SouthernDemocrat said:
And every northeastern liberal Republican left the party over time, and just about every racist Dixiecrat jumped ship to the Republicans.
Nope, the Dixiecrats, after their failed campaign for the presidency, remained Democrats. Thurmond was the only Democrat who changed parties and that was after the Republicans won passage of the civil rights bill so hardly a reason to go there. Gore, Fulbright, Byrd and all the other Democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights legislation remained Democrats to their dying day.
I am from the south, I know why southerners vote Republican now and its all because of race baiting and gun laws.
I am from the South and still live in the South. I was vice-president of the Teen-Age Republicans in my city in 1968 and we support candidates who support passage of the civil-rights legislation and we supported desegregation. The Democrats opposed both. And clearly the race baiters STILL live in the Democrat party.
That is it. Its that "Southern Strategy" that the GOP has been pursuing every since the early 70s.
The most misrepresented Strategy in American History. It had nothing to do with brining the racist policies of the Democrats into the Republican party. Nixon was well known as a supporter of and fighter for the Civil Rights laws. Here from one of his political startegist.
[FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]"Now, as a co-architect of the Nixon strategy that gave the GOP a lock on the White House for a quarter century, let me say that Kristol's opportunism is matched only by his ignorance. Richard Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column on the South (by this writer) that declared we would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the "party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice." [/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]In that '66 campaign, Nixon – who had been thanked personally by Dr. King for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 – endorsed all Republicans, except members of the John Birch Society. [/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]In 1968, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew for vice president. Why? Agnew had routed George ("Your home is your castle!") Mahoney for governor of Maryland but had also criticized civil-rights leaders who failed to condemn the riots that erupted after the assassination of King. The Agnew of 1968 was both pro-civil rights and pro-law and order."
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[FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]
He goes on to point out
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[FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]Between 1969 and 1974, Nixon – who believed that blacks had gotten a raw deal in America and wanted to extend a helping hand: [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]raised the civil rights enforcement budget 800 percent; [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]doubled the budget for black colleges; [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]appointed more blacks to federal posts and high positions than any president, including LBJ; [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]adopted the Philadelphia Plan mandating quotas for blacks in unions, and for black scholars in colleges and universities; [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]invented "Black Capitalism" (the Office of Minority Business Enterprise), raised U.S. purchases from black businesses from $9 million to $153 million, increased small business loans to minorities 1,000 percent, increased U.S. deposits in minority-owned banks 4,000 percent; [/FONT]
- [FONT=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]raised the share of Southern schools that were desegregated from 10 percent to 70 percent. Wrote the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1975, "It has only been since 1968 that substantial reduction of racial segregation has taken place in the South."[/FONT]
And let's not forget that it was a Republican President, bucking a Democrat congress, who sent troops into a Democrat controlled state to desegregate the schools, that being Eisenhower and Arkansas.
I mean you guys must think that Black people are morons or something for voting Democrat.
No I think the only people who think that are on your side, the side that thinks blacks must live by the government dole.
Until the Republicans leave behind the legacy of race baiting in the south,
Since it never existed and is only the rhetorical creation of Democrats to hide their own Civil Rights record there is nothing to leave.
they will never have the Black vote.
And you say others are racist and demeaning to blacks.
Then again, if they did that, they might risk loosing the southern vote.
Hmmmmm my neighboring city, in which I work, just elected a black mayor who won by getting the majority of the white Republican vote.
I think you need to get rid of your preconcieved, erroneous notions, do a little historical reading and take the blinders off as the the racial situation in the South these days.