Quick History: Democrats

originally posted by: Gothmog
You didn't check the source of that one , did you ?
Check your source , always.
Then , go out and read some real history books

You say exactly nothing here.

Why don't you quote a source that refutes anything I've said here.

originally posted by: Edumakated
George Wallace died a Democrat...

You sure?

In a 1995 interview, Wallace said that he planned to vote for Republican Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential election, commenting, "He's a good man. His wife is a born-again Christian woman and I believe he is, too." He also revealed that he had voted for George H. W. Bush, another Republican, in 1992. His son, George Wallace Jr., officially switched from Democrat to Republican that same year. Wallace himself declined to identify as either a Republican or a Democrat. But he added, "The state is slowly going Republican because of Clinton being so liberal."

Source

If the Democrats did a true 180 due to the 1960’s Civil Rights Era then why do they all fully embrace the socialism of FDR’s New Deal Progressivism? Which is exactly the same as the 1930’s until the 1950’s.

The question being how can there be a complete change (including a party charge) yet no change in fundamental party ideas. JFK (who was great friends with Joe McCarthy and even RFK worked for old Joe) seem to be the aberration to the march of socialism throughout the 20th Century’s DNC. Seems rather odd, don’t you think?

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: Edumakated
George Wallace died a Democrat...

You sure?

In a 1995 interview, Wallace said that he planned to vote for Republican Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential election, commenting, "He's a good man. His wife is a born-again Christian woman and I believe he is, too." He also revealed that he had voted for George H. W. Bush, another Republican, in 1992. His son, George Wallace Jr., officially switched from Democrat to Republican that same year. Wallace himself declined to identify as either a Republican or a Democrat. But he added, "The state is slowly going Republican because of Clinton being so liberal."

Source

He never switched and given how loony the Democrats have become, can you blame the guy voting for a Republican?

The fact is the parties never switched. As pointed out, the south started going Republican over other issues... gun control, religion, economics, etc. It has zip to do with race.

Exactly one major dixiecrat formally switched parties, Strom Thurmond. All the other stayed in the Democrat party, some decades later.

Al Gore, Sr (Father of the same Al Gore who was Bill Clinton's VP) was a prominent Democrat. He filibuster the Civil Rights act. He didn't change parties and his son certainly wasn't ashamed enough to do so either.

You can't really believe that the parties switched but only one Democrat dixiecrat did so officially? So all the peon voters just decided to up and leave the party over racism, but none of the leaders of said party left? This makes zero sense.

What actually happened is most people got over race being important and started focusing on other issues (gun control, religion, economics, education, etc). Once those other issues came to the forefront, the Democrat party was not the place to be.

a reply to: Edumakated

In 1968, a young Hillary Rodham switched from Republican to Democrat...because Nixon won the nomination. The hate was only beginning then.

You gotta be really gullible and low IQ to actually believe this "party switch" line.

It's one of the goofiest BS lies that the Dims spew and yet, so many repeat it. I gotta laugh.

a reply to: Edumakated

You're contradicting the man himself and what he said about his political party. That's just silly.

Then you go on a fallacious rant. The parties did switch on the issue of Civil Rights, and it's well documented. We can (and I will) compare the Electoral maps, the composition of State Legislatures and Governorships, etc. IF you have facts (not opinion videos) from Youtbe.

All this thread is about are the facts. And the facts are that the Democratic Party transformed after the Civil Rights Acts were passed because the Southern wing of the party became Republican. This is not really questionable, but I will be demonstrating those facts in this discussion.

I don't care whether you like the Democratic Party or not. This is not a defense of the Democrats. I don't agree with most of their modern platform.

IN fact I'm on record as saying, in general, that the Democratic leadership of the last few decades are incompetent boobs that have allowed fractional identity politics to repeatedly destroy any advantage they have.

This is about the facts. Bring facts. All I've seen so far are lies from the right-wing media machine.

originally posted by: Ahabstar
a reply to: Edumakated

In 1968, a young Hillary Rodham switched from Republican to Democrat...because Nixon won the nomination. The hate was only beginning then.

One person, one choice.

That has nothing to do with the facts of this topic.

a reply to: Gryphon66

You want to know why? Because Jimmy Carter was inept as President.

Because the Democratic Party abandoned the South and Southern ideologies.

Until 1980, it was hard to find an "R" on a ballot here outside the Presidential campaigns, and even then people tended to laugh at the Republican choice. Republicans were seen as being pro-big business and anti-the working man. It had nothing to do with slavery per se for the average Southerner... it had to do with the absolute destruction of the South by the Republican Party under Lincoln. I'd bet if I were to come to your neighborhood and burn every house to the ground, kill all the children and old folks, rape and then kill the women, all while you were off at work, then come in after you started trying to rebuild and take your home, you might be a little miffed too.

Lincoln was seen as directly responsible for the carpet-baggers. The carpet-baggers stole land using Republican laws and left the working man to starve. For years after the war, Lincoln wasn't seen here as "The Great Emancipator"... he was "The Great Devil that Destroyed."

Precious few Southerners owned slaves before or after the War of Northern Aggression. They cost too damn much. The average slave cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today''s money, and they then had to be housed, fed, and looked after. Only the wealthy could afford slaves.

Many Southerners were share-croppers. They didn't even have a home; they lived in a home owned by someone else and worked the land in exchange for part of their crop. What was left was barely enough to eat until the next crop came in. I know; my grandfather was a share-cropper (one of the last).

Others owned small family farms that couldn't afford slaves. Slaves weren't necessary anyway because they could work the land with only the family. A few of the larger family farms managed to afford a slave or two, but they were typically treated more like hired hands than slaves, well, except for the "being owned" thing.

The plantations were where the slavery was. The owners were wealthy and could afford slaves. They farmed vast tracts (vast for the time anyway) with slave labor. They also kept the poor whites from becoming more than sharecroppers, by making sure the laws were skewed to them and against the poor. They owned politicians as well as slaves. But were they hurt by the War? Nope... they didn't stand on the front lines... the poor Southerners were the ones hurt. Most plantations were burned to the ground, but the families of the owners got out and left for safer places, leaving their slaves behind. Incidentally, there were more blacks killed by the war criminal William "Uncle Billy" Tecumseh Sherman in one military operation than in the hundred years prior. Sherman freed the blacks, sure, but then burned the bridges behind him so they couldn't follow... leaving these free black folk to try and eat ashes, I assume. A great many starved to death since Sherman had taken or destroyed everything edible.

The KKK as we know it was created out of that anger. Not over slavery, but over the destruction of our people and our homes. The hatred was aimed toward blacks because they were still here and the only target available. The war criminals were up North; the carpetbagger went back up North; only the ex-slaves remained to become the target of all that anger.

Had the North not pushed the South to secede through unfair taxation laws, unfair business practices, and yes, trying to destroy the Southern economy by ending slavery, slavery would have died out on its own within a few decades and there would have been none of the hatred. The Underground Railroad was alive and well and expanding in the years prior to the war, and public sentiment was turning against the idea of slavery. Only the plantation owners held tight to slavery, because that was their bread and butter.

Instead, it took 120 years to get over the anger enough to realize the Democrats no longer represented the South. Carter's ineptitude at handling the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Reagan's harsh rhetoric toward Iran sealed the deal and placed the South in the Republican column. Why is because the Republicans destroyed the South under Lincoln and raped what was left under Grant, and it took that long for the hatred to die down.

Don't believe everything that those history books tell you. They were written by the winners. The winners lie. Usually, that's how they won in the first place.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Much of what you say is spot on. As far as the rest, I'm a native Georgian born in 1966. I lived through White Flight. I know why it happened. I knew the people who wore those hoods and marched through town. I know what their message was ... and it was not civil rights.

As far as the rest, the Republican Party from its beginning represented a belief in strong central government.

The Democratic-Republicians, and then the Democrats represented the opposite side of American politics, an emphasis on a limited central government and local determination.

That stopped for the Democrats in the 1930s after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Whether that was necessary at the time or not, it's true. The Southern Democrats were committed segregationalists. When institutionalized racism started to fracture after World War II, they formed their own party in 1948. The Republicans were basically out of power in this country at least at the national level from the 1930s to the 50s, and the only anomaly was President Eisenhower. Shall we look at the platform of his party? It's unrecognizable from a modern Democratic platform.

After Eisenhower, the fields started to shift significantly. Goldwater and Nixon courted the segregationalist south. You guys can deny Atwater's Southern Strategy all you want, it was real, and it worked.

Carter was an anomaly and was mostly a reaction to Watergate. One term, failing economy, grew the Federal government just like Roosevelt, but unemployment and inflation skyrocketed and Carter was soundly defeated. Also, against expectations, he didn't resurrect segregationalist values as many thought a good Georgia boy would. Reagan won over the States Rights secregationalists in 1980 and has kept them for the most part because the Democrats post 1980 freed of the Segregationalists were free to go full metal Federalist, growing the government, supporting the ever increasing fractionality of identity poliics, etc.

After 1980, however, the two traditional parties mixed and matched ideologies. I hope to address that as we go forward because the two parties are nothing like their historical counterparts.

Speaking of history, don't believe the history books? Right.

As long as the discussion never rises above the level of belief, one beliefs is as good as another?

LOL ... I lived through most of what I'll be discussing. I'm not just "following a history book" Neck. We will be talking about verifyable facts.

a reply to: Gryphon66

Have a blast then

originally posted by: Ahabstar
a reply to: Gryphon66

Have a blast then

Blind link for Party Switchers in the US ...

... so?

In reality, the South swung back and forth in presidential elections for four decades following 1964. Moreover, Republicans didn’t win the South solely by capitalizing on white racial angst. That decision was but one in a series of decisions the party made not just on race but on feminism and religion as well. The GOP successfully fused ideas about the role of government in the economy, women’s place in society, white evangelical Christianity and white racial grievance, in what became a “long Southern strategy” that extended well past the days of Goldwater and Nixon.

Wapo - What We Get Wrong About the "Southern Strategy"

Over the course of 40 years, Republicans fine-tuned their pitch and won the allegiance of Southern whites (and their sympathizers nationwide) by remaking their party in the Southern white image.

Goldwater’s campaign did launch the Southern strategy, originally called “Operation Dixie,” by directly and aggressively championing his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a result, the senator won five Deep South states, including 87 percent of the vote in Mississippi. But this blunt appeal may have done more harm than good, because, other than his native Arizona, these were the only states Goldwater won.

Enter Lee Atwater ... GOP Strategist for 40 years.

Four years later, understanding the risks of such an overt campaign against civil rights, Nixon’s team instead coded their racial appeals. The “silent majority” of white Southerners that the candidate needed to attract understood that Nixon’s call for the restoration of “law and order,” for example, was a dog whistle, signaling his support for an end to protests, marches and boycotts, while his “war on drugs” played on racialized fears about crime. Nixon also adopted a stance of “benign neglect” on civil rights enforcement, a message that his advocates, such as Democrat-turned-Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond, bluntly conveyed to Southern whites on his behalf. As Thurmond put it, “If Nixon becomes president, he has promised that he won’t enforce either the Civil Rights or the Voting Rights Acts. Stick with him.”

The Atlantic, IBID

Candace Owens' false statement that the Southern strategy is a myth

When Republican Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, his Southern surrogates played up the fact that he had just voted against the Civil Rights Act. That paid off in the Deep South where he won a handful of states, but he ultimately lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Southern Strategy is Segregationalist Strategy 1962 Newspaper Article by Joseph Alsop

The idea, long advocated by Senator Goldwater, is that most Southern Democrats are deeply disillusioned with their own party and will change parties for good if teh Republcian make the correct sympathetic noses about states' rights.

Closed doors are desirable for a discussion of the Southern strategy, at least by Northerners, because it is basically a segrgationalist stretgy. The ugly word is not and will not be used, of course. Powerful admiration for states' rights will be professed instead. But this amounts to the same thing in the present circumstances.

RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, this morning will tell the NAACP national convention in Milwaukee that it was "wrong."

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out," Mehlman says in his prepared text. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

a reply to: Gryphon66

Much of what you say is spot on. As far as the rest, I'm a native Georgian born in 1966. I lived through White Flight. I know why it happened. I knew the people who wore those hoods and marched through town. I know what their message was ... and it was not civil rights.

And I am a native Alabamian, older than you. My first school burned to the ground the summer before I entered the 2nd grade. Arson, in response to the forced integration. I was a part of the first class to experience integration. I knew Klan members too. Good people consumed with hatred that burned them up from the inside.

As for White Flight, my parents turned from their farming roots, but they didn't flee. They stayed here, on the land, but turned tradesman and working woman. I'm still here, following in their footsteps as best I can, a mixture of the old and the new. I can accept the modern and not lose sight of antiquity.

As for the political parties and what they stood for, I can only speak to the attitudes that prevailed among my people. I can, however, go back beyond my own life; most of it I have spent researching those who I came from. I have letters written by my ancestors' hands describing what they thought and how they felt about issues that they considered important. I know Southern history and the Southern attitudes of olde better than most.

And much of what you say is true as well.

Speaking of history, don't believe the history books? Right.

As long as the discussion never rises above the level of belief, one beliefs is as good as another?

LOL ... I lived through most of what I'll be discussing. I'm not just "following a history book" Neck. We will be talking about verifyable facts.

I said the history books are written by the winners, and that winners often lie. Do you disagree with either of those statements?

I saw first hand the history books my children studied in school, and they were fairly fantastical on several points. So no, I do not blindly follow the history books... I would place my faith in the handwritten letters of ordinary people over the musings of a professor who never lived the things he writes about. The letter writers had no reason to believe their words would ever survive them, and thus no reason to push for a long-term agenda.. The historians do not need their words to outlive them to affect public perception, and most are well aware of that fact.

So for once, let's keep this real, shall we? You have first hand knowledge of suburban Southern culture and I have first hand knowledge of rural Southern culture. You have insight into the political parties of yore; I have political insight into the people's perception of political parties of yore. We can put our heads together and both learn, or butt heads and both come out with headaches... your choice.

Incidentally, I mostly agree about Carter with two points to be made: I never heard a word among ordinary people about the larger issue of segregation or states' rights. I did hear a lot of anger over the Iranian hostages and Carter's inability to bring them home. That last point was the reason most people gave for wanting Reagan in office, although the economy was a close second. In hindsight, with years of watching political shenanigans under my belt, I believe that was all choreographed... but it worked.

James Earl Carter was a great man. He deserved his Nobel Peace Prize, if for nothing more than starting Habitat for Humanity. I think he really believed in the ideals he preached; but he made a lousy President. His brother Billy would probably have done better; I remember the running joke from the day, that we elected the wrong Carter. I also remember Billy Beer... kinda rough, more like something one might cook up in the bathtub rather than what one would expect in a store-bought can, but marketing genius nonetheless.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

That's that's all very well written, Redneck.

We moved from the suburbs to the country. My family home was on the western bank of the Chattahoochie in a town called Mableton. We moved 50 miles west to a 40-acre farm in Polk County.

I'll be glad to keep it real with you Redneck. Anytime.

a reply to: Gryphon66

That's all I ask.

ETA: I didn't recall the name, but it turns out I do know the Mableton area... right there around Six Flags. I visited there several times when I was younger. I'm also familiar with Polk County; I often use GA 100/US 27 as a shortcut to Hot-lanta.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: Gryphon66

That's all I ask.

ETA: I didn't recall the name, but it turns out I do know the Mableton area... right there around Six Flags. I visited there several times when I was younger. I'm also familiar with Polk County; I often use GA 100/US 27 as a shortcut to Hot-lanta.

TheRedneck

We lived on River View Road, just off of Hwy 78 (Bankhead Highway) on one end and South Cobb Drive on the other. It was still relatively "rural" in those days. We had a garden, and cows, in my earliest recollection. LOL. I had a Hereford calf named "Twinkle" ... and in kindergarten I like every other kid in Georgia travelled to Mayfield Dairies to "milk Rosebud."

1972 we bought "the farm" which was about 50 miles west in the edge of Polk County, in fact, our property line was the county line as well. Our neighbors across the road lived in Haralson. They had 112 acres, we had 40. I grew up there from age 12, learned to raise tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, how to hunt, fish and shoot. None of that really took, LOL, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

The first Democrat I remember listening to was Senator Sam Nunn. Herman Talmadge was the other Senator. I remember when "the Communists" shot down Representative Larry McDonald's plane. I remember hearing from my dad that Governor Lester Maddox sold axe-handles in his restaruant downtown (the Pickrick) to help "keep the Blacks in line." (Spoiler alert, the word used was not Black.)

The Iran Hostage Crisis was the final nail in President Carter's re-election. Now we know that the Reagan campaign worked with the Iranian Government to delay the release of the hostages until just after Reagan's inaugeration.

Republicans until that point had been mostly goofballs. Bumbling Jerry Ford. Tricky DIck Nixon.

a reply to: Gryphon66

The Watergate fiasco was my first memory of caring about politics. I was shocked at how things worked out: Nixon and Spiro Agnew (his VP) were both accused of the wiretapping; Agnew resigned under threat of impeachment; Nixon appointed Ford as VP; Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment; Ford became President and pardoned both Nixon and Agnew. Everyone got off scott-free, and a Republican stayed President. I guess seeing that helped shape my mistrust of politicians in general.

Carter got in office for one reason: he wasn't a Republican. Of course, we now know that Nixon was set up by the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover died.

I honestly didn't know there was actual evidence that Reagan delayed the hostage release. I'm far from surprised though, as I suspected such for some time now. At the time, I was as caught up int he rhetoric as anyone, but looking back it was simply too perfectly timed. Still, I think Reagan did some good for the country and was a better President than Carter. And I agree: Carter's failure was the final straw for the South and the Democrats. We turned red and never looked back. The push had been underway to point out how DNC policy was inconsistent with Southern values for a few years, but no one was listening until Carter's failure.

Bumbling Jerry Ford... lol, that characterization was hilarious. If I remember correctly, he tripped on camera one time, and from that moment on he wasn't supposed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

TheRedneck