million dollars in the last month alone on ads to help boost Republican Senate candidates in three different states and we're still seven months away from the election.

Somebody should do a study, to figure out what would happen if the USA split down party lines into two countries, the liberal North and West and the conservative East and South. My gut feeling is that most industry is in liberal territory, while much agriculture is conservative. Welfare and social security is largely SE, meaning the former Confederate States are net debtor states to the federal budget. I doubt the Confederacy would be self-sustaining, but the Union might be hard pressed to feed itself.

Would make an interesting study anyway.

And come November, whoever wins, we might need the data.

The Confederacy never really went away.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47193273
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/6/18213902/ralph-northam-resign-justin-fairfax-mark-herring-blackface-virginia-governor
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/attorney-northam-virginia-country-club_us_5c61a875e4b0eec79b268f3a
ttps://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823582/virginia-blackface-scandal-draws-attention-to-the-dehumanizing-impact-of-blackfa

NoCoPilot wrote:

Somebody has, three years ago.

If you read the article carefully, you may find that, after making all the suggested accommodations, what the author suggests is little different from the monolithic country we now have.

States that voted for Trump in 2016.



States that have outlawed abortion.



States most reliant on federal aid.

Quote :

Republicans represent a far greater number of smaller counties with less-educated, more-homogenous workforces that, on average, tend to rely on manufacturing, agriculture and mining.

Democrats represent a smaller number of densely populated and diverse metropolitan counties fueled by service-oriented industries such as finance, professional services and software.

Brookings researcher Mark Muro put it this way: ““Blue and red America continue to reflect two very different economies — one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services professions and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on ‘traditional’ industries,” he added.

“If this pattern continues — with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority — it will be a recipe for economic harm to nearly all people and places,” Muro wrote.