“What you should understand about the Deep South,” she replied, “is that social issues have hijacked overall conservatism and the Republican party because socially conservative voters in the south now vote on two issues and two issues only: guns and abortion.”It wasn’t always this way, of course, despite what it sometimes feels like when I read The Atlantic and some of my other favorite rags from the social left. As recently as 1992 and 1996, a Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton, won southern states like Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, and Louisiana while being pro-choice and pro 2nd amendment regulation. However, the key differences were first the tone of the discussion and, second, the absolutism of the social conservative position on both issues. The two most painful social issues of the 2008 campaign for Democrats were gay rights, where both Obama and Clinton both tread very lightly, and race issues. And no national Democrat should be anything but pro-choice, pro-regulation on these two key issues.

Source: Huffington Post October 22, 2017 00:56 UTC