One Party, Two Factions: South’s Republicans Look a Lot Like Its 1970s Democrats

One Party, Two Factions: South’s Republicans Look a Lot Like Its 1970s Democrats

By JONATHAN MARTIN at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/politics/one-party-two-factions-souths-republicans-look-a-lot-like-its-1970s-democrats.html?hp&_r=0

"SNIP.......................


JACKSON, Miss. — When Senator Thad Cochran initially won his seat in 1978, he became the first Republican elected to the Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction, a signal moment in what was then an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

There were competing Democratic factions in the Mississippi of that era, one loyal to the old-line segregationist Democrat whom Mr. Cochran succeeded, Senator James O. Eastland, and the other aligned with Senator John C. Stennis, who was also a segregationist but more genteel than Mr. Eastland.

This year, with Mr. Cochran seeking a seventh term and trying to fend off an aggressive challenge from his right in Tuesday’s primary, Mississippi is again dominated by one party with rival blocs — except it is Republicans who now enjoy near-total political control.


Mr. Cochran’s face-off with State Senator Chris McDaniel is the purest distillation this year of the nationwide Tea Party-establishment battle in the Republican Party, but it is also a vivid illustration of how, yet again, one-party rule is shaping politics in the Deep South.


As the Democrats’ regional fortunes have waned and Republicans have taken over statehouses and congressional delegations, the cultural and ideological divisions of the so-called Dixiecrats are now found under a different party banner. With the Republican nomination tantamount to victory in the general election, incumbents are increasingly facing primaries, the contests are growing more heated, and interest groups are taking sides in a way that underscores the primacy of the nominating process.


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