Somewhere, John C. Calhoun is laughing.

In an era of beards, we do the best we can.

National Journal's Ron Brownstein has a long think piece on the Old Confederacy & Buffalo Commons Party's shrinking electoral real estate.

Basically, he argues the more Southern it gets, the less appeal it has in the rest of the country.

And, as usual, South Carolina Republicans are in the forefront of the GOP irredentists:

Overall, the GOP's congressional leadership is more regionally diverse than it was in the 1990s, when it was dominated by Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Dick Armey of Texas, Trent Lott of Mississippi, and other Southerners. But in Congress and beyond, Southern Republicans have frequently led the resistance to Obama, heatedly denouncing his initiatives. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has described Obama as "the world's best salesman of socialism." Southern governors such as Sanford, Barbour, and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal headlined the Republican opposition to Obama's stimulus plan, condemning it as a federal intrusion into states' rights and even rejecting some funding. Texas Gov. Perry trumped them all for provocative positioning when he suggested in April that Obama's plans were so onerous they might prompt Texans to consider trying again to secede. Perry no doubt was trying to consolidate conservative support heading into his gubernatorial primary next year, not launch a genuine secessionist movement. But his inflammatory language, which ignited an inevitable cable television and blog conflagration, dramatized the extent to which Southern voices now define a Republican Party explicitly formed in the North as a counterpoint to Southern political influence.

INTERACTIVE CHARTSouthernization Of The GOP

Carrick, like many other Democratic strategists, believes that these ideologically assertive Southern Republicans are hurting the GOP's appeal elsewhere, particularly because cable television has made each party's leaders more visible than a generation ago. "It makes them look... extreme and that they are engaged in partisan political fights that are irrelevant to achieving success," Carrick says. "It is definitely a losing spiral that... is reinforced every day by the 24/7 news cycle."

Like Barbour, South Carolina Gov. Sanford rejects the idea that the South is disproportionately influential within their party. In any case, he says, the arguments that he and other Southerners have raised against Obama offer the party its most promising path back to power. Republican recovery "is probably less about new bells and whistles and more about the core of what made the party great in the first place, which is the angle of limited government," Sanford said. "I believe our political destiny is more closely tied to our roots than in trying to add new features."

And, as usual, none of the Big Swinging SC Conservative Bloggers will talk about any of this. It's pretty sad.

Swirling the gurgler, they're still chanting "It's Morning in America."