The Washington Post reports on the Democratic gains in the west, noting changes in attitudes:
Last month’s elections, though, may signal the end of Republican dominance and fierce resistance to many conservation measures. Profound demographic and economic change seems finally to be asserting itself across the region. Westerners cast votes suggesting that the protection of their natural surroundings is not a negotiable condition for living well.
“Self-interest has intersected with reality,” said Limerick, chair of the board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “To have open spaces and nice places, people realize, they cannot be a bunch of individuals pursuing self-indulgence. They have to act collectively.”
To that end, much of the West rejected ballot measures that could have shredded state and local land-use rules limiting growth, controlling sprawl and ensuring open space. Voters in Idaho, Washington and California soundly defeated “takings” measures, intended to compensate individual owners whose land is devalued by land-use or zoning laws. Arizona voters approved their law. Courts had earlier tossed out the measures in Montana and Nevada.
At the same time, Democrats consolidated gains from 2004, picking up the governorship in Colorado, a Senate seat in Montana and two House seats in Arizona. Democrats already controlled governor’s seats in Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
This leaves the Republicans with just the south. The Economist turns Zell Miller’s attack on Democrats against the Republicans, noting that it is now the Republicans who are A National Party No More:
The extent of the southernisation of the Republican Party is astonishing. The party was all but wiped out in its historic base, the north-east. There is now only one Republican in the 22-strong New England House delegation. New Hampshire kicked out its two Republican congressmen (and gave Democrats a majority in both state houses for the first time since 1874). Massachusetts ended 16 years of Republican occupation of the governor’s mansion. Rhode Island decapitated Lincoln Chafee despite his moderate record. New York installed Democrats in every statewide office for the first time since 1938.
The Republicans also suffered big losses in a region that voted solidly for Bush in 2004—the Mountain West. Three Republicans lost house seats. Conrad Burns lost his Senate seat in Montana (59% for Bush in 2004). Democrats now control five of the eight governorships in the region, compared with none in 2000.
The only place where the national tide had little impact was in the South. The Democrats made a few inroads in the periphery—winning a Senate seat in Virginia and House seats in North Carolina, Florida and Texas. But deep southern states such as Georgia and Mississippi remained unchanged. Exit polls showed that only 36% of white voters in the South voted for Democratic House candidates; it was 58% in the north-east.
The problem for the Republicans is that a regional stronghold can become a prison. The South has one of the most distinctive cultures in the United States—far more jingoistic than the rest of the country and far more religious. Fifty-eight per cent of deep southerners identify themselves as either evangelical or born-again compared with a third of non-southerners (the figure in Mississippi is 73%). But for every non-southerner who waxes lyrical about southern charm there are many more who associate the South with racial bigotry and cultural backwardness. The 2006 election—which saw social conservatives such as Rick Santorum and Kenneth Blackwell go down to humiliating defeat—suggests that non-southerners have grown particularly impatient with the South’s brand of in-your-face religiosity.
It would be premature to write off the Republicans, considering how many were doing the same to the Democrats just two years ago. The Republicans still have two potent Presidential candidates between John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, and the party will be less closely tied to Bush’s failures.
While a personality such as these can still win the White House, it will be harder for the Republicans to rebuild as a national party. So far they are showing a tendency to retreat towards their base, which ultimately limits them to the South. Their backwards ideas which are divorced from reality and which have been repudiated by most thinking Americans do not provide a good basis for rebuilding.