Middlebury College professor Gary Winslett somehow got the Washington Post (of all places) to print this list of the key ingredients that caused the Midwest to rust and the South to boom. It reads like a greatest hits of HOTLINE themes:

Right-to-work laws, cheap energy, affordable housing, low-cost land, fast permitting, low taxes, immigration. That’s a powerful combination, and it has had big effects. In 1992, there was not a single auto plant in Alabama. Today, Alabama is the No. 1 auto-exporting state, producing more than 1 million vehicles a year. That’s brought more than 50,000 jobs and billions of dollars in investment. Instead of a Big Three, it has a Big Five (Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Mazda) along with an ever-expanding web of suppliers. This is just one example of the South’s burgeoning economic prowess…

Both parties prefer simple villains, whether it’s China or greedy corporations. But what’s needed isn’t more warm fuzzies about the way things used to be or globalization scapegoating. It is a clear-eyed approach that understands why companies choose Alabama over Ohio and that embraces the choices made by Southern states.

This chart from the Economic Innovation Group tells the same story:

The new big government Republicans called National Conservatives (NatCons) want to expand unions and repeal right to work laws at the same time they say they want to bring manufacturing jobs back to the Midwest and the Northeast. These NatCons are supposedly smart people, but they have a hard time seeing that these are completely contradictory goals.