Monday Open Thread [10.24.11]

A new University of Iowa poll finds Herman Cain leading the Republican presidential field in the first caucus state with 37%, followed by Mitt Romney at 27%, Ron Paul at 12%, Newt Gingrich at 8%, Rick Perry at 6%, Michele Bachmann at 4% and Rick Santorum at 3%. And yet he has no major campaign to speak of. That is why he won’t win.

Now that Perry has gone Birther, perhaps teabaggers will return to his campaign.

In keeping with the theme of rich people treating their families like trash, Madonna has a homeless brother.

A year ago, former senator and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth (R) said his party is “beyond redemption” is Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) faces a serious primary challenger. I love it when words come back to haunt others, since it happens to me so often.

Colin Woodward’s description of the Deep South is spot on. It also describes the party whose base is in the Deep South.

The Deep South

Established by English slave lords from Barbados as a West Indies-style slave society, this region has been a bastion of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a version of classical Republicanism modeled on the slave states of the ancient world, where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many. It spread apartheid and authoritarianism across the southern lowlands, ultimately encompassing most of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, plus western Tennessee and southeastern Arkansas, Texas, and North Carolina. Its slave and caste systems smashed by outside intervention, it continues to fight for rollbacks of federal power, taxes on capital and the wealthy, and environmental, labor, and consumer safety protections. […]

The goal of the Deep Southern oligarchy has been consistent for four centuries: to control and maintain a oneparty state with a colonial-style economy based on largescale agriculture and the extraction of primary resources by a compliant, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible. Not until the 1960s was it compelled by African American uprisings and external intervention to abandon caste, sharecropper, and poll tax systems designed to keep the disadvantaged majority of their region’s population out of the political process. Since then, they have relied on fearmongering— over racial mixing, gun control, illegal immigrants, and the alleged evils of secularization—to maintain support. In office they’ve instead focused on cutting taxes for the rich, funneling massive subsidies to agribusiness and oil companies, rolling back labor and environmental programs, and creating “guest worker” programs and “right to work” laws to ensure a cheap, compliant labor supply.