Where Were The Rednecks?

Where Were The Rednecks?



Now this is the kind of quote you don't see everyday:

“White rednecks” who “didn’t show up to vote for us” partly cost GOPers their cong. majorities, Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) told fellow Republicans today.

Examining the 2006 midterms, Putnam blamed the GOP defeat on “the independent vote, the women vote, the suburban vote.” He said that “heck, even the white rednecks who go to church on Sunday didn't come out to vote for us.”

Three Republicans in the room independently confirmed to the Hotline the substance and context of Putnam’s remarks. But Putnam’s chief of staff insists that the remarks were taken out of context.

Why do we make such a fuss when politicians talk the way regular folks talk? And yet we make fun of them when they talk in that PC Conehead speak that we all recognize as a distinct dialect of Bullshit? Like I keep saying, I wish politicians could or would communicate with the frank honesty of standup comics. And it gives me an excuse to link to this long list of Jeff Foxworthy punchlines.

If your state's got a new law that says when a couple get divorced, they are still legally brother and sister...

If you think Possum is "The Other White Meat"...

If you think the last words to The Star Spangled Banner are "Gentlemen, start your engines..."

In any case, Putnam bluntly captured the essence of the GOP base in two words, without offending said base which has embraced the term with perverse pride. (More substantive: his criticism of former Rep. J.C. Watts' leadership of the House Republican Conference.) And the GOP is making fast moves to recapture the white redneck vote, returning Trent Lott and his fond memories of the Dixiecrat `48 campaign to the Senate leadership.