It's not about the Confederacy, pdq...it's about rural and small-town America as opposed to metropolitan-center America. I can remember well when I lived in New York State. The Big Apple was a Democratic stronghold. As for the rest...all those little towns, green hills, and moderate-sized places...they were solidly Republican territory. If a chimpanzee or a rabid dog had run on the Republican ticket in New York State he would have still won in those little towns around where I lived. "Thus are the sins of the fathers passed on to the sons, yea, even unto the seventh generation". :-) Or the seventeenth. Whatever.