On those Southern Red States

The New York Times had an intresting observation on the voters that John McCain was able to capture in the South. More importantly, this looks like trouble for Republicans who seem to be a party of a few and … how should I say this, not the sharpest tools in the shed.

Adam Nossiter reports, "The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern."

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.
“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country."

If that was not terrifying enough, Frank Rich sheds light into the make up of those voters that support the GOP in the South.

Frank Rich claims, "Those occasional counties that tilted more Republican in 2008 tended to be not only the least diverse, but also the most rural, least educated and slowest-growing in population."

The Republicans do have a mess in their hands and I do not anticipate that they will have their act together by 2010, on the bright side they have 4 years to figure out what to do.