Goodbye to the Democrats ! ?

Much has been made lately about the demise of the Democratic Party in the South.  The Democratic “Solid South” Party is now no more than a highlighted link.  Nixon’s Southern Strategy did way more than even he and his Neocon cronies could ever imagine.

But, the Solid South did not die.  It is as alive as ever, but it is now in the pocket of the GOP – a hot pocket, to be sure, a pocket that wants to dictate how the rest of the suit hangs – but the good old boy, bible thumping, holier than thou south is still solid.

However, the question that caused this posting was could the Democratic Party ever recover in the South.  How can anyone who is even an elemental student of history not look at this question and wonder what is the opinionated world coming to.

They are asking if the party that has been taken over by liberals can ever recover from this takeover and recapture the hearts and minds of the working middle class or will it go the way of the Whig Party.

The answer is yes to all their naïve questions; it will not only survive, it may be well become the majority party before mid-century.  Case in point that supports this argument:  the Republican Party’s dominance in the South.

The Republican Party
We are talking about the party that started the Civil War.
The party that burned Atlanta and was going to make Georgia howl. 
The party that controlled Congress and punished the South after the Civil War.
The party that won the 1864 presidential election for Lincoln with the soldiers’ vote.

The same soldiers that were burning and destroying whatever they could find of value in the South.  This was 1864 and the North’s military supremacy could no longer be denied by the South’s heroic stand even in spirit if not in numbers.

In the 1864 election, the Democrats ran on a ticket of letting the South goes it separate way.  A peaceful settlement of hostilities and the South could continue as it had before.  Had the Democrats won the 1864 election, there would be a Confederate States of America, today.

But the Republican Party won with the soldiers’ vote, the North defeated and occupied the South.  During what they called “Reconstruction”, they controlled how each state could reenter the United States as an equal.

How could any party that had come into existence to destroy the Southern way of life ever become the dominate party in the South is the greater, more interesting question.  Answer that one and the one about the current recovery of the Democratic Party is easy.

To quote Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Wag the Dog”, “This is nothing!”