Why Southern Republicanism?

In a recent interview with Human Events, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour talks about the rise of Southern Republicans, arguing that it had to do with generational and economic transformations. Liberal bloggers Steve Benen and Steve Kornacki reject this argument in separate posts, arguing instead that the South’s move to Republicanism was tied up wholly in racial politics.

Both Benen and Kornacki take one truthful element of the Southern realignment, expand it so that it explains the whole thing, then relentlessly hammer the same point for hundreds of subsequent words. Their work amounts to an oversimplified account of the partisan realignment of the South.