Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
I love this one. Typical of this type of breed of American who cites history with absolutely no understanding of it. The type of talking point that gets used to essentially rewrite history.
While I suspect Lonesome Nutjob will skip this entirely (too much for his attention span), let's have a brief discussion about race, the Democractic Party and the Republican Party in US.
Thomas Jefferson's Democractic-Republican party -- a party that represented primarily the landed interests in the southern US -- morphed first into the Jacksonians and then the "new" (as in the forerunner of today's) Democractic Party. They were generally opposed by the Whigs whose power base was with the merchants and small farmers of the North. In general, the Democrats were pro small government and pro slavery. The Republicans abolitionist and pro a more dynamic federal government.
After the Civil War, blacks in the South adoped the REpublican party as the "part of Lincoln" and voted straight ticket Republican until the 60s. MOre on that later. The Democrats on the other hand were split. More progressive Democrats out west and in the North opposed Jim Crow.
But the breed of "innit haters" who inhabited the South, where I live and grew up, were the architects of Jim Crow.
Things stayed this way really into the 70s. The south voted solidly Democrat and remained racist and segregationist. THe north and the West Coast Republican (basically the exact opposite of today).
So what changed? The Republican's "Southern Strategy." Realizing that the Democratic stranglehold on the racist vote in the South had led to Democrats holding the presidency for all years except for Ike's terms between 1932 and 1968, the Republicans sought to capture the "social conservative" (and racist) white vote in the South.
They succeeded. They convinced individuals like Strom Thurmand and Jesse Helms and countless others that the Democractic party had abandoned them with the Civil Rights Act, etc. and those racist white politicians either joined the Republican party (Helms, Thurmond, others) or reformed (Byrd, Wallace, others).
The Republican party remains whipsawed by this decision today. It alienated it's traditional moderate base of social liberals/fiscal conservatives in the Northeast and the West and sold its soul for the bible thumping anti-gay anti-abortion and yes ex-(and sometimes not so ex) racist vote from the South.
So whenever I see the conservative blog talking point about how the Democrats were the party of racism in the South, I chuckle. THey were.
And then all those racists joined the Republican party in the 70s and became its base.....
The party of Robert Byrd would have loved them too!
While I suspect Lonesome Nutjob will skip this entirely (too much for his attention span), let's have a brief discussion about race, the Democractic Party and the Republican Party in US.
Thomas Jefferson's Democractic-Republican party -- a party that represented primarily the landed interests in the southern US -- morphed first into the Jacksonians and then the "new" (as in the forerunner of today's) Democractic Party. They were generally opposed by the Whigs whose power base was with the merchants and small farmers of the North. In general, the Democrats were pro small government and pro slavery. The Republicans abolitionist and pro a more dynamic federal government.
After the Civil War, blacks in the South adoped the REpublican party as the "part of Lincoln" and voted straight ticket Republican until the 60s. MOre on that later. The Democrats on the other hand were split. More progressive Democrats out west and in the North opposed Jim Crow.
But the breed of "innit haters" who inhabited the South, where I live and grew up, were the architects of Jim Crow.
Things stayed this way really into the 70s. The south voted solidly Democrat and remained racist and segregationist. THe north and the West Coast Republican (basically the exact opposite of today).
So what changed? The Republican's "Southern Strategy." Realizing that the Democratic stranglehold on the racist vote in the South had led to Democrats holding the presidency for all years except for Ike's terms between 1932 and 1968, the Republicans sought to capture the "social conservative" (and racist) white vote in the South.
They succeeded. They convinced individuals like Strom Thurmand and Jesse Helms and countless others that the Democractic party had abandoned them with the Civil Rights Act, etc. and those racist white politicians either joined the Republican party (Helms, Thurmond, others) or reformed (Byrd, Wallace, others).
The Republican party remains whipsawed by this decision today. It alienated it's traditional moderate base of social liberals/fiscal conservatives in the Northeast and the West and sold its soul for the bible thumping anti-gay anti-abortion and yes ex-(and sometimes not so ex) racist vote from the South.
So whenever I see the conservative blog talking point about how the Democrats were the party of racism in the South, I chuckle. THey were.
And then all those racists joined the Republican party in the 70s and became its base.....