Republican Party On the Outs, Except in the South

Washington conventional wisdom has it that the Republican Party is in big trouble nationally, its brand tarnished, and that support for the GOP is now relegated to support from the least educated people in the country, the most hard core racist conservatives in the Deep South. Now there’s polling data to back that up.

According to a DailyKos Poll, the Republican Party’s favorability rating is very weak in the Northeast, where only 7 percent of the people hold a favorable opinion of the GOP, while an overwhelming 87 hold an unfavorable view.

The party of Lincoln, Reagan and Bush is only faring a tad better in the Midwest, where 13 percent of the people say they have a favorable view of the party while 78 percent say unfavorable. In the West, only 14 percent support the Republicans while 75 percent are skeptical.

In the American South, however, 50 percent of those polled still somehow have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party while 37 percent hold an unfavorable view.

According to Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine:

Does this mean that the party of “no,” now widely associated with tea-baggers, birthers, deathers, and efforts to label Obama simultaneously “fascist” and “socialist,” has scored in the South, while damaging its reputation elsewhere?

According to more data from Middle Tennessee State University, if the people around the South are similar to those in Tennessee, and we suspect they are:

* 34 percent of those polled and 47 percent of those identifying themselves as Republicans are “birthers,” believing that President Barack Obama was born outside of the United States, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

* 30 percent of respondents and 48 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim, although even Senator John McCain dispelled this myth during the presidential election of 2008.

* 35 percent of Tennesseans and 55 percent of Republicans believe Obama intends to take their Second Amendment rights and their guns away, although the pollsters did not ask about their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches and siezures.

* 46 percent of those polled and 71 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a “socialist,” in spite of his attempt to negotiate a health-care plan that compromises with private insurance companies and drug companies.

As for the people of the South, Horton says, “I’d bet that these folks don’t spend much time tracking the news, but if they do, no doubt they’re watching Fox (and listening to Rush Limbaugh, and maybe reading a conservative, chain newspaper). Reading these polls in conjunction suggests that the Republican brand is doing just fine in Dixie, and it’s lined up with some seriously delusional ideas.”

Get to work people. Find out and share the facts…