Cross-posted at The Politicizer
Last week, Democratic Congressman Parker Griffith of Alabama officially became a Republican. As the media trumpets Griffith’s defection as the latest harbinger of a newly vulnerable Democratic Party, it’s important to realize that Griffith’s switch was hardly a surprise. In August, the conservative Alabaman declared that he would not support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in the next Congress and further implied that she deserved to be confined to a mental institution. Regardless of the substantive consequences of Griffith’s formal announcement, his defection has generated a worthwhile discussion about the future of Southern Blue Dogs that I will attempt to explore.
As Griffith’s defection becomes the latest headline in the media’s "The Democrats are doomed!" narrative, an instructive lesson for the Republicans has gotten lost in the fanfare. While Democrats are in an unenviable position throughout the country, an increasingly enthusiastic contingency of Southern conservatives constitutes a particularly potent challenge for Democrats in the region. The hostile political landscape has already prompted two veteran Democrats from Tennessee (one of whom chairs the Science and Technology Committee) to retire. Despite the South’s unique potential in this political landscape, however, the Republican establishment is treating the region as if it were entering a normal midterm election. If the Republicans are serious about taking back the House, they will wage a legitimate campaign against the South’s fifteen Democratic incumbents who represent districts carried by McCain.
Thus far, the National Republican Campaign Committee has failed to recruit competitive challengers against seven of those fifteen incumbents. This group of seven Southern Democrats includes some of the most conservative members of the caucus and only Jim Marshall from central Georgia has faced a competitive race as an incumbent. This group of unchallenged Democrats includes Arkansas’s Mike Ross and Marion Berry, both of whom ran unopposed in districts where McCain’s margin of victory improved over Bush’s in 2004.
McCain’s success in Ross and Berry’s district is emblematic of an ongoing realignment that has steadily evolved since the 60s. Since the tumultuous decade, Republicans have marked their inroads in the region with a pattern of victories that began with Barry Goldwater’s woeful campaign in 1964. Amidst Lyndon Johnson’s vow to continue John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights agenda, the majority of the South (and all of the Deep South) subsequently favored a Republican nominee for the first time since Reconstruction.
From Richard Nixon’s "Southern Strategy" immediately following the 1960s to the advent of the "Reagan Democrat" in the 1980s, the South’s steady evolution has largely mirrored Presidential elections. As Bush districts from 2000 and 2004 turned into Obama districts in 2008, many of the South’s white constituencies defied this national trend and hardened their support for John McCain. After nearly an entire year of Obama’s Presidency, Southern opposition to the President has only intensified. Channeled through the pseudo-populist rise of the Tea Party Movement, this intensity has morphed into a more universal anti-establishment attitude that is directed towards anyone that does not hail from Glenn Beck’s neighborhood on the political spectrum.
In Ross and Berry’s Arkansas, Democrats can no longer appease an increasingly disillusioned electorate with the type of playbook that has served Southern Democrats since the 1960s. That playbook of emphasizing one’s moderate bona fides to contrast against the national party epitomizes the career of Blanche Lincoln, the state’s Senior Senator. Despite Lincoln’s self-consciously moderate legislative behavior, she enters the 2010 elections as one of the most vulnerable incumbents in both chambers of Congress. According to a Rasmussen poll from earlier this month, Lincoln is losing to each of her four GOP opponents who range from a highly touted state senator to a little known leader in the state’s Tea Party Movement. In an environment that endangers a well-established incumbent Senator, it is inexcusable that Republican leaders haven’t recruited top tier candidates to take on Berry and Ross.
The anti-establishment fervor that is endangering Senator Lincoln in Arkansas is a microcosm of the anti-Obama South. As opposition to the President continues to intensify, an overarching hostility to the political establishment will develop to a point where even the region’s most conservative Democrats will be disposed. This entire trajectory, however, requires that the GOP runs challengers that can overcome the advantages that are inherent to incumbency. Although recruiting efforts at the NRCC have drastically improved, they cannot afford to run second-stringers against the vast resources that are available to Blue Dog incumbents.
Just like the elimination of Republican moderates in the Northeast was a crucial component the Democratic strategy to take back the House, Republicans face a similar set of circumstances with the South’s Blue Dogs. As Parker Griffith settles into his new political party, Republicans should realize that 2010 has the potential to mark a significant development in the South’s realignment.