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The Spectacle Blog
Fred Barnes has a very important piece in this week’s Weekly Standard. He details the absolutely phenomenal gains by Republicans in Alabama in the recent elections:
The biggest Republican breakthrough was in the legislature, the heart of Democratic power in the state since Reconstruction. The turnaround was dramatic. The senate flipped from 20-to-15 Democratic to 22-to-12 Republican (1 independent). Republicans won 19 house seats, reversing a 60-to-43 Democratic lead (2 vacancies) and giving them a 62-to-43 advantage. Pretty impressive.
The Republican rout was all the more striking because Democrats in seemingly secure legislative seats were soundly beaten. In 2006, 6 of the Democrats who lost this year were unopposed and the other 13 won by an average of 25 percentage points. In the state senate, the losers had won four years ago by an average of 20 percentage points.
Sure, Alabama at the presidential level has voted Republican for many years. But the good-ol-boy Democrats, backed by the worst state education association in America, dominated the Legislature and blocked all sorts of reforms for years and years. Even with an excellent governor in the term-limited Bob Riley, the Legislature managed to keep in place a host of unethical practices and kept spending higher than it otherwise would have been. It also blocked charter schools. The new Republican triumph, though, will allow Alabama to become a laboratory for conservative reform.
Of particular note, the solidly conservative, thoughtful Luther Strange easily won his race for attorney general, and thus will fill a position that launched conservative stalwarts Jeff Sessions (U.S. Senate) and Bill Pryor (now a federal appellate judge) to stardom.
Go read Barnes’ article for more. It’s good news all around.
View all comments (6) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/11/16/fred-barnes-on-alabamas-red-ti
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Oldefarte| 11.16.10 @ 11:23AM
As an Alabama resident who voted the straight/entire [national/state/local] Republican ticket, [ignoring our state problems] I am completely disgusted at the damage that Democrats are doing to this country. There has previously been prior problem Republicans, but nothing to compare to the domestic terrorism that now controls our country. Surely there were capable, intelligent Democrats that could have recieved my vote, but all Democrats are now branded/smeared by the corruption that their national leaders/politicians have brought upon them and their party. This country is simply under siege, and if/until it is rescued from same, the Republican Party candidates [governed by its national leadership] are the only choices available. It's ludicrous and absurd to critique/complain about a Republican politician's private sexual activities [discounting the absence of bribery, theft,etc] when the political corruption now present within the Democratic Party is [or should be] known to any person beyond the age of five with a moderate degree of common sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Margie| 11.16.10 @ 11:58AM
Good Lord, do I love you, Oldefarte.
Quin,
Alabama sounds an awful lot the the state of New Jersey as far as the same exact type of corruption~ the teacher's unions, labor unions, state employee unions, et al.
And what you said about how Alabama votes on the Presidential level for Repubs but the good ol' boys hold sway at the state & local levels makes me think of my Dad.. a lifelong Dem who will vote for a Republican President but votes Dems local & state.
It baffles the mind.
Oh, and as to what you said here:
"The new Republican triumph, though, will allow Alabama to become a laboratory for conservative reform."
And so may the entire country become same!
P.Smith| 11.16.10 @ 12:03PM
The Democrats have had Legislative Control for 136 years in Alabama, we really should have given them a little more time to work their craft.
ncatty| 11.16.10 @ 12:30PM
The same thing happened here in the NC General Assembly. The first Republican majorities in both Houses since Reconstruction. Expect the Democrats to start another riot in Wilmington.
Derek Leaberry| 11.16.10 @ 1:39PM
The three-generational sea change in Southern politics is rather simple. The Democrats are today the party of blacks, white college liberal professoriates and a scattering of Yankee retirees. The Republicans are largely the party of whites, both Southern and Yankee transplant. If you are a man on the go in the South, you become a Republican. Andy Griffith, James Hunt and George Wallace are the past.
Some states will be different. North Carolina has two big left-wing universities in Duke and North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle techie area and a growing motion picture industry in Wilmington(Wilmington elected a lesbian to the State Senate for two terms) so North Carolina resists the tide better than most states in Dixie. Meanwhile, the state of the Crimson Tide has fewer obstacles to conservative Republican governance of the state.