Southern discomfort: For the third presidential election in a row, the GOP's base is without a top contender

Steve Fair, Oklahoma’s Republican national committeeman, said Southern voters no longer simply supported a candidate because they were from the South. With the rise of the Internet and technology, party activists had a wide array of factors influencing who they got behind.

“I don’t think geography is nearly as important as it was 45 to 60 years ago,” he said. “Obviously a person from the South is more appealing, because of culture. But I don’t think it’s a critical factor.”

It’s not hard to understand why. Southern Republicans see the region’s red tint — you could take I-40 out of Oklahoma City and drive on it for more than 1,000 miles and not encounter a single state with a Democratic governor or state legislature — as validation of the conservative style of governance and values they espouse, and they’ve already remade the national party in that image…

One factor that might lift a Southern candidate is the primary calendar. A group of states, including Alabama, Texas, and Virginia, are banding together to establish what’s being referred to as the SEC primary, an allusion to the NCAA powerhouse conference in the Southeast. The plan, which would designate March 1 as a single day when Southern states would hold their primaries, is intended to give the region greater influence over the nominating contest. In recent nominating contests, the region’s primaries were spread out among a number of different dates.