I hear so often on this blog people claiming with a sense of authority that we can't win the south for this and that reason. This is all so much nonsense. You may not realize it but we in the south are people too not too terribly different from you. Sure we have a legacy of more cultural conservatism but we also have a legacy of distrusting powerful regimes in every sense. The recent success of Republicans in this region is not because we are all a bunch of racist bastards (though I would never argue that the GOP is not the destination of bigot votes) it's because that other party has more successfully recognized and played upon our cultural biases. The south used to vote Democratic because we were the party that kept powerful people from affecting their individual freedoms (and that doesn't just include the racist side of states' rights arguments)- the Republicans have diverted this sentiment toward the so-called "big government" but there is no reason to suggest that we cannot re-divert that suspicion toward big business and specifically Bush's pharmaceutical, insurance, and oil buddies. After all these ARE the truly powerful interests which are limiting the prospects and undermining the civil liberties of people all across this country including the south.