Is Voinovich's 'Southerner' Code for 'Religious Conservative'?
In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Republican Ohio Sen. George Voinovich blames the GOP's woes on Southerners:
We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It's the southerners. They get on TV and go "errrr, errrrr." People hear them and say, "These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?"
It strikes me that Voinovich may be using "Southerners" as shorthand for religious conservatives or white evangelicals. Can Coburn's Oklahoma really be called a Southern state? It wasn't a part of the Confederacy, usually a prerequisite for a state to be considered Southern.
Coburn is, however, a religious conservative and a white evangelical. Those are the kind of folks that some Republican are blaming for the party's electoral doldrums, claiming the party's social conservative image has made the GOP an endangered species in the Northeast and the West.
It's worth noting that some of the party's leading religious conservatives—including, most notably, Sarah Palin—aren't Southerners at all. I wonder what Voinovich, a moderate, thinks of them.
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Reader Comments
Democrats don't run as "family values" candidates
The reason Republicans get hit harder when caught cheating or in sex scandals is because they run as "family values" candidates. The Dems don't get holier than thou and kowtow to the religious right. Every Republican caught in a sex scandal lately has been a darling of the religious right. And they dont get kicked out, they make tearfull confessions and are forgiven because they are usefull tools.
Are Democrats any cleaner?
The Bob of Oregon mentions airport bathroom sex, visiting prostitutes, having affairs with your married staff, having phone sex with young male congressional pages as though Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, and numerous other Democrats are moral--Politicians of both parties have demonstrated that they have human failings, the difference is when a Republican commits one of these immoral acts; he is crucified. When John Edwards has an affair and pays his mistress with campaign funds, while his wife is fighting Cancer--the liberals say to bury the story because that's his "personal" life.
My opinion is both parties are full of hypocrites, but at least the Republicans purge those they find--the Democrats celebrate the diversity of their "moral compasses" and purge anyone who points out the problem with a Democrat.
Vitter's defence
Listening to Vitter defend "core Republican Values" is hysterical. And those values, Senator, include airport bathroom sex, visiting prostitutes, having affairs with your married staff, having phone sex with young male congressional pages? All the while wrapping yourself in a veneer of the Family Values Party?
To be honest, I love talk of succession by right-wing religious conservatives. The parallels between them and the Taliban become closer and closer.
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