"Washington Post" columnist, "The GOP Goes South"

Another article on the Republican party becoming a sectional party by David S. Broder.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601129.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Trent Lott said in a Southern Partisan interview that the Republican party was the party for the descendants of Jefferson Davis. It seems that it is becoming truer by the day. This is an extract from the Southern Partisan interview, Vol. 4 No. 4 Fall 1984.

Page 44

Partisan: At the convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi you made the statement that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." What did you mean by that?

Lott: I think that a lot of the fundamental principals that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important today to people all across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party. .... After the War between the States, a lot of Southerners identified with the Democrat Party because of the radical Republicans we had at the time, particularly in the Senate. The South was wedded to that party for years and years and years. But we have seen the Republican Party become more conservative and more oriented toward traditional family values, the religious values that we hold dear in the South. And the Democratic party has been going in the other direction. As a result of that, more and more of The South's sons, Jefferson Davis' descendants, direct or indirect, are becoming involved in the Republican Party. The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there --- from tax policy, to foriegn policy: from individual rights, to neighborhood security --- are things that Jefferson Davis believed in.