These Republicans are mostly just children playing with matches, best I can tell, albeit greedy, stupid children, with a truly breataking indifference to the suffering of their fellow man. I suspect they lack the self-awareness required to understand the shamefulness of what they do. Men like McDonnell, the newly-elected governor of Virginia, are opportunistic parasites, not neo-Confederates as such.

Poor and middle-class whites in this state do indeed have serious grievances - rural poverty, sub-standard medical care, rampant drug abuse, decrepit infrastructure, industrial flight, gentrification, the list goes on and on. They are all the sort of problems that could be addressed successfully by the state and Federal government, but it would involve increased taxes and public spending on social programs, something these reptiles are obviously opposed to and violently so.

Consequently, in order to remain in power and continue shilling for their corporate masters, the Republicans must substitute these imaginary grievances istead, the lost cause of the Confederacy and the system of institutionally enforced white supremacy it represented. Shocking as it might be in this day and age, at least out there in the civilized world, these symbols have amazing power among certain voter groups and not just in the South, either, I'm am very sad to say.