Your reading for today: Ernest Dumas
When time comes to explain Republican gains in Arkansas:
The academics won’t have to dig deeply. Everyone knows the answer though many will dispute its meaning. Barack Obama is president and he has come to represent the Democratic Party. Republican candidates from the courthouse to the Senate see to that. Every Republican is running against the president and every Democrat is somehow a stooge of Obama. It works.
Wait, you say, don’t tell us it is because Obama is black, the first African-American nominee of a major party and the first African-American president.
That is exactly the reason.
Be sure to read the whole column for a useful explanation of why Arkansas is late to the Southern strategy. Short answer: WR. And some of our early commenters have apparently already forgotten the presidential primary in 2008 in Arkansas.