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Derek Leadberry made an important observation in the comments section of Takimag.com concerning the bailout of the Big 3:
Politically speaking, Republicans do badly in states that deindustrialize. Think Massachusetts, which until the mid-50s had a strong, competitive Republican Party. The Massachusetts GOP went south as that state’s industrial jobs went south. Blue collar workers not only tend to have conservative views as long as they are paid well, industrial economies generate managers who vote and fund Republicans. When the industries left Massachusetts, the economy of that state turned to the effete, soft economy of Paul Gottfried’s Therapeutic State. Do conservatives want Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin go the way of Massachusetts? Count me as one who does not want the Republican Party crucified on a cross of Austrian economics.
Indeed Massachusetts is a good example of how deindustrialized states have become in effect, one-party states or where the local GOP has become incredibly weak. Michigan and Illinois are others and one could also cite New Hampshire and Conneticut as well.
For the most part in the North at least, the people who worked in heavy industry were Catholic/Orthdox immigrants from Europe. There were Southern white refugees and blacks but the strong majority were of this grouping. Yes, they belonged to leftist unions like the UAW and voted most Democratic but as Wallace and Nixon and Reagan showed their votes could be won with appeals on social issues, even on foreign policy (anti-communism) issues as well (Just think how badly Gerald Ford hurt himself when he said in a debate with Jimmy Carter ”There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”)
One would think all this would hurt the Democrats and in the past it did so. But the Dems have successfully, if not painfully, made the transition to being a post-industrial party, capbale of capturing voters of different races, occupations, and classes. The white working class vote was the swing vote in many of these states between traditional Republicans and Democrats since 1968. Now that this class is shrinking through job losses and retirement or are moving South to already strong Republican areas, traditional Republicans in blue states are left holding the bag, on islands in a Democratic sea.
Look at all the states that once had strong local GOPs or were the ancestral heartland of the party and now are shriveling up: New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin etc. All of these states were once a part of the industrial heartland of the North and Midwest.
Even in California this has become true when aerospace and defense industry jobs shriveled up in the 1990s. And when logging jobs disappeared in Washington and Oregon, well.. it’s the same pattern.
If the GOP wishes to be a Southern regional party, by all means that’s their perogative now that the South is pretty well industrialized and has lots of shiny new auto plants. But I wonder when Zel Miller is going to write his book on how the GOP became a national party no more.
Bede on 18 Dec 2008 at 5:12 am #
Good post!
Harold Crews on 18 Dec 2008 at 11:30 am #
Patroon the North has deindustrialised due to the high costs of union labour, taxes and the regulatory state. It is simply not competitive. The South has also lost much industry. North Carolina has lost its textile and furniture industries. Don’t blame the South for the North’s embrace of socialism.
I understand there are a lot of Buchanan disciples here. And Pat is great on social issues and foreign policy but when it comes to economics he has gone socialist. He goes so far as to praise Hamilton and Lincoln even. He wants the government to pick the winners and losers in the economy. That is what protective tariffs do. Pat is more properly known as a populist.
It is not conservative to sacrifice freedom in an attempt to keep an otherwise nonviable but politically influential industry alive. Not everything can be conserved. We can find replacements for the auto industry. Heck the auto industry can even be revived but not under the Big 3. There are no acceptable replacements for the ideals of freedom and limited government. There have been far too many compromises already. There is very, very little of America left.
Weaver on 18 Dec 2008 at 2:32 pm #
Harold Crews,
unions aren’t so much socialism as the reverse of monopolies of capital (monopolies of labour). Neither is desirable.
The world isn’t divided into individualists and socialists, nor terrorists and war mongers… There’s no sense in falling for the Cold War dichotomy or the War on Terrorism divide. The divide ought to be between those who wish to defend America and the South and the those who wish to exploit and/or destroy them. The question oughtn’t be: is this anarchist, but is this good for the South and/or America?
Patroon on 18 Dec 2008 at 5:36 pm #
You’re right Harold, North Carolina has deindustrialized. Look who carried it in this year’s election. The tobacco, furniture and textile workers who voted for Jesse Helms and John East and Lauch Faircloth are gone ergo their politics are gone too.
I’m not blaming the South. For whatever reason Unionism never caught on there as in the North, that’s fine. But as Tom Piatak points out, don’t expect foreign automakers to continue to build plants in the region if there’s domestic competition. Not only will they not have to, they can lower their labor costs further by building plants in Mexico or China. Even Southern workers are still pretty costly compared to those who will for for a $5 an hour.
roho on 18 Dec 2008 at 10:04 pm #
I could do a 4 hour seminar on how the trade unions were great for Americans coming out of the depression, and worked perfect for decades in a joint relationship with both ownership and labor, UNTIL the EPA, Civil Rights Movement, and Politicaly Correct Globalism showed up!!!
This was also a time when America had millions of Independent Newspapers, and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were trying their best to deliver “TRUTH IN JOURNALISM” to the United States Citizen……..Today, the MSM is worthless while trying to get FACTS about what the hell is really going on! (Remember the 4 weeks of hearing how the poor Georgians were attacked by the mean Russians for no reason, and yet it turned out that President “Sackashit” from Georgia was killing South Osatians like he was on Safari!!!)
In defense of the “Big 3″ workers, here’s a piece that may very well be true, inspite of the MSM not reporting it? (Not as greedy as we thought?)
http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682
However, we in the South owe the North NOTHING!……NOTHING!…They didn’t bring us Car factories, but carpet baggers!…..The Steel Industry did invest in the South later, but, even President Reagan drug his heels on addressing the issue of “Japan Dumping Steel” in the eighties until many were out of business. The “Big 3″ bypassed the South on their way to Mexico and China, where the “JAPS” said, “Great work ethic, Fair wage expectations, and a character of honor in the Southern employee.” Meanwhile, “MOTOWN” is learning the hard way what Southerners have known for centuries! (How ya like your migrated labor force?)
Nothing will ever again be what it appears to be, as the GLOBALIST manipulate everything for their “International Bankers” benefits! However, “BALKANIZATION” is inevitable! And I support my Senator Shelby from Alabama that opposes a bailout for the “Big 3″………It was the North’s Industrial Base that “Overwhelmed” our “Agriculture Base” in 1865, and sent us on a 100 year road to semi-poverty!……My response to “MOTOWN” is “ENJOY YOUR 100 YEAR OLD MIGRANTS!”………….As for my beloved SOUTH, embrace ANYTHING that accelerates seccession!
PS: After Henry Ford wrote “THE INTERNATIONAL JEW” he should have built a factory in the South to demonstrate “His Awakening”.
Harold Crews on 18 Dec 2008 at 11:35 pm #
Weaver, I think we can certainly agree that unions are collectivist. And if unions aren’t advocates of socialism, socialists are certainly advocates of unions.
Roho, if unions exist for any substantial reason other than raising the members’ income beyond what a free market in labour would bear I can’t think of it. But it could be a matter of insufficient imagination on my part. I don’t really have a problem with unions so long as membership in the union isn’t required and the union is peaceful. Unions without legal privileges and peaceful can be a valuable intermediate institutation and means of support between its members.
As for poor North Carolina, my home state, land of my fathers and where my people are buried it pains me to no end. But many foreigners have moved to North Carolina over the years. I believe these people provided Obama his margin. That and McCain was an extraordinary weak candidate. What I’ve been telling people is that you can’t beat a socialist with a liberal.
Patroon, please correct me if my characterisation is incorrect, but as you see it the choice is subsidise the automative industry now by government bailout but put moderate Republicans in office up North or give totally isolate the South by Democratic governance for a generation or more. Was it not the same Northern Republicans that supported the anti-South 1964 Civil Rights Act and who are more likely to support abortion?
I think the dichotomy is false. The choice is between a South that ceases to exist or a South that is free.
Harold Crews on 19 Dec 2008 at 3:09 am #
Potroon do you write for Salon? Someone there is wanting a Third Reconstruction of the South over the Not So Big 3 bailout.
Harold Crews on 19 Dec 2008 at 3:10 am #
My apologise, it is Patroon.
Patroon on 19 Dec 2008 at 4:35 am #
No, I blog at TAC. I read that Salon article is basically a lot nationalization nonsense. Southerners have been in the same boat before when it came to textiles and furniture manufacturing and such. We’ve all suffered from unlimited free trade. It was fear of protectionism that brought thos eplants to the U.S. in the first place.
Trent Hill on 19 Dec 2008 at 7:10 pm #
“Count me as one who does not want the Republican Party crucified on a cross of Austrian economics. ”
Oh yes–by all means–consider the Republican Party’s fortunes before the economic realities of life. Better to have everyone suffer from higher prices and tyrannical unions than have to vote for DEMOCRATS or losing Republicans (who are the same damned thing to begin with).
Seriously, you people ought to bone up on your economics–this is pathetic drivel.
Weaver on 21 Dec 2008 at 1:12 am #
Patroon, you’re very right.
South Carolina got hit very hard already. We had a protectionist running for the open senate seat, but DeMint beat him when he first got up there…
Big business wins everytime. Actual Southerners are exploited left for poverty…
Weaver on 21 Dec 2008 at 1:13 am #
I mean actual Southerners as opposed to the transnat big business.
I didn’t mean that as an attack on Mr. Crews, whose patriotism I don’t question.
Weaver on 21 Dec 2008 at 2:04 am #
Mr. Crews,
it’d be hard for me to argue that unions aren’t socialist leaning (though surely guilds aren’t socialist, at least weren’t in the past – someone recently warned me that modern coopts have a socialist character to them), but I was trying to reproduce a point I’ve seen made elsewhere:
that a monopoly of labour is similar to a monopoly of capital.
Both capital and labor are needed for efficient production, so if a group has most of the labor it has great bargaining power. And if it has most of the capital, it similarly has great bargaining power.
It’s a powerful argument, I think, and really shakes the stuff I was taught growing up about free enterprise and protecting the owners of capital.
There’s this myth that since the owners of capital eventually die and their children or grandchildren eventually will squander the parent’s wealth, that the system works and so shouldn’t be tampered with. But roho and others have stories of abuse of this system.
A system must be designed around the best interests of the nation. Those nations that are weak fall to those that are strong, so strength is survival. I don’t say that as implying that war is necessary, far from it. But war happens, unfortunately, among mere humans. It’s not necessary, just inevitable.
—
I fear what’s happened in the US is diversity has struck. Foreigners and those who feel outside the core ethnicity, or who have been educated to hate the core ethnicity, have come to like two ideologies: the idea of the individual taking care of himself and his nuclear family, and the idea of individuals without ties belonging to a global or smaller centralised state.
Groups would lead to exclusion, so the more-foreign elements have pushed for weaker group ties, and simultaneously for weaker religious and traditional ties and for the undermining of policies that historically strengthened the nation.
This will end with Balkanisation: those groups that bind together will defeat and replace those that do not. Power makes right unfortunately… Though, following what would be called Puritan principles does lead to power imho…
I also realise that nothing I say will appeal to you, heh. But anyway, have a Merry Christmas, and never, never say Happy Holidays! (something you’ll agree with me on.)
Dr Bob on 22 Dec 2008 at 7:00 pm #
The problem has never been a problem of monopoly of labor or monopoly of capital. The problem has ALWAYS been labor, or capital, in bed with big government.
When the government steps in and tries to “solve a problem” they almost always do so on the side of the big guy. No, they won’t say that. They always say they are helping the little guy. But they step in, pass laws that only the big capital or big labor entity can handle and that leads to the death of competition from the little guy.
This has been the pattern throughout history. And until we get government out of the market place we will continue to reap the whirlwind of government interference. And as we all know, government has the reverse of the midas touch. Everything it touches turns to crap.
We as consumers should understand that when tarriffs are imposed that it will always result in higher prices to us. No, companies do not absorb these higher costs of doing business. They will always pass it on to the consumers.
Then when the people say “I will have no part of that” the government says, yes you will, whether you like it or not. That is exactly what took place in 1861 and continues to take place today.
Weaver on 23 Dec 2008 at 2:15 pm #
Just because the American government today is evil, anti-Southern, and anti-American doesn’t mean all government is so.
It’s surely folly to say “government can do no good”…
And tariffs would allow this country to 1. separate from the global society, allowing for a distinct nation to be preserved and 2. allow this country to set its own economic system free from outside influence.
—
It’s a shame Southerners have been fooled into believing the South stands for anarcho-capitalism.
Luckily the Rainbow arguments are too ridiculous to convince many that the South was multicultural and racially blind. So, patriots today have only to defeat anarcho-capitalism to save the South.
Weaver on 23 Dec 2008 at 2:52 pm #
That is to say, to defeat the ideology. Ancap or otherwise, a Southron is a Southron.