Still Fighting The Civil War (& New Prez Poll)

It's been at least 146 years since the American Civil War ended, but it seems that some people just won't let it die. A new CNN/Opinion Research poll (taken from April 9th through April 10th of 824 adults) shows some rather startling statistics. It seems that some people still sympathize more with the traitorous Confederacy than with their own government. It seems that nearly a quarter of the population still sympathizes with the traitors (and the percentage rises with the teabaggers and the Republicans). Here are the numbers:

Total population...............23%
Teabaggers...............26%
Republicans...............28%
South...............38%
Midwest...............23%
Northeast...............14%
West...............11%

That would be bad enough, but it seems that even more people want to deny history. Much larger percentages say they believe that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. This is a lie told by modern Southerners (the people who claim the confederate flag represents "heritage not hate"). They know that slavery is deemed to be totally unacceptable by virtually everyone in the United States today, so they had to invent another reason for the secession of the Southern states -- a reason that could be defended. The reason they developed was "states rights".

Any person even moderately interested in history knows this is a lie. All a person has to do is read the speeches and writings of the secessionist leaders. They were not ashamed of believing in slavery and made it clear the Confederacy had been created to defend the institution of slavery.

Some of the people claiming that "states rights" and not slavery was the cause of the Civil War are doing so to try and rehabilitate their ancestors. Others are saying it because it gives a certain justification (although a spurious one) to their own opposition to the federal government. These are the people who don't want to have to obey certain portions of the Constitution (like equal rights, freedom for all religions, birthright citizenship) or federal laws creating minimum wage, health insurance reform, Social Security, Medicare, immigration laws, workplace safety rules, environmental regulations, and many other things.

If they can claim the Southern secession was due to "states rights", they think it validates their own arguments against the federal government today. It doesn't, but those who deny historical truth find it easier to also deny constitutional truth. Here are the numbers of those who deny slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War:

Total population...............42%
Republicans...............52%
Teabaggers...............54%
South...............44%
Midwest...............45%
Northeast...............39%
West...............39%

Those numbers are far too large. Either our schools are failing to teach good history or far too many people are willing to rewrite history to fit their own prejudices.

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The people at CNN/Opinion Research also did a presidential preference survey among Republicans on those same dates. This poll shows that Donald Trump has gained enough support in the last month to now be in a tie with Mike Huckabee for first place. And it seems that much of his new support has been at the expense of Mitt Romney. Here are the current numbers (with the numbers from March in parentheses):

Mike Huckabee...............19% (19%)
Donald Trump...............19% (10%)
Sarah Palin...............12% (12%)
Newt Gingrich...............11% (14%)
Mitt Romney...............11% (18%)
Ron Paul...............7% (8%)
Michele Bachmann...............5% (NA)
Mitch Daniels...............3% (3%)
Tim Pawlenty...............2% (3%)
Rick Santorum...............2% (3%)
Haley Barbour...............<1% (1%)
Other/none/no opinion...............8% (9%)

I'm loving those numbers. It would be great to see Trump (or even Palin or Huckabee) run against the president in the next election. It would be the best gift the Democrats could receive. And it gets better. Yesterday Trump said he would probably run as an Independent if he didn't get the Republican nomination. That would split off a good portion of the teabagger vote from the Republicans. The race for 2012 is still months away, but it just gets more interesting every week.