The military voting Republican goes back to the Vietnam era. LBJ in 1964 was the last democratic presidential candidate to win the military's vote. Many in the military during Vietnam point to McGovern and his what they say was the U.S.'s unconditional surrender to North Vietnam campaign pledges. That was probably the real turning point. The military mind is different than a civilian mind. Not better, but different. Most of us who served just wanted to accomplish our mission of Keeping South Vietnam free. Mission orientated More to it than that. But as history unfolded, Carter came around after Vietnam and shrank the military big time. If you remember a lot of people were talking about Carter's hollow military. Reagan rebuilt the military, then Bill Clinton downsized it again by 500,000 personnel. Downsizing is always a four letter word when it comes to the military. Obama cut another 300,000 out of the military and pulled the military out of Iraq preventing what I refer to as mission accomplishment This is just a short synopsis, but beginning with McGovern the democratic party in military circles for a very long time was known as the peace dove party.
This certainly isn't the south of the 1950's. You'll see very few bumper stickers or licence plates with the confederate battle flag on it. You'll see perhaps ten times as many old Obama/Biden bumper stickers still on cars than the confederate flag. No one celebrates Confederate Memorial day anymore, heck we don't even know when it is if it still is. Atlanta has the slogan, The city too busy to hate. Georgia took the confederate stars and bars off it's state flag in 2003. It was done with approval of a majority vote of Georgians, 70% or so if I recall. I can't remember when was the last time I seen a confederate statue. Although Stone Mountain still has it carving.
Alabama and Mississippi always lag behind, so I can't say about them. Texas is always reflecting on when they were a nation and at times still acts as if they were. As for statues and the like, if northerners let us be, we'll take care of these thing ourselves. One last quickie, we can also get our southern hackles up. Back in 1998 when Zell Miller was governor, we were all set them to take the stars and bars off Georgia'ls state flag. But we were invaded by tons of folks from the north, protesting and marching, telling us to remove it. Well, that got our hackles up, instead of voting to remove which probably would have passed easily, it was defeated soundly. We weren't going to let all those protesters from out of state tell us what to do. In 2003, with no influx of millions of folks from out of state trying to tell us what to do, we took it off ourselves. It was all done rather quietly. Don't underestimate southern hackles.
Interesting to note Zell Miller was a Democrat who first tried to get our flag changed, Sonny Perdue a Republican accomplished it.
