...In a very long piece in
The Weekly Standard of all places, they have an interview with Southern Democratic strategists
Dave "Mudcat" Saunders &
Steve Jarding detailing the philosphy behind their book to released next spring called
"Foxes in the Henhouse".
If one of the 2006 or 2008 campaigns, or the DNC are smart, they'll pickup these guys. Both men were the Democratic strategists behind Governor Mark Warner's win in Virginia in 2001. They were able to get the rural vote in that southern red state to vote Democrat for the first time in over a generation. Their prescription for Democrats being competitive in the south with Whites is understanding Southern Culture, & finding ways to embrace it with Democratic values. Otherwise, Democratic candidates will be dismissed out of hand...
So what's in the book...
The book itself, as Mudcat describes it, will "take a wire brush to Republicans" for peeling off traditional Democrats in southern and rural areas under false pretenses, first through Nixon's race-tinged Southern Strategy, then by suckering Reagan Democrats after preaching the gospel of limited government and heartland values while selling their jobs out to big business and socking the country with runaway deficits. But the screed is not only a prescription for how to bring those Democrats home on issues such as gays and guns. It's a stink-bomb lobbed at fellow Democrats--or as Mudcat often calls them, "f--in' Democrats," the northeastern liberals who he feels have contempt for his culture, and whom he dislikes more than he dislikes Republicans. (While the "foxes" in their tale are Republicans, Democratic leaders aren't so much hens as they are "possums--the ones who roll over and play dead.")
They argue that being competitive with white southern voters is simple logical electoral strategy...
One of Mudcat's myriad cris de coeur (besides the lament that Democrats "have no testosterone" and are unable to "get through the culture" of the South) is that his party can't count. "Politics is about addition, that's all it is. It's not difficult," he says, giving me a primer on Mudcat math.
"If I go get a white male," he asks, "how many votes do I get?" One, I reply. "No," he says impatiently, "I get two. Because I just took one away from Republicans."
It is the most elegantly simple precept, he says, one that could end the Democratic drought, and yet they don't see it because they think targeting Bubba males alienates their base and smacks of racism. "No it doesn't," he says. "My African-American friends want to win as much as I do. . . . Democrats are insane. They say Republicans are insane, but they win. I don't see anything insane about winning."
One of the examples of his message in the article is an exchange between Mudcat Saunders & a Republican neighbor...
We adjourn to the porch, and talk hunting for what seems like several hours, while Mudcat encourages the boys to finish off the damson, "cause after this story comes out, I can't have this s--in the house." After hearing about my magazine, Bobby identifies himself as a
"f--in' die-hard Republican. I love W. He's the man!" Mudcat settles in with his iced tea, and goes to work on Bobby's head. He drills him over the Contract With America, not because Mudcat disagrees with it, but because he says power-drunk, decadent Republicans have largely forsaken their principles and quit acting like Republicans.
Bobby takes strong issue, saying you can't blame Republicans for the deficit, since the economy is partly responsible. "Well they write the goddamned budget!" says Mudcat. "And the president is a Republican--who else do I blame?" Mudcat tells Bobby he may be a Democrat, but he's a fiscal conservative who believes in the sanctity of the Constitution and has a poor opinion of the Patriot Act. Furthermore, he tells Bobby that "there ain't 50 cents difference in you and I politically." Sure, Bobby's a good Baptist who thinks gays have no right to get married, while Mudcat thinks it's a states-rights issue, and takes a more laissez faire attitude toward homosexuals, as long as he's not the object of their attentions.
But much as he did during the Warner campaign, when he and Jarding neutralized the NRA by forming their own pro-gun sportsmen's committees, Mudcat sings the glories of gun rights, and tells Bobby that as a sportsman he should be grievously offended that Bush relaxed standards on coal-fired generators. "They're throwing 3.2 percent more acid rain in our streams," he emphasizes. "They're killin' our f--in' brook trout. They're gone!"
Bobby, who earlier said he didn't want to talk politics, by now is nodding furiously. Hitting an array of other cultural issues--mostly Democratic planks formulated in Bubba English--Mudcat's about ready to draw the net. He says that to keep their rural children home, they need to give them a reason to stay, through investment and better education. "We need to keep our culture," says Mudcat.
"Yeah," amens Bobby, and "what's the bulls--with the ban on Sunday hunting?"
"You're not a redneck," says Mudcat. "You're the spirit of Bubba, son. Just like Cravin sitting over there." He tells them that inside every rural Republican is a Democrat trying to get out. If a Democrat "would give you a reason to vote for him, you'd vote for him," promises Mudcat. "But they don't know how to shoot at Bubba."
...By now, Mudcat is feeding off his audience. "I can take you down the road to Damascus in about four hours," he tells the boys.
"C'mon, Paul," says Bobby, "Bring it!"
"I can't make you vote for a Democrat," Mudcat continues, "But I can make you look at one." By the time we all take the fraternal leak in Mudcat's yard, Bobby the Eye Doctor, the former die-hard Republican, is ready to look, assuring Mudcat, "You know what? I vote for the person, not the party."
So are Democrats receptive to his ideas? Well...
Time after time, Mudcat says, he butts up against the intellectual condescension of the northeastern ruling elite in his party, who dismiss a counteroffensive out of hand.
When he and Jarding approached the Democratic National Committee about sponsoring a NASCAR truck decked out with fire-snorting donkey nostrils--as they'd done successfully with Warner, and as everyone from the NRA to the U.S. Navy has also done, as a way to start cracking the culture--he says they were rebuffed. "It wasn't the demographic they were going for." I ask what they were going for. "Fat women from New England," he snaps.
...Mudcat prefers to call them "white males" or just "Bubbas," not only because it annoys the elites in his own party, but because NASCAR fandom itself is grossly misunderstood. Forty percent of the followers of stock car racing are women, and only 38 percent live in the South (a new track is opening in Staten Island). The advantages of slapping a candidate's name on a car, silly as it seems to some, are obvious, Mudcat says. NASCAR fans are fiercely loyal, and they are three times more likely than the average consumer to buy products advertised on their favorite driver's car. For a candidate who does this, it's just one weapon in his arsenal, he says. It won't win you a political race, but it can get you a hearing with voters who would otherwise be indifferent. "It's branding, Brotha, just like Downy and Budweiser."
Why is Mudcat, a southern white male, a Democrat...
After hours of listening to Mudcat talk about how he hates foreign interventions but supports a robust military, about how he detests high taxes and profligate spending, about how he can't stand demonizing all rich people as greedheads, and how he's fervently pro-Second Amendment, I tell him he sounds an awful lot like an old-school Republican. Why not save some time and just become one? "Because since the beginning of time, the big sonofabitch has kicked the little sonofabitch's ass," he says. "Republicans are the big sonsofbitches. And I happen to like the little sonsofbitches. They're my people."