"so well to someone who is a known proponent of Secession."
This is a furtherance of what as called the Nixon Southern strategy.
It started as playing on resentment and fears following civil rights legislation for African Americans, then, the religious right joined in the coalition and added their grievances: feminists, women’s rights, women’s reproductive rights and gay rights to the list of things that made them angry and mostly fearful.
Although it is so called the Southern strategy, it seems to extend to certain segments of the US population beyond the South, for example that separatist movement is from Alaska, other areas susceptible to this kind of politics are perhaps rural, perhaps Bible belt, they played to angry males in the rust belt until their rw economic failures undercut their cultural war arguments, but it is all part of the same play book, the politics of us and them.
The Palin rallies, the emergence of dim wit Joe the Pee as some cultural icon, all play into what they have been until fairly recently so good at doing, and what PE Obama to a large part over came, cultural divisions and the logical extension of all those rw ideas viz a viz, states rights, anti-fed gov., code words include Washington, anti-tax, southern cultural pride, the anti gay rhetoric, all of this goes back to the Nixon era and has now become enshrined and expanded in the politics of the far rw. I agree, NEVER count them out, they await the next chance to regain their voice and influence, they are out still there.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_ClauseLiberals also point out that Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" was premised on a tacit support of segregation that continued when Nixon came to office, so that after 1968 the Executive was no longer behind the Court's constitutional commitments.<17>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategyIn American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican method of carrying Southern states and conservative Democratic voters in the latter decades of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century by exploiting racism among white voters.
Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,<1> but merely popularized it.<2> In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.<3>.......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategyThe states of the Deep South remained loyal to the Democratic Party, which had not officially repudiated segregation. Indeed, the "Yankee transplant" does not explain the Republican rise in the "Deep South" states. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina actually lost population and Congressional seats from the 1950s to the 1970s, while Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana remained static. From the turn of the century, Mississippi's constitution was hostile to industry so new jobs were not being created.
Many of the so-called states' rights Democrats were attracted to the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater was notably more conservative than previous Republican nominees, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower. Goldwater's principal opponent in the primary election, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, was widely seen as representing the more moderate (and pro-Civil Rights), Northern wing of the party (see Rockefeller Republican, Goldwater Republican). Rockefeller's defeat in the primary is often seen as a turning point towards a more conservative Republican party. It was the beginning of a long decline for moderate and especially liberal Republicans. Goldwater’s primary victory is also seen as a shift of the center of Republican power to the West and South.
In the 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater ran a conservative campaign, part of which emphasized "states' rights."
Goldwater's 1964 campaign was a magnet for conservatives. Goldwater broadly opposed strong action by the federal government. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964<14>. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose. In addition, Goldwater's primary delegate slate from the South had no blacks, but was filled instead with white segregationists.
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of the Deep South states (Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) since Reconstruction. However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to Goldwater’s campaign everywhere outside the South (besides Dixie, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964
Despite his appeal to Southern whites, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate into wins in other states, and he took a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear moderate to most Americans because the Southern strategy referred to integration obliquely through states' rights and busing that were emotionally charged for voters in the South.
In addition, the idea of "states' rights" was subsumed within a broader meaning than simply a reference to civil rights laws,<8><16> eventually encompassing federalism as the means to forestall Federal intervention in the culture wars. Money was found to help support the building and funding of a large number of independent, conservative churches across the South and Midwest which could be expected to support the conservative social agenda. Most successful in this was Roe Messner who has built more than 1,700 churches including several megachurches.
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