It was a Libertarian, not a Democrat, who forced Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia into a runoff election this week. And it will be libertarian-leaning folks who decide whether the Republican Party enjoys relevancy again.
The South has been Republican territory for 40 years, but this year was the Democrat’s high-water mark in the region since 1976. As the presidential results showed, the GOP faces marginalization unless it holds its ground down south in addition to getting back in play in the Midwest and West.
With Barack Obama driving black turnout and some individual Republicans running ineptly, Democrats had their best chance in years to make gains in Dixie.
Out of 22 contested House seats in the former states of the Confederacy, nine changed parties, with the GOP gaining three and the Democrats picking up six.
Democratic add-ons mostly occurred in states with a growing number of Yankee transplants and immigrants – Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Republicans, meanwhile, saw gains in reddening Texas and Louisiana and with the restoration of the suburban central Florida seat lost to Mark Foley’s misconduct.
In the Senate, Democrats picked up two seats in the South. One was lost by Elizabeth Dole’s wretched campaign in North Carolina and the other was won by Mark Warner’s flawless campaign in Virginia. In addition to local factors, Obama did well in both states.
But the devil of a race was down in Georgia, where John McCain and Sarah Palin managed a five-point win. Chambliss, who in his first term in Washington angered conservatives back home with votes for a compromise illegal immigration package and a Wall Street bailout, didn’t quite manage 50 percent of the vote in November.
McCain, who was helped with conservatives by Palin, nabbed more than 52 percent of the vote in Georgia. Many expected Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr to do well enough in his home state to put the state’s 15 electoral votes in Obama’s reach. But in the end, Barr couldn’t muster three-quarters of a percent of the vote there.
Chambliss, with a voting record like McCain’s but no help from Palin, saw about three percent of the vote in his Senate race go to Libertarian Allen Buckley. Democratic factotum Jim Martin suddenly found himself thrust into a two-way runoff with a Republican incumbent who was expected to whip him soundly.
Many in the Franken wing of the Democratic Party hoped that Martin would get some of Obama’s mojo and bring the party closer to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But Obama and other rational minds saw that without the Libertarian drawing votes away from Chambliss, Martin was helpless, and they mostly left him to flounder.
With time and money on their sides, though, we can expect that Obama and other Democratic leaders will be look to make 2012 the year that the Solid South is broken once and for all. Certainly with an incumbent president and demographic trends continuing to work, Democrats could cement gains in Virginia and Florida and perhaps even North Carolina.
But it will take more Republican mistakes to put the rest of the South and border states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma on the other side of the ledger.
Libertarian success is usually evidence of Republican failure. When candidates like Chambliss become indistinguishable from Democrats on issues relating to the size and power of government, there’s little reason for younger conservatives with libertarian leanings to stick with the GOP.
And it’s in the South, in places like Travis County, Texas, where Libertarians have been gaining the most ground.
If the Republican Party panics and seeks redemption in “big-government conservatism” or socially conservative, fiscally liberal populism, the South may be lost, and the party’s future along with it.
What’s kept the Republican coalition of church folks, business types, and libertarian leaners together is a common distrust of government. If the GOP tosses out that unifying skepticism, libertarians will see no reason to stick around.
With an invigorated Democratic effort and Libertarians drawing better than 3 percent in key races, it wouldn’t take long for the rest of the South to turn blue.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected]
