Dear Mr. Archibald: This Is Why Alabama Is A Red State

Dear Mr. Archibald:

Today I viewed your well intentioned video editorial for the uninformed designed to instruct the unwashed as to how Alabama was miraculously transformed in less than 20 years from a deep blue state to a blazing red one.

While I think the topic is of interest and bewilderment to my fellow citizens who can’t come to grips with the reality of the total failure and collapse of a political party, I want to respectfully disagree with the premise of your explanation for the root causes.

As you pointed out Alabama citizens demonstrated their political astuteness and enlightenment, and in a swift and skillful manner retreated from a failed party faster than three hound dogs after a biscuit thrown from the front porch.

Let us make one fine point as we begin. The transformation has absolutely nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, or Obama backlash. Liberals and Blue faced TV analysts get this wrong every time they open their unwashed mouth. Please get off of that train, it leads to a hopeless dead end. 

Point Number 1: Nobody in the Republican Party hates Abraham Lincoln. We all know our history and we know the history of the Civil War like a book. Lots of books, and we read all of them. Stop talking about it. Not an issue in today’s politics at all except for one thing…one party keeps bringing it up. Stop it.

And that monument and cross thing. Now that it has started there will be no stopping place. Will the monuments to all of the soldiers who died in defense of this country, regardless of the conflict,  and the religious crosses upon their graves  all be removed from every cemetery in this country?

Point Number 2: Southern voters, (Alabamians) did not hate Obama during his Presidency. A lot of us voted for him. After 8 years of G.W. and the prospect of John McCain following, Barack did not look like a threat to our democracy as a candidate in 2007. 12 years and mountains of smoking evidence later we would like a do over. It may be too late to impeach but a consult with Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler may be in order.

Point Number 3: The democratic party abandoned us

I do not know anyone who was born into a family of Republicans. My parents were born in 1920 and 1923. They lived thru the depression. They thought FDR saved this country with his social and economic policies that helped Alabama farmers and the starving poor in Alabama. They witnessed people wandering this country looking for food, knocking on strangers doors asking for a meal and sleeping by railroad tracks, traveling to nowhere looking for work. They knew what it meant to be poor. They saw Republicans as rich people who cared nothing about the working class. They would rather be dead than red.

This is the generation that marched off to War in 1941. Everybody went to war. If you were not on a ship, an airplane, or a battlefield, you were still at war nonetheless. At home you might have been in a manufacturing plant. Or at home sacrificing supplies, rubber, sugar, gasoline, essentials, all for the war effort. Everybody gave something for the war.

In a post-WWII society the economy surged, government was controlled by democrats, the working class benefitted and Alabama slowly and steadily recovered from the depression years. From 1920 until 1995 you could hardly find a Republican voter in this State.

Almost all of those Democrats that controlled Alabama were from the generation that survived the Depression, the War, and built the family values, the traditions, and the moral fabric that drove this country into the 21st Century. Through the end of the 20th Century those people did not change their value system but the Democratic party shifted left by leaps and bounds.

The election of Guy Hunt (R) was an accident, not the deal breaker. Feuding between Bill Baxley and Charlie Graddick (1986) drove a wedge in the Democratic Party that year and Guy Hunt slipped in while they were duking it out in the courts.

Don Siegelman’s (1999-2003) problems did not kill the Democratic party in Alabama either, although the publicity was not helpful. Republican Bob Riley defeated Siegelman by a very narrow margin in the 2004 election.

Obama got 39% of the votes cast in Alabama in the 2008 Presidential cycle. Racial prejudiced Alabama? Hardly, only about 22% of all registered voters in 2008 were black. It is unlikely that 100% of registered voters made it to the polls, therefore a large number of non-black voters must have cast their ballots for Mr. Obama. It is time to quit using the Obama backlash routine.

So did Bob Riley’s election signal the end of Democratic control in Alabama. No, it had already been happening with the abandonment of the Democratic voters by the party itself over a period of the prior 25 years. The combination of infighting in the Alabama party with party decisions and national political implications have been too much for Alabamians to tolerate.

The party that continuously preaches about “disenfranchisement” has been practicing a perverse form of it to its own membership for over 25 years and in the South, they have quietly drifted away from the party by the millions. But if you ask, they will say the party left them.

They no longer recognized the party they grew up with and fought for that they believed shared their value system. They could no longer reconcile their personal beliefs and values with a political party that wanted to remain in total control of their country.

Since Bob Riley’s election in 2004 Republicans have held on and gained control of State government, making gains in every county statewide. GOP Chair Terry Lathan updates the numbers frequently.

The post WWII generation is dwindling but the flags they planted in this State are anchored in the bedrock of the grassroots conservatism that turned their children into  the natural default of choosing Republicanism. The generation that followed are tethered to conservative ideals and not to the elites of the national GOP. These are the voters that brought this country Donald Trump. And they are spread across this country east to west and north to south on the ground democrats call flyover country.

For the sake of our country I pray that holds, for the blue party has nothing to offer, unless you are looking for open borders, sanctuary cities, free abortions, free college tuition, government provided health care, government agencies headed by czars, endless investigation of your political enemies; I could go on and on.

Before he left this earth in 2009 my father, a WWII vet who loved his country, and could no longer tolerate the antics and shenanigans of the Democratic party, voted Republican, but he could not talk about it. It took him 50 years to share his feelings about his experiences in the South Pacific in 1942.

Mr. Archibald, if you really want to know why Alabama is Red, ask a veteran. Make it a member of that Greatest Generation if you can still find one. They are precious few these days. Be prepared to pull up a chair. They taught their children to love your country more than your politics.

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE WRITER AND ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE BIBB VOICE