Why Are All Rednecks Republicans?

"Yes, I will vote for President Palin!"

Actually, they are not. Some self-described rednecks are radical populists. But most are passively conservative or apolitical, voting for the party that best seems to reflect their social rather than their economic values. The paradox is that by doing so, they often vote against their own economic self-interest. Norman Thomas, the six time socialist presidential candidate, was reviled most bitterly and sometimes egged by those whose cause he supported, poor non-urban whites. Perhaps the reason is that such people see their lives with the attitude that it is what it is. They have their god and their guns and their grandparents. And newfangled notions such as social security and community colleges could only intrude on and upset the rhythms of their world. Thus, they chose conservatism and destitution over progressivism and hope.

Southern comedian Jeff Foxworthy defines "redneck" as "a glorious lack of sophistication," stating "that we are all guilty of [it] at one time or another." Redneck has two general uses: first, as a pejorative used by outsiders, and, second, as a term used by members within that group. To outsiders, it is generally a term for white people of Southern or Appalachian rural poor backgrounds — or more loosely, rural poor to working-class people of rural extraction. (Appalachia also includes large parts of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.) In the West Coast, there are regionally specialized versions of the term, namely Okie and Arkie, for poor rural white migrants from respectively Oklahoma and Arkansas, displaced from the Great Plains by the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. Poor economic conditions across the Southern US also pushed people to migrate to the farming valleys of California.