What about the left's 'verbal terrorism?'
Posted 10/14/2008 01:31:00 PM
By Dan Foley Obama and his racist supporters have gone too far. Comparing Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin to Democrat Gov. George C. Wallace has to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!
How come Obama and his Far Left thugs continue to accuse Republicans of bringing race into this campaign when the fact is the only people who constantly bring race up are the left-wingers themselves? Why do the media let them get away with the continued hate- mongering and divisive race-baiting that the Obama campaign relishes? Can you imagine if a Republican said any of the things that Congressman John Lewis said? Not only is the smearing wrong, just in principle, it is also wrong in terms of any bearing it might have on actual history. It is yet another in the continuous examples of how the liberal educational systems have failed to pass on any knowledge of history to the modern age of consumers.
George C. Wallace was a life-long Democrat who was elected governor of
In the 11 states of the old Confederacy, the Democrats harassed, brutalized, intimidated, murdered and lynched some 5,000 Republicans, black and white, between 1866 and about 1920. They succeeded. The region became known as “The Solid South.” That meant it was a bastion of solid Democratic voting and one-party, Democratic, domination. In addition to those 11 states, the Democrats also worked hard to do the same thing where there was a solid base of hard core anti-Republican sentiment left over from pre-Civil War politics:
George C. Wallace was a product of these efforts. After two years as governor, he entered several Democratic primaries in the 1964 presidential race. Four years later, he created his own party to run for president in 1968. But he returned to the Democratic Party immediately afterward to begin running for its presidential nomination in 1972. At the time he was shot in May of 1972, Wallace was the leading vote-getter in the Democratic presidential primary field. I say again: in the Democratic presidential primary field.
Today, Democrats will try to tell you that such-and-such has been done by Republicans. One union organizer answered my previous column by saying that “Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had become Republicans.” When I showed him that all but one of them had died as Democrats and had never gone back on their segregationist views, he did not respond. I do not hold that against him. It isn’t his fault: He just doesn’t know anything about the Democratic Party’s actual history. (The one person he named, who later became a Republican, renounced his segregationist beliefs and worked against the Wallace campaign in 1968 -- something none of the Democrats did.)
Mainstream media advocates for the left
As the election comes closer, we keep hearing from the Obama surrogates that if we vote for McCain there will be chaos, just short of anarchy. Why do they get away with this? Are the Far Left media so in bed with these folks that they refuse to report the facts? This a significant turning point in our history, that it is now being universally acknowledged, that in fact the mainstream media are advocates for the Democratic Party and no longer even pretend to present “the news.”
Not only that, the media actively work with the Far Left to re-invent history. They also ignore the ongoing, disgusting, hate-filled and divisive sloganeering that continues to be emitted from the Obama campaign.
How come when ever a question is asked by McCain or Palin, not to mention any other Republican, about Obama and his past or qualifications, the Hard Left immediately accuses them of being racists? And why do the media parrot those exact accusations, taking them as their own? The media’s role should be somewhere between the two competing points of view, rather than merely serving as a microphone and sound system to amplify the Left. At least that used to be the idea.
Obama needs to come clean
I believe it is not racist to ask about Obama’s background. Maybe he should be required to come clean to the American people. It’s just a thought. In year’s past, a less left-compliant media would force him to answer legitimate questions. We wouldn’t be waiting with bated breath to find answers to questions about Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, his ties to organizations like ACORN and his medical records (the media would go ballistic if it were John McCain).
New revelations are coming out every day about ACORN and their plans to steal elections all across the country by registering and voting illegal immigrants, non-citizens, and simply fake, non-existent names, sending volunteers to sign for the fake people and cast vote after vote. Can you imagine if John McCain had worked for these guys?
Obama, like most liberals, is supposed to be smarter than the “ordinary” American, but he refuses to release his college transcripts.
We have shrunk to a place wherein Obama and his surrogates call almost every questioner a “racist.” If you cannot ask about his relationship with a terrorist, a racist preacher, his political background and his public voting record, then why even have an election? Let’s just let the “Ministry of Information and Truth” simply announce that an election has been held and that Obama has won. We have descended into a surreal Orwellian world in which this appears to be the only approach that can avoid the omnipresent charge of “racism.”
Americans should be up in arms
We as Americans -- regardless of whether you are liberal or conservative -- should be up in arms about how the Obama campaign is acting. We should all be asking if the mainstream media are going to do their jobs, going to ask the tough questions of all candidates.
Left-wing, verbal terrorists like Congressman John Lewis should be held up to ridicule. They shouldn’t be taken seriously, as the ignorant, history-deprived media talking heads take them.
Our country should not be dividing along lines of race. That is something artificial that has been smeared across the landscape by the cynical managers of the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee -- with the mainstream media as their agents.
Obama and his surrogates should not be using fear in this campaign, trying to threaten and scare Americans into voting for their candidate.
To Americans who have actually read history -- not just watched TV shows, but read history -- it would come as no surprise that the Democratic Party, a party that was founded on racism, preached segregation and thrived on race division, continues to go back to its traditional playbook over and over again.
Today they don’t have the Ku Klux Klan, which historians called the “military wing of the Democratic Party.” But their new Klan is the Mainstream Media, the screaming hate-mongers led by people like Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow and Eleanor Clift, and by outlets like the New York Times and NBC News and its subsidiaries. In the old days it was intimidation, threats and actual violence to hold people back. Today it is verbal terrorism, trying to force people to comply. Not only are both wrong. They are both evil. And they are the antithesis of all
Foley, a Republican, is the outgoing minority whip in the New Mexico House of Representatives.
Labels: 2008 election, Guest columns, Presidential race
23 Comments:
Sorry Mr. Foley - We as Americans -- regardless of whether liberal or conservative -- should be up in arms about how the McCain and Palin campaign is acting. Their campaign is a disgrace when Americans are facing a serious economic crisis! Let's talk issues!
This article contains a lot that is true, but freaking out over Lewis being an hyperventilating idiot and calling the media the new Klan and Lewis himself a terrorist is kind of, uh, ironic.
Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Governor Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies." This the kind of stuff that has found it its way in the Palin campaign. It is too bad that Westbrook Pegler is not alive today he could become a Palin speechwriter.
BTW, Lewis was spot-on right to raise the red flag on this campaign of hate speech and lies designed to incite fear and anger among voters. Calling him a "left wing terrorist" and a "race-baiting thug" is so over the top you should be ashamed of yourself. Perhaps your head has been elsewhere for most of modern American civil rights history, but news flash: he's got valid life experiences someone of your ilk will never, ever be able to impune.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future..."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3
Sorry, Foley. Falshood, fear mongering and obfuscation just aren't going to work anymore. You've got all the "low information" voters in your camp already. Each day your candidate goes ugly, his numbers get worse.
Face it: The people know what they see and hear. There is a huge difference between what we are witnessing by attendees in line outside McCain-Palin rallies, or who shout "kill him" once their inside and ANYTHING you will ever hear or see at an Obama-Biden rally.
By the way, good work with spouting to the letter the Republican Propaganda Points of the week about Obama needing to "come clean" about "things". For the record, he has given full answers regarding your list, and any moron with a computer can link today to a variety of news and analysis on why the ACORN story really isn't.
Oh, and how bout that video of McCain thanking them for their work in 2006?
Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.
Mr. Foley has no idea what Rep John Lewis went thru. He has reason to be angry. He had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. As he said "I was beaten -- left lying bloody and unconscious. But I didn't give up. You must not give up". Mr. Foley says "Left-wing, verbal terrorists like Congressman John Lewis should be held up to ridicule." That is an insult to Mr. Lewis and all Americans who believe in equal rights!
"Lewis was spot-on right to raise the red flag on this campaign of hate speech and lies designed to incite fear and anger among voters"
This is not true. Lewis' comments were pretty vague, and serve no purpose except to do two things: one, make it against the rules for McCain to criticize Barack Obama (because that would create a negative tone!) but okay for Obama to criticize McCain; and two, to declare any criticism of Obama to be racism.
There's a lot of good in Obama's candidacy, but there's a lot of legitimate gripes to be had as well. For thinker and hemingway to call McCain's campaign a lying, hate-speech-offering disgrace is really hysterical - and I mean that in the sense of hystrionics. They are losing their minds. In their worlds, you can criticize Obama's issues but not his character - if you do, you're a racist - but you can criticize both McCain's issues AND his character. If McCain is bad, he's a racist. If he's good, it's too little, too late. There's no winning.
Thinker even went as far in his last post as to declare criticism or correction of Lewis to be off-limits. Why? Not because of his ideas, or because of the truth or falseness of his claims, but because of his valid life experiences. This is an amusing mirror of the liberal meme that John McCain uses his POW experience to silence any criticism of himself. Thinker's attempt to silence the author is a pretty impressive assault on irony.
To others, I offer this: read the news yourselves. McCain has quite publically criticized racist tactics, and even vaguely racist tactics, from the very beginning. He has corrected people in his town hall meetings when they offered up anti-Obama slurs or rumors. There are racist voters here and there supporting McCain, just as there are racist voters here and there supporting Obama. McCain and Obama have both, to their credits, been conscientious of this and have both avoided crass - or even subtle - appeals to these groups.
Against the backdrop of American history, this is, on both sides, one of the cleaner campaigns ever run. It's too bad there are so many negative, nasty, and vicious voters with computers or time to go to rallies mucking it up.
Furthermore, Barack Obama disagrees with thinker and hemingway's hystrionics:
"Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night."
Obama segues this point into a rebuttal of Sarah Palin's assertion that Obama has worked with Bill Ayers, but the first half of his statement is clear: McCain is not at all comparable to Wallace, and McCain has rightfully rebuked those responsible for the rhetoric.
thinker and hemingway have the opposite opinion. Whereas Obama says "the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis", thinker and hemingway are in favor of angry rhetoric provided that only one party - the Democrats - is doing it.
C'mon, guys, Give it a rest. Obama's got a great message. Either you believe in it, or you're being cynical. Which is it?
What I find ironic is the very "mob" that attacked Lewis was motly registered democrats since that is who carried out these kinds of acts back then. Today they are the same mob instead of using bats and clubs they are using the media to do their dirty work.
Dan Foley
Today they are the same mob instead of using bats and clubs they are using the media to do their dirty work.
Agh!
This is the same thing as saying that - for example - McCain's campaign is the modern version of Wallace. Instead of white sheets and segregationist campaigns, he . . . I dunno, picks Sarah Palin or something.
Rank and file Democrats of the 50s and 60s bear little resemblance to the rank and file Democrats of today when it comes to the issue of race.
ben, Sorry to be a crab, but you're just wrong on this one.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who WANTS to see it just exactly what has been going on in the McCain-Palin speeches and the fully intended effects being elicited in their crowds. As for McCain denouncing these attacks, gimme a great big flippin' break. What he says is completely undone within minutes by the people who are working for him. Either he is an idiot, an extremely weak leader, or he knows exactly what he is doing.
Like Rep. Lewis said, the ENTIRETY of the events are reminiscent of the days when an environment was created for in which violent events, from the church bombing, to lynchings to the assassination of MLK. Even though I was young, I lived through some of those days, and remember all too clearly watching my grandfather get verbally abuse and physically intimidate a black man who, arriving at the door to the local grocery at the same moment, had the audacity to attempt to enter first. It scared and sickened me, and it was only in the early 1980's in Northern Virginia! If you have not visited these rural and southern areas of the nation lately, you might be fooled into thinking outward racism essentially anachronistic, but it is still extremely strong, and ripe to be exploited for political means.
They are not criticizing Obama's positions, they are calling him a traitor, a terrorist, and a liar which are lies in themselves. Their crowds then begin yelling "off with his head" and "kill him" and "traitor" and "terrorist", none of which meet the definition of "criticism of his character"--they are demeaning and border on defamation. These supporters carry monkey dolls with Obama t-shirts on them, wave posters saying "Obama bin Lyin" showing a big-lipped, cartoonish Obama wearing a turbin; sell pancake mix with Obama dressed like Aunt Jemimah on the box. These folks WANT race to be an issue, as in FEAR OF COLOR.
Being an apologist for this kind of crap is morally wrong. Parsing or minimizing these acts, their words, or minimizing the impact of racist undertones to push buttons for white rural voters, equating what McCain-Palin are doing to "criticism" instead of calling it out for what they are--and then patting yourself on the back for not being "hysterical"--might feel good. But it is morally wrong.
And as far as what Obama says, I am proud of him for his restraint and his steady decency. It's just another reason why I think he will be a great President. He is entitled to be forgiving--the offense is against him and he should respond in a way that best suits his temperment. I, on the other hand, have no such obligation, and have never stood by when someone around me behaved like an ugly, bigoted bully.
Call me hysterical, irrational, whatever.
Geez Foley, take a poli-sci class, PLEASE!
The "democrats" from the south all went republican as soon as the Dems wouldn't tolerate their racist values. They fled like rats jumping from a sinking ship.
Ben said:
"Rank and file Democrats of the 50s and 60s bear little resemblance to the rank and file Democrats of today when it comes to the issue of race."
Thinker said:
"The "democrats" from the south all went republican as soon as the Dems wouldn't tolerate their racist values. They fled like rats jumping from a sinking ship."
You got it. Foley is clueless or a scoundrel. Perhaps both. peace, mjh
You people are lost! The Democrats who oppossed the civil rights act DIED democrats you can try to re-invent history but I am not going to allow you. Give me the names of the Democrats who switched parties, would it be Robert Byrd, Al Gores Farther come on who????
The people in the South who switched did so because of issues like abortion as one example they didn't agree with teh social agenda of the radical left and that is a fact talked about by anyone who understands history, that is clearly not any of you.
The very people who attacked Congressman Lewis and his family were Democrats Governors and people like the police officer who was a Democrat National Committeeman but these facts are lost on you people who refuse to read history instead you take your points from Democrats and no matter how hard you try you can not erase your past. You can not hide from your devise actions today from Robert Byrd to Al Sharpton from Al Frankin to Sharon Stone you people are totally out of touch with mainstream America and if it wasn't for the actions of organizations like ACORN you would not get elected to any of these offices.
I appreciate you reading the column but before you try to take me on get your facts straight you will not intimidate me or get me to agree with your flase re-visionist history tales and I will continue to make sure people knwo the truth no matter how angry you get!!!
Dan Foley
"teh social agenda of the radical left"
Including such greatest hits as The Civil Rights Act of 1964, a piece of legislation that, upon being signed, helped a Republican win the deep South for the first time since . . . well, ever, if you don't count the elections that the Republican party had troops stationed in the South, and since Grant was president otherwise.
You have some good points, Foley, but you ruin them by being a hysterical ranter, by cherry-picking your history, and by pretending we live in a world in which every Democrat elected to office accomplishes that goal fraudulently. Do you have something specific to say about Governor Richardson?
I have a degree in history. Is there any history you think we need to discuss in greater detail so that we can understand it better?
Stop being so angry. You're acting like the fringe Democrats you despise.
Yours,
ben
Ben,
Sorry you are taking my post that way. I am in no way angry if you know me I don't get angry about this stuff, passionate yes angry no.
Ben I will be glad to cover this at length but it will take to much time. Many demographers talk about how the Republicans won the South and it really has more to do with the Democrat party going way left on social issues and that forced the already socially conservative southerners to start voting Republican, remember they did vote for Carter later on though. There are many articles and books written about this and if you wish I will send you a few titles and articles written by many folks who are not active for any party.
I am not sure what you are asking about Gov. Richardson but I will say unlike ACORN his organization a few years ago did not take the 5th ammendment when being question about voter fraud and how they actually registered voters. They answered the questions and I praise them for that. I have worked with Gov. Richardson as a legislator and I believe he would tell you I did a good job and was easy to work with, even on things we didn't agree on. I did and will voice my opinion when we disagree but I am willing to work with him on things we agree on.
Thanks for your post and I am sorry if I was ranting.
Dan
Dan,
I referenced Governor Richardson because you appeared to be saying that Democrats are out of touch with mainstream America and that no Democrat can therefore get elected without engaging in voter fraud. Thank you for clearing that up.
Which social issues did the Democratic party go way left on in 1964 that led Goldwater to sweep the deep South?
Thank you,
ben
Ben thanks for the question, I appreciate it when we can all have a discussion so thank you.
In answer to your question her is some info:
It was the Democrats who--for the first time--in 1964 finally supported a civil rights bill.
That is indisputable. Republicans continued to support civil rights in much, much higher percentages in Congress in both the CRA and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And actually it was just the Johnson Administration that actually embraced the Republican
concept of Civil Rights. Kennedy (and Johnson prior to 1964) had been cool at best and his Administration got no legislation through.
Democrats came to the Republican position--equal protection of the laws, a color-blind society-- in 1964 and stayed there till 1967 or 68. They then began to substitute new “concepts” for civil rights, including racial preferences, set-asides, race-based hiring, admissions, et cetera. Republicans stayed with their original position.
Actually, it was the influx of Yankees--like former Georgia Senator (first Republican since Reconstruction) Mack Mattingly-- that provided the candidates and the votes to defeat the lower middle class dominated white Democrats who were allied with very liberal black voters on a range of social welfare issues--and still wrong on civil rights. What some apparently believe is a recent “trend” and “influx” started in the 60s and provided
tremendous Republican votes throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s in almost all Southern states.
I'm maybe the only member of the New Mexico Legislature to have had the privilege of an evening-long conversation with Michael Barone, Editor of The Almanac of American Politics, Fox News Political analyst, and by all accounts the nation's leading political demographer. Barone told me he started out as a liberal Democrat in the late 60s, but admits that history has taught him, and continues to teach him day in and day out, that much of American political mythology is just that, mythology. In other words it's the bad mythology, the kind of storytelling that doesn't leave behind an essential truth.
Political Scientist V. O. Key documented the surge of the Republican vote in the South beginning in the early 50s. And it had everything to do with the same phenomenon that Barone identifies: culture. A middle-class, religious, tradition-bound rural or rural-influenced cultural conservatism.
Democrats of the late 60s through the 70s, and arguably up to this day, identified, and identify with what was generally termed the "counter-culture." Republicans didn't. This phenomenons, and more accurately, outgrowths from it, have gained a tremendous number of adherents in all regions of the country, but it has been slower to catch on, or to gain a majority in the culturally conservative South.
Southerners by the 1970s weren't fighting segregation. They were fighting against radical secularism, against the people who had fought to get prayer out of schools, and the Ten Commandments off public buildings and crèches from courthouse lawns, and who had made abortion on demand the law of the land, and who wanted to do away with the death penalty.
Democrats tried to deny that was what they faced for one simple reason: by the late 70s it was clear their party had moved so far to the Left they weren't going to change those positions. So, admitting what the problems were with their cultural modern liberalism was a losing proposition. It felt better, and left them feeling superior to attribute their loss of the South to race. But as Barone points out over and over, they knew this was not true.
Here is a list of the Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act, so when people say the "Democrats yesterday are the Republicans today" that just really isn't true. I did a little research as to what happend to these folks after their votes.
Robert Byrd, still a Democrat, still in the Senate
Albert Gore, Sr., remained a Democrat, defeated in 1970 by pro-civil rights Republican
Herbert S. Walters, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
John J. Sparkman, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Lister Hill, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
J. William Fullbright, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
John McClellan, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Herman Talmadge, defeated by Republican Mack Mattingly in 1980, died a Democrat.
Richard Russell, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Allen Ellender, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Russell Long, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
John Stennis, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
James O. Eastland, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
B. Everett Jordan, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Sam Ervin, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
Olin Johnston, died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
A. Willis Robertson, subsequently defeated in Democrat Primary, died a Democrat in 1971
Harry F. Byrd, Jr., died a Democrat, never denounced his vote
-----------------------------------
Dan Foley
Dan,
Thanks for the answer. Certainly, the GOP from its inception in the 1850s until the 1960s had the better record on race, and certainly they were on the right side of the civil rights movement waiting for Democrats to come join them. However, people like Mack Mattingly came long after 1964, when the deep South overwhelmingly rejected native son LBJ and embraced Republican Goldwater not because of abortion, or cultural liberalism, or the counterculture, but because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1960, the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) gave the Democrats 51%, 62%, 56%, 36%, and 50%, respectively. These numbers were generally down from 1956, which were generally down from 1952. Then, in 1964, they went down to 41%, 45%, 0%, 12%, and 43% during a year where Democrats gained in every other state.
That's a swing unseen since Strom Thurmond ran in the South in 1948, and unseen again until George Wallace would run in 1968.
Your assertion is that the voters flipped because of liberal Democratic policies, but the only issue that links these three reversals is civil rights. Other social issues, especially in 1980 onward, locked in the GOP advantage in the South - but it's not true to say that these issues caused voters to abandon the Democratic party and embrace the GOP initially. It's true to say that these voters abandoned the Democratic party each time because of moves by the Democratic party to give black people civil rights. Abortion and hippies did not lead deep South voters to embrace Goldwater.
Exceptions to that flip include Carter, who lost white voters in the South by 6 points in a year where voters were repulsed by Republicans, and Clinton, who won a few states outside of Arkansas by slim margins well within the Perot factor. Arguably, in normal elections, they would also have lost the South.
Your point about Democratic politicians is true to an extent - Democrats prior to 1964 generally have a grotesque record on race - and your point about modern liberalism also has some truth to it, but it remains that the South flipped because of neither of those issues. The social issues that locked in the flip didn't come about until later.
It's furthermore not fair to try to tie modern Democrats to those of the pre-1964 era. Remember that the Democratic party split on the issue of race; modern Democrats are descendents of the pro-civil rights part of the split (Kennedy, Truman, Johnson), whereas the anti-civil rights part of the split went elsewhere.
Yours,
ben
One final nugget of fun: while Democrats and Republicans split on the Civil Rights Act by roughly similar margins, and southern Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the act, southern Republicans unanimously opposed it.
Goldwater, it's useful to note, voted no, too.
I'm pretty sure that, once you toss out the South, Democrats supported the bill by margins greater than Republicans did.
Yours,
ben
Ben:
I take it you are sincere in your opinions. I am not going to put you down for them as many on the Left do to me. At least I can say
you have done some study of the issues even if I believe your conclusions are not warranted by a detached, objective assessment. You are entitled to your view.
I stand by the judgments that I have made thus far about the general subject of our discussion. And I have to say I rely a great deal on the conclusions of Michael Barone, a man who started his career as a garden variety liberal, but who has always been a scholar. This paragraph that I used earlier is not a quote from Barone, but it is an assessment that is in line with his.
“Southerners by the 1970s weren't fighting segregation. They were fighting against radical secularism, against the people who had fought to get prayer out of schools, and the Ten Commandments off public buildings and crèches from courthouse lawns, and who had made abortion on demand the law of the land, and who wanted to do away
with the death penalty.”
I mean, these things are just indisputably true. These were culturally-centered public policy questions that just irritated the rural Southerner, as they did
the rural Westerner and Midwesterner. But they by and large did not annoy the New Englander, or the big city dweller across the Northern tier. Those
are generalities, but then so is much of demographic trend line analysis.
Segregation, and race-based politics were spent forces by the end of the 60s. And to me it is just an unsustainable, not to mention out-of-this-world ridiculously simplistic, statement that everything is traceable to race. The modern Left-wing political junkie in effect makes 15 million white southerners and border state dwellers who trended toward the Republican Party into racists—all of them. That just doesn’t make any sense. And in reality it is just devoid of any regard for humankind.
We could go on and on ad infinitum, but I’m not sure what good that would do.
I’ve looked at it every which way from Sunday and I have to say that I do take some comfort in the fact that scholars I respect the most, including the leading political demographer in America, Barone—who, frankly, knows infinitely more
about the subject than you or I do—see it the way I have described.
Cordially,
Dan
Dan,
Thank you for your analysis and response. Of course, by 1972, cultural issues beyond racism had become important to Southern voters. And of course, by the end of the 1960s, segregation was a spent force. I'll happily concede both of those points. They're true, and I've never denied them.
My contention is that the cultural issues to which you refer were not major issues to voters in the South in 1964, and were not the impetus behind the campaigns of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, nor were they the impetus behind the deep South flipping from the Democrats to Barry Goldwater. My contention is that the stance taken by Democrats on the civil rights issue caused the switch to occur at the presidential level.
Certainly, later social issues locked that switch into place both at the presidential level and eventually the congressional level, but the original rebellion of Southern Democrats was over the issue of civil rights. Southern Democrats opposed civil rights planks in the Democratic platform, walked out when those planks were added, split the party twice in the presidential election over those planks, and defected to the Republicans en masse to vote against President Johnson when he signed the civil rights legislation.
Is there a part of this narrative - prior, I say again, to the 70s and end of the 60s you're talking about - with which you disagree? And, if it was not Johnson's signature on the Civil Rights Act that caused the South to defect in 1964, what was it?
Yours,
ben
Ben,
You actually seem like a decent sort and I’m able to take you at face value. I appreciate that. Almost all the others are just filled with hate and venom, there’s hardly any reason to address their points. They seem entirely and exclusively focused on calling me some kind of name. That’s all I get out of their comments. It’s all anyone gets out of them. I suppose it makes them feel better. I just don’t come from that kind of background. (I actually think many of them are symptomatic of what’s wrong with American discourse today—what George Will calls the American political distemper.) Anyway, I do want to answer you final thoughtful reply.
You’re the first person to concede that by the end of the 60s we’re no longer talking about race, and that cultural issues had come to the forefront. I appreciate your honesty, and it’s an important marker that allows us to focus in on perhaps a narrower line of disagreement—who knows, one that we may resolve. You said:
My contention is that the cultural issues to which you refer were not
major issues to voters in the South in 1964, and were not the impetus
behind the campaigns of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, nor were
they the impetus behind the deep South flipping from the Democrats to
Barry Goldwater. My contention is that the stance taken by Democrats
on the civil rights issue caused the switch to occur at the presidential level.
Okay, so we’re talking about 1964. I have several points on this:
1) My party and I are moving targets in this discussion. Terms, regions, alleged motives and actors are thrown in and then pulled out of the discussions with blinding speed, depending on how the discussion seems to be moving.
2) A favorite almost knee-jerk, hip pocket cliché some people whip out is the “Southern Strategy” (with which the user tries to imply—although they never come out and say exactly how—that some kind of tactic, stratagem, or ploy was used in some kind of sinister way that caused the most evilly motivated voters to somehow vote Republican. This is never fleshed out.)
3) Strom Thurmond was a Democrat. He was a Democrat when he left the Democratic Convention in 1948 (probably bewildered because it was the same party that had supported the Ku Klux Klan as recently as 1924---keeping in mind that that’s the same distance of time as 1984 is from us, and I remember 1984 pretty doggone well) to run as a Dixiecrat, i.e. Southern Democrat for President. He was a Democrat when he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He left the party and became a Republican subsequently, but you have to remember he denounced segregation and in 1968, he supported Nixon, and not fellow Democrat Wallace.
4) George Wallace was a Democrat. Always. He was the leading Democrat vote-getter in the 1972 Presidential Primaries. The only thing to keep him from finishing as the top popular vote-getter was that he got shot.
5) The “Deep South” you refer to was actually all lost by Republicans in 1968—with the single exception of South Carolina where Thurmond campaigned for a Republican platform that did not embrace segregation or Wallace themes. But this is a key year they are referring to when many modern Democrats blurt out “Southern Strategy.” We carried the rest of the South, except Texas. But that merely means we carried the part of the South where we had a good deal of strength already in Presidential elections. Eisenhower had carried Tennessee, Florida, Texas and Virginia twice each. Nixon in 1960 had carried Florida, Tennessee, Virginia and even Mississippi had defeated Kennedy with a slate of unpledged electors—and this was long before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, let alone the VRA. It’s impossible to blame Republicans for “racism” for that fact, or any of the other losses the Democrats were beginning to pile up not just in the South, but in border states like Oklahoma, Kentucky and Missouri where they had long dominated. Political scientists and historians point out the psephological trends visible in the 30s and 40s as reactions to the New Deal, and what many Southerners and
Midwesterners and Westerners viewed as creeping socialism, rightly or wrongly.
Engel v. Vitale, which struck down school prayer was handed down in 1962, and brought outrage from middle class conservatives. And there were a number of liberal, rulings prior to 1964, and shortly thereafter (Miranda, 1966) that had “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards popping up all over middle America, including the South. The Great Society programs which foisted government on American life in a way unmatched since the New Deal, and which in its permanency and cost vastly outstripped the New Deal, are also completely ignored by most “crossfire-styled” blog commentators on this. (Frankly I doubt very many of them know much about these things at all.) Again, though, it’s clear you are not like that and enjoy a serious discussion. My point is that there are numerous influences on political attitudes that were taking shape in the mid-60s that had nothing to do with race. People in Jefferson City, Missouri were mad as hell about watching out-of-control riots on TV every night, with no one able to get a handle on it. Some of the riots were in fact race riots in the North, but most were about Vietnam, and many were just about student “agitation.” When we look for “race” to answer every single thing that ever happened in the 60s, we not only miss a hell of a lot of clearly documented impacts on political attitudes and voting shifts, we miss a tremendous amount of American history. We disserve our fellow citizens if we narrow our discussions to such inaccurate pigeon-holing, substituting clichés and catch-phrases for history.
6) In the first election of the 70s, Nixon squared off against McGovern, who embodied everything I’ve just discussed. That election wasn’t about race any more than 1968 was. Nixon carried all 11 Southern states, and 49 of 50.
7) Jimmy Carter came right back and carried ten of eleven states, plus Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland. If the Democrats had lost the South because of race it—and the Republicans had gained it as part of their “empire” would have stayed lost and gained. It didn’t. Because it wasn’t about appeals to race. Republicans made no appeals to race. Here’s probably what happened. And you have sort of talked around it, but not quite hit it.
As the immigration waves of the early late 1800s and early 1900s were reaping its generational benefits, the big cities began to take on a bigger role in Democratic politics—outfits like Tammany Hall had always been powerful, but the rural agrarian South and West could dominate at conventions. This tension grew as the numbers began to grow even. People like Al Smith and FDR were nominated and that was okay, sort of, with rural Democrats because though they seemed highly concentrated on urban concerns and big government, they were Democrat enough to be at the very best (or if you’re a Democrat of that era, at the very worst) indifferent to race and racism. But because of this shift toward the cities, Republican strength began to grow—anomalies like Warren Harding carrying Tennessee even went little noticed, but Republican returns got a lot better. The Depression and Hoover set them back, but FDR’s excesses saw the numbers start growing again by the 40s.
By the end of the 40s there were the first stirrings of the consciences of some Democrats on race. Republicans did not do anything other than watch them. Keep in mind what were big deals, and big revelations to Democrats had long since been advocated by Republicans. (Truman integrated the Armed Forces eight years after the Republican Platform called for it.) Eisenhower continued to make gains. By the time the Civil Rights Act occurred, with Republicans overwhelmingly supporting it, other factors mentioned above were becoming stronger and stronger—driving wedge after wedge between the modern liberal Democrat and the populist Democrat that was a holdover from the post-Reconstruction era.
Here’s where I get to the nugget of historical fact that I think we’ll agree on: The Southern Populist Democrat by the mid to late 1960s no longer agreed with the modern liberal Democrat, who now controlled his party, on anything. Economics, welfare, the courts, prayer in schools, rioting in the streets, law and order, national defense priorities, “tying the hands” of the cops (a big issue in the 60s) and many, many others. If he also no longer agreed with the Democrats on racial justice and Civil Rights, it certainly cannot be said that the Republican Party agreed with him. Nowhere did Republicans repudiate their 110-year (at that time) history on civil rights. The Southern Populist no longer had a Democratic Party apparatus that would, as an institution—nationally for at least 125 years, and regionally for another 15-20 years—stand up for him on segregation and racism.
So the Republican Party wouldn’t either. So what. The Grand Old Party would stand with him on economics, welfare, the courts, prayer in schools, rioting in the streets, law and order, national defense priorities, “tying the hands” of the cops (a big issue in the 60s) and many, many others.
He switched.
That is not the fault of the Republican Party. Republicans made no great racist overtures to him or anyone else. The party grew in the South, in the Midwest and in the West based on the fact it was more in step with the Middle Class, what the modern liberal would call “bourgeois” value, than was his old party.
That’s the long of it. (I would say long and short of it, but that would be wrong.)
Dan
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