Tag: Southern United States

At a cabinet meeting prior to the briefing, Trump warned that parts of the government would could remain closed for a “a long time” without a deal. “We’re asking the president to open up government,” Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to assume the speakership of the House of Representatives on Thursday, said after the briefing with Trump. Why would he not do it?” The shutdown was triggered by Trump’s demand that Congress allocate more than $5bn in taxpayer money to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico – a concession Democrats refuse to make. The shutdown, which entered its 12th day on Wednesday, has affected nearly 800,000 federal workers. The incoming House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said Trump invited leaders back to the White House on Friday. The Republican-controlled Senate passed a spending bill last month that would have funded the government through 8 February without money for a border wall. But Republican leaders in the House refused to hold a vote on the measure. On Capitol Hill after the briefing on Wednesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, told reporters that it could take “weeks” to break the stalemate and that Wednesday’s meeting did not produce “any particular progress”. Schumer said he implored Trump to reopen the government while they debated their differences over the border wall. “We asked him to give us one good reason – I asked him directly,” Schumer said.

In 1938, an ambitious young Texas congressman named Lyndon Johnson voted for a bill called the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage. This was the famous “solid South” of the mid-20th century, after all. In the 1930s, the region supported economically progressive legislation, but by the 1940s, much of the South had soured on the New Deal. “Even though there was no partisan competition in the South, there was intraparty competition,” Caughey says, noting that “once members of Congress were elected, they would divide in ways that aligned either with the Democrats or Republicans nationally.” But while other interpretations of the Democratic Party in the South at the time depict it as being controlled by elites who ignored the masses, Caughey contends that Southern politicians backed away from their party’s program because voters would not have kept electing them otherwise. “A lot of Democratic Party primary contests in the South were often on the kinds of issues that divided Democrats and Republicans nationally, about the role of government, how high taxes should be, and other classic New Deal issues,” Caughey says. Of course, as Caughey details in the book, any discussion about public opinion in the South in this era comes with a huge qualification: Segregation prevented almost all African-Americans from voting, so the public opinion that swayed politicians was strictly white public opinion. “The distinctive regime in the South for most of the first part of the 20th century featured both disenfranchisement and a lack of party competition.” The issue of racial relations, Caughey notes, also strongly informs the South’s reversal regarding the New Deal. In the 1930s, much of the South supported the New Deal in large part because it brought jobs and infrastructure to what was the country’s most economically lagging region. The other was its even more famous flip away from the Democrats after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — signed by, yes, President Lyndon Johnson — to the point where the region is now heavily controlled by the Republican Party. The current dynamics, Caughey writes, still “exhibit an extraordinary degree of ideological and partisan polarization by race.” For his part, Caughey adds, he would like the book to open up avenues for further research about conditions of one-party domination in politics, something he affirms in the book’s conclusion: “My hope is the questions raised in this book will spur other scholars to pursue a broader research agenda on representation and democracy in one-party settings around the world.”

COLUMBIA — When Gov. Weeks away from a highly competitive GOP gubernatorial primary, all of the Republican candidates are flexing their Christian muscles in attempt to woo the Palmetto State's more religious voters who make up a significant and vocal portion of the party's base. Yancey McGill has cited his own Christian upbringing as his reason for signing a pledge to support the abortion ban bill. Now, all of the Republican candidates have said they would support the abortion ban, a sign of the importance of pro-life credentials in the race. Evangelical voters make up a significant proportion of the turnout in GOP primaries around the country. That has not stopped churches from urging parishioners to take to the polls and consider their Christian values when doing so. 'Pastors are multipliers' State Sen. Darrell Jackson, a Hopkins Democrat and pastor at Bible Way Church of Atlas Road, suggested that Republicans who believe they have a leg up with Christian voters are only thinking about white evangelicals. Skepticism towards the GOP among religious African-American voters, Jackson argued, stems from a view that "we certainly understand the importance of our faith but we believe our faith dictates that we reach out and help those who are less fortunate.” While many black churchgoers are also pro-life, Jackson said Democrats have an opportunity to make inroads if they are authentic about their beliefs. "If you listen to what some Republicans say, you'd think Christians and people of faith are only concerned about one issue," Jackson said. "You may discount the faith community but pastors are multipliers," Connelly said.