Blue Dog, Red State

I wouldn't get too cocky over Ralph Hall's defection from the Evil Empire switch to the Republican Party. He's been the most conservative Democrat in Congress for years, a left-over of the old days where the GOP was a non-issue in the south and conservative good-ol'-boys (even ones that weren't Dixiecrats) were Democrats. Note that you don't see too many young Democrats defecting; it's the older ones who wouldn't have concidered the GOP when they were starting their careers that make up most of the defections.

[Update 3:35PM-I want to refute the notion from the Evangelical Outpost that credits me with saying that Hall was a Dixiecrat. That usually assumes segregationist roots, which don't seem to be there with Hall, although I haven't looked to see what he was up to in the 50s and 60s. His Congressional stint post-dates that era. Some of the segregationists types that earned the Dixiecrat label (Strom for one) did switch over, but I don't want Hall given that label by implication]

It's been a slow-motion affair, but we're gradually seeing the completion of the party reallignment that started in the 70s. Liberal Michigan Senator Don Riegle got started as a Republican congressman from Flint, while Phil Gramm got started as a Democratic congressman. Over the years, the truly conservative Democrats have become Republicans (Zell's the exception that proves the rule) and the truly liberal Republicans have become Democrats. You have a little bit of overlap, where the most RINOey Republicans will be a bit to the left of the bluest Blue Dog, but the days of Jacob Javits and Lowell Weicker are long gone.

Just for fairness, this works both ways. although the Republican-to-Democrat flow is smaller. Democrats are crowing about the defection of Pennsylania state treasurer Barbara Hafer to their side; the abortion-rights-backer had been endorsing Democrats for a while. In Hafer's case, her social liberalism didn't fit, and finally flipped over; she's being played up as a foe for Santorum in 2006.

Texas has become a Republican state as those post-Reconstruction biases against the Republicans have gone away. Conservatives aren't overly welcome in the Democratic party, and Hall finally came to that conclusion.