I live in Indiana, we have 100% GOP statewide elected officials and a supermajority in the state legislator and most of our reps are just awful. A few years back the Superintendent of Public Education, a "Republican", followed no one but Democrats on her official Twitter page and no one seemed to notice but me. She ended up running for Governor as a Democrat last year. The problem in deep red states is that people just look for the R on the ballot and don't ask many questions.
Probably because Southern Republicans have been like political refugees, men without a party, since "Wheels" Roosevelt began his reign and when they finally formally broke their allegiance under the original Southern Judas, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, they scuttled to the Republicans under Nixon, but have never controlled that party as they once did the Democratic Party. They entered as supplicants and beggars, apostates and opportunists and willing collaborators- not men of power or respect and never leaders, and permanently kept from leadership by the old Yankee elite, and forever estranged from their Southern counterparts in the Democratic Party. They, in a Darwinian way, have evolved to be the spineless Vichy Republicans of the modern day.
Hmmm. Maybe, but I liked the country I grew up in which was run by WASP elites, even if they were northern. As OSS head Donovan (who was Irish?) said they acted like they owned the country and everyone else was a guest. The difference between elites now and then is the difference between owners and renters.
Democracy and diversity is inherently incompatible. Voters will vote tribally and are easily manipulated.
Yeah, Donovan was that rara avis, an Irish Catholic Republican. Note that when the old OSS (which was, contrary to popular belief, almost laughably amateurish and ineffective in WWII) was disbanded and then replaced by the CIA, the CIA leadership was almost to a man Yankee Protestant elites, in imitation of the British MI6, whom they rightfully regarded as a superior organization. Of course, they didn't know that the British elites in MI6 were completely infiltrated, just like Wheels Roosevelt's administration, with Communist agents.
Meanwhile up here on top of the world in this the northernmost state, we tend to vote democrat local and Republican national. What do we get? Take Lisa Murkowski.
Your description as Southern Republicans as reliably the worst of the lot is, of course, correct.
But you've missed two phenomena that add some interesting background for the question of why Southern voters appear to put up with this so reliably. Or, perhaps, details as to how the colonial lords accomplish their support of their loyal henchmen.
First, while you are correct that it is not merely the machinations of political parties that guarantee men like Graham never face a serious challenge, there are plenty of other machinations to go around here. He represents the Defense Industrial Complex more than the citizens of South Carolina directly. The fact that the DIC is responsible for so much of South Carolina's economic activity presumably makes that a lot easier for him to justify to himself, and one assumes similar mental processes are at work in many of the most compromised Republican elected officials.
As an aside, this also presumably factors in to many voters' support for him. Yes, I'm sure plenty of Republican voters are ashamed of their own heritage. But plenty of them are in the military themselves, work for defense contractors, or are just generally in support of, defense spending. As much as dissidents may dislike this, Graham's reliable warmongering has been a pretty major component of his political persona for a long time.
Second, you completely neglect the influence of the Intelligence Community here. One assumes that the spooks have damaging kompromat on most of them. I can by no means positively assert that, for instance, Graham is batting for the other team, as it were. . . but I would by no means bet against it either. Then there's the entire Bush political dynasty. Why on earth did a scion of a New England industrial and financial family with deep ties to the IC relocate to West Texas, of all places? To act as a beachhead for the IC in bringing a major rising center of power and influence on-side in the immediate aftermath of WWII.
"Antifederalist Paper 9 – A CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT IS A TYRANNY
“MONTEZUMA,” regarded as a Pennsylvanian, wrote this essay which showed up in the Independent Gazetteer on October 17, 1787.
We the Aristocratic party of the United States, lamenting the many inconveniences to which the late confederation subjected the well-born, the better kind of people, bringing them down to the level of the rabble-and holding in utter detestation that frontispiece to every bill of rights, “that all men are born equal”-beg leave (for the purpose of drawing a line between such as we think were ordained to govern, and such as were made to bear the weight of government without having any share in its administration) to submit to our Friends in the first class for their inspection, the following defense of our monarchical, aristocratical democracy. ...
Nor have we allowed the populace the right to elect their representatives annually . . . lest this body should be too much under the influence and control of their constituents, and thereby prove the “weatherboard of our grand edifice, to show the shiftings of every fashionable gale,”-for we have not yet to learn that little else is wanting to aristocratize the most democratical representative than to make him somewhat independent of his political creators. We have taken away that rotation of appointment which has so long perplexed us-that grand engine of popular influence. Every man is eligible into our government from time to time for life. This will have a two-fold good effect. First, it prevents the representatives from mixing with the lower class, and imbibing their foolish sentiments, with which they would have come charged on re-election.
2d. They will from the perpetuality of office be under our eye, and in a short time will think and act like us, independently of popular whims and prejudices. For the assertion “that evil communications corrupt good manners,” is not more true than its reverse." https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/just-for-the-record-antifederalist
I ran that 18th century jargon through Grok and had it brought into the 21st century:
We, the Elite Alliance of the United States, are frustrated by the outdated system that drags down the privileged and forces them to mingle with the masses. We reject the ridiculous notion that "everyone is created equal" plastered on every rights document. Our goal is to clearly separate those destined to lead from those meant to follow, and we present this defense of our exclusive, elite-driven democracy to our fellow high-class citizens for review.
We’ve also blocked the public from electing their representatives every year. This stops the government from being swayed by the fleeting opinions of the crowd, which could destabilize our carefully built system. We’ve learned that to maintain control, all you need is to make elected officials less dependent on the people who voted for them. We’ve eliminated term limits, which used to disrupt our plans and give the public too much power. Now, anyone can stay in office for life. This has two key benefits:
First, it keeps our representatives from mixing with the lower classes and picking up their naive ideas, which they’d bring back if re-elected.
Second, with permanent positions, they’ll stay under our watch and soon think and act like us, free from the public’s fickle biases. It’s just as true that “bad influences ruin good character” as it is that good influences shape it.
Yankees have run this country since 180 and have run DC since 1932. They have created a culture in which anything Southern is inherently uncouth. (Just ask LBJ how the Harvard boys treated him.) When sons of the South arrive in DC they find a society dominated by the enlightened and cultured to which they aspire. Look at journalism: Howell Raines, Tom Wicker, Dan Rather.
It seems to be the mirror image of the same phenomenon we are told exists in Iran, where it is claimed that "the people" despise their islamic hardline government, yet they seem to keep electing the same islamic hardliners. Or maybe they aren't that opposed to it?
I have a hypothesis that primaries are incredibly easy to rig once you've gotten that foot in the door. Literally just pay six idiots to split the opposition against you.
I live in Indiana, we have 100% GOP statewide elected officials and a supermajority in the state legislator and most of our reps are just awful. A few years back the Superintendent of Public Education, a "Republican", followed no one but Democrats on her official Twitter page and no one seemed to notice but me. She ended up running for Governor as a Democrat last year. The problem in deep red states is that people just look for the R on the ballot and don't ask many questions.
Same rational as to why 2Gs vote D.
Probably because Southern Republicans have been like political refugees, men without a party, since "Wheels" Roosevelt began his reign and when they finally formally broke their allegiance under the original Southern Judas, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, they scuttled to the Republicans under Nixon, but have never controlled that party as they once did the Democratic Party. They entered as supplicants and beggars, apostates and opportunists and willing collaborators- not men of power or respect and never leaders, and permanently kept from leadership by the old Yankee elite, and forever estranged from their Southern counterparts in the Democratic Party. They, in a Darwinian way, have evolved to be the spineless Vichy Republicans of the modern day.
This!!!! Georgia's great senator, Richard Russell, towered above the feckless shills now slithering through the halls of our nation's capitol.
Hmmm. Maybe, but I liked the country I grew up in which was run by WASP elites, even if they were northern. As OSS head Donovan (who was Irish?) said they acted like they owned the country and everyone else was a guest. The difference between elites now and then is the difference between owners and renters.
Democracy and diversity is inherently incompatible. Voters will vote tribally and are easily manipulated.
Yeah, Donovan was that rara avis, an Irish Catholic Republican. Note that when the old OSS (which was, contrary to popular belief, almost laughably amateurish and ineffective in WWII) was disbanded and then replaced by the CIA, the CIA leadership was almost to a man Yankee Protestant elites, in imitation of the British MI6, whom they rightfully regarded as a superior organization. Of course, they didn't know that the British elites in MI6 were completely infiltrated, just like Wheels Roosevelt's administration, with Communist agents.
Meanwhile up here on top of the world in this the northernmost state, we tend to vote democrat local and Republican national. What do we get? Take Lisa Murkowski.
Please, somebody take her.
And do what with her? I suggest take her to Dutch, put her in a pot, show her the chart chop the line & tip her in
Your description as Southern Republicans as reliably the worst of the lot is, of course, correct.
But you've missed two phenomena that add some interesting background for the question of why Southern voters appear to put up with this so reliably. Or, perhaps, details as to how the colonial lords accomplish their support of their loyal henchmen.
First, while you are correct that it is not merely the machinations of political parties that guarantee men like Graham never face a serious challenge, there are plenty of other machinations to go around here. He represents the Defense Industrial Complex more than the citizens of South Carolina directly. The fact that the DIC is responsible for so much of South Carolina's economic activity presumably makes that a lot easier for him to justify to himself, and one assumes similar mental processes are at work in many of the most compromised Republican elected officials.
As an aside, this also presumably factors in to many voters' support for him. Yes, I'm sure plenty of Republican voters are ashamed of their own heritage. But plenty of them are in the military themselves, work for defense contractors, or are just generally in support of, defense spending. As much as dissidents may dislike this, Graham's reliable warmongering has been a pretty major component of his political persona for a long time.
Second, you completely neglect the influence of the Intelligence Community here. One assumes that the spooks have damaging kompromat on most of them. I can by no means positively assert that, for instance, Graham is batting for the other team, as it were. . . but I would by no means bet against it either. Then there's the entire Bush political dynasty. Why on earth did a scion of a New England industrial and financial family with deep ties to the IC relocate to West Texas, of all places? To act as a beachhead for the IC in bringing a major rising center of power and influence on-side in the immediate aftermath of WWII.
"Antifederalist Paper 9 – A CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT IS A TYRANNY
“MONTEZUMA,” regarded as a Pennsylvanian, wrote this essay which showed up in the Independent Gazetteer on October 17, 1787.
We the Aristocratic party of the United States, lamenting the many inconveniences to which the late confederation subjected the well-born, the better kind of people, bringing them down to the level of the rabble-and holding in utter detestation that frontispiece to every bill of rights, “that all men are born equal”-beg leave (for the purpose of drawing a line between such as we think were ordained to govern, and such as were made to bear the weight of government without having any share in its administration) to submit to our Friends in the first class for their inspection, the following defense of our monarchical, aristocratical democracy. ...
Nor have we allowed the populace the right to elect their representatives annually . . . lest this body should be too much under the influence and control of their constituents, and thereby prove the “weatherboard of our grand edifice, to show the shiftings of every fashionable gale,”-for we have not yet to learn that little else is wanting to aristocratize the most democratical representative than to make him somewhat independent of his political creators. We have taken away that rotation of appointment which has so long perplexed us-that grand engine of popular influence. Every man is eligible into our government from time to time for life. This will have a two-fold good effect. First, it prevents the representatives from mixing with the lower class, and imbibing their foolish sentiments, with which they would have come charged on re-election.
2d. They will from the perpetuality of office be under our eye, and in a short time will think and act like us, independently of popular whims and prejudices. For the assertion “that evil communications corrupt good manners,” is not more true than its reverse." https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/just-for-the-record-antifederalist
I ran that 18th century jargon through Grok and had it brought into the 21st century:
We, the Elite Alliance of the United States, are frustrated by the outdated system that drags down the privileged and forces them to mingle with the masses. We reject the ridiculous notion that "everyone is created equal" plastered on every rights document. Our goal is to clearly separate those destined to lead from those meant to follow, and we present this defense of our exclusive, elite-driven democracy to our fellow high-class citizens for review.
We’ve also blocked the public from electing their representatives every year. This stops the government from being swayed by the fleeting opinions of the crowd, which could destabilize our carefully built system. We’ve learned that to maintain control, all you need is to make elected officials less dependent on the people who voted for them. We’ve eliminated term limits, which used to disrupt our plans and give the public too much power. Now, anyone can stay in office for life. This has two key benefits:
First, it keeps our representatives from mixing with the lower classes and picking up their naive ideas, which they’d bring back if re-elected.
Second, with permanent positions, they’ll stay under our watch and soon think and act like us, free from the public’s fickle biases. It’s just as true that “bad influences ruin good character” as it is that good influences shape it.
Yankees have run this country since 180 and have run DC since 1932. They have created a culture in which anything Southern is inherently uncouth. (Just ask LBJ how the Harvard boys treated him.) When sons of the South arrive in DC they find a society dominated by the enlightened and cultured to which they aspire. Look at journalism: Howell Raines, Tom Wicker, Dan Rather.
It seems to be the mirror image of the same phenomenon we are told exists in Iran, where it is claimed that "the people" despise their islamic hardline government, yet they seem to keep electing the same islamic hardliners. Or maybe they aren't that opposed to it?
I have a hypothesis that primaries are incredibly easy to rig once you've gotten that foot in the door. Literally just pay six idiots to split the opposition against you.
Plus low turn out makes vote rigging easier.