HISTORY—When Did the South Go Republican:

Richard Reeves tells the story of "How Kennedy Won the House and Lost the South" in his opinion piece for The New York Times. Although Reeves mentions the race factor in his discussion, which focuses on changes in the Rules Committee that has a strangle hold on bringing legislation to the floor of the House, he doesn't include the South's religious bigotry against Catholics.

The sort of liberalism that Kennedy represented was often associated with Roman Catholicism in those days. Southern Democrats generally appealed to white voters by "keeping the black man down," and they believed the northern Democratic strategy was an attempt by Catholics and Jews to "raise the black man up" in order for the former two groups to achieve power within the party. The fact is that there wasn't a politician alive at that time who thought that Kennedy's Catholicism would directly affect any of his political positions. Regardless of the feeling among the electorate who might have feared that Kennedy would "take his orders from the Pope," the real concern was of a shift in the power base that he represented. Kennedy was a northern Democrat.

More Suicide Bombings in Iraq:

As Obama attempts to prepare America for the pullout from Iraq, forces there are gearing up for the free for all struggle for power that seems inevitable once the withdrawal comes. Unlike Vietnam, where a very strong power was ready to move into any political and military vacuum that would develop once America withdrew, no such force appears to exist within Iraq, thus the "you break it" analysis of Colin Powell. (See The New York Times' story.)