But wouldn't racism be super tough to attack? I say that because racism itself is illogical, and I don't know how to combat a lack of logic with logic and facts. Or put another way, while I agree that racism underpins a lot of the problem, I simultaneously hope that it's not the underlying problem because it's shown a very difficult bias to overcome with facts. There are some of them who actually believe that immigrants and black people have more rights than whites, and that white people are discriminated against while blacks enjoy this fantasy coddled status. It's pure fiction, of course, but if racists have proven anything over the years it's that they won't be disturbed by your facts.
I don't think all southerners are racists. But I do agree that they don't like public assistance (unless they need it) and they don't like the federal government. I suspect that the former is a winnable argument, but the latter is more complex seeing as they can - rightly - point out that theoretically a government could get very large and controlling of its people, something almost no one would enjoy. But when it's pointed out that our government isn't actually that oppressive, they point to the federal government "control" of education as some one-size-fits-all argument against government power, as if the schools go about literally strapping kids' eyes open and forcing them to watch indoctrination videos. It's a very difficult argument to have, largely because the Christian majority there seems to honestly believe that the freedom of religion only applies to Christians, and that it should somehow mean freedom to teach Christianity to everyone - in public schools.
Unfortunately I've only seen that side of the opinion spectrum widening in the South. Widening and getting more recalcitrant. And not just there, but the states in which Rick Santorum won I would bet cash money that the views I've described were the ones which controlled that voting behavior. How you combat that I don't really know considering that now in many places it's considered a mainstream argument to hold that the government actually SHOULD embrace one religion's views as its own; it's not considered wacky to say in some areas that the Bible is more supreme than the Constitution, and that where the latter conflicts with the former that it should be okay to eschew the latter in favor of the former. That's a very deeply-held religious view, and how we go about changing it I'm not really certain.
We liberals too have often ceded this ground, allowing ourselves to be tagged as liberal (in the right-wing pejorative sense) - paradoxically for holding the same position that the founders did. If there was ever a more conservative position I don't know what it would be. On that area we should start by pointing out that our views are actually the conservative position inasmuch as we say the same as what the founders said, and those who say the opposite are the pejorative "liberals" (using that because in the south anything labeled "liberal" is automatically wrong and offensive). It should ALWAYS be a radical, extremist position to say that there is a higher law of the land than the Constitution, and we should start by pointing that out. If they want to argue that they shouldn't have to help fund any abortions through tax dollars, then we should argue that they alone should have to pay for the wars and Bush tax cuts since we didn't want those. Once that sort of logic is presented the idea of commonality of interest might be reinvigorated.
But these are the extremes in the south. There are still moderate elements there who aren't as viciously anti-government. And I think a big part of the reason why this stuff is expanding is because there aren't many credible voices on the other side advocating why that's a destructive path. If we could forge an alliance between the moderates and what remains of the Democratic constituency down there I think we could at least be competitive, even in some rural areas.
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