scoundrel,
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Originally Posted by scoundrel
Slavery is a defunct issue today, but tension between conflicting regional interests is alive and well.
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Sorry to say it but there are many people in the South (and other states such as Indiana) who wouldn't mind its return and don't think it was all that bad. Do a quick google search on "slavery a blessing in disguise" and you'll be amazed. Southern Republicans (not all but quite a few) would have no problem going back to pre 1865. Here's an example of a couple of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03unoBg06G0
"In a 2009 self-published book, Representative Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro calls slavery a “blessing in disguise” for blacks, who otherwise would have still struggled as “African tribesmen” instead of becoming the citizens of “the greatest nation” on earth.
“The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise,” Hubbard argues in Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative. “The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of this Earth.”
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/09/...aign-comments/
Those three are actually typical of many modern Republicans. And they're actually in some places you wouldn't expect. There was a time, only a few years ago, when the Ku Klux Klans largest membership was actually in Indiana! Not in a southern state.
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The religious right are strongest in the South and South-West states, excluding California. But in places like Ohio, California, key swing states, the totemic God-botherer positions on abortion, contraception, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, the classic banners of mean-spirited social repression, play badly, as Todd Akin discovered.
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It seems to me the only reason Akin and these other Republicans wind up losing is because they get caught and receive national attention. Please remember, Akin lost funding from the national Republican party for a while but, when the national party realized they still had a chance to win the seat they quietly restored his funding. So the Republicans really have few problems with racism if they think they can win a senate seat.
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What happened in the 1850s could happen again; a schism based on regional interests. At the moment, I don't see what the touchstone issue might be which would create the fracture.
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As far as the Republican schism is concerned its the social conservatives (who have taken the party over) vs. the mainstream Republicans mainly concerned with fiscal issues and small government (who are now cowering somewhere in the dark). The social conservatives vote in the primaries and win at that level. But they get slaughtered in general elections. Mainstream Republicans realize that but don't seem to be willing to do anything about (at least for now). Its the "god botherers" that are your touchstone.