working class stiff Loc: N. Carolina

There's nothing secret about this history. Anyone who has an interest in the reconstruction governments of the post-war south knows that the federal gov't set up free e******ns in those states and that many qualified b****s were elected to both state and federal positions during that time.

That history has little to do with the current parties and their platforms. For example, Republicans at that time had no qualms about disciplining state governments that actively opposed the tenets of the Constitution and Declaration as they saw it. Today, however, the Republican party is all for states rights. Clearly something has changed.

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

Ok. But first answer me this; are you one that believes the parties actually "switched" over the issue of race in the 1960's ?

jelun

If this info is secret how do so many true outsiders and fools know all about it?

working class stiff Loc: N. Carolina

I'm not sure why 'switched' is in quotes. What I have seen and learned is that from the 60s on, b***k A******ns no longer felt at home in the Republican party. My personal opinion is that over the course of the past 50 years the platform of the Republican party no longer met the needs of this basic (formerly) Republican constituency, and the Republicans did nothing to stem that loss. B****s were a constituency the Republicans were quite willing to let go.

It is also true that party platforms change over time. The Republicans are no longer the party of the 1860s, nor are the Democrats. Did they switch platforms....no. Did the platforms evolve in such a fashion that b****s no longer feel welcome in the Republican party....the proof is in the v****g.

jelun

An excellent framing of the facts. TY.

I am not even sure that using the party identification works. Don't you think it is more of a de facto slip into one party or another by people on a spectrum...in reality the extremists are not truly Republican, they tend to label people as RINOs. I am pretty sure I saw that used here today. Those people are actually the Republican Party folks, those who align with the Republican center right folks. I would bet that if it were worth the time to check that most on this site have said more than once that they are not Republicans but Independents.
The same goes for lefties and Dems. Many don't identify as a Dem, but as progressive or as socialist. I have no dog in the stand that Dems take really. Their platform is theirs.
Though, people v**e for Dems most often as there are no realistic 3rd party people to v**e for on a federal level. People talk about Jill Stein... LOL, she has more money than the Clintons. The Green Party cannot get on the b****t in several states.
So v**e Green within the state occasionally... if it isn't going to hurt anything. WTH.

Progressive One

Thank you...why in the hell does the right keep up this dishonest charade?

working class stiff Loc: N. Carolina

I do tend to agree with the folks who argue that both parties are corrupt at this point. If that argument is even handed, I have no issue with it. To claim that Dems are more corrupt than the Reps is a non-starter. I have often stated that I think liberals have a lot to learn about tactics and organization from the TEA party folks and start a liberal movement from the ground up. Here in red state NC, I see that happening as the urban areas are rebelling against an over-reaching state government. I am not happy with the Clinton c****ation. I will v**e for her as the alternative (Trump) grates even more. So yeah, I don't see the party labels as that relevant anymore. There are many issues I agree with conservatives on (unsustainable federal budget, gov't-lobbyist revolving door, reform of the federal bureaucracy), but that doesn't mean I agree with their more draconian solutions.

I also see the extreme rhetoric as barrier to progress. If the founders had taken a 'no compromise' attitude this country wouldn't even exist.

northernlights

Now you're denying history also.

jelun

I think that it has to be acknowledged that for several decades, almost a century, the power resided in the Democratic Party (for a time some were known as Dixiecrats) on the larger stage of national politics.
George Wallace was a Dem, for goodness sake. James Eastland was a Dem as well. People like him ran away from racial e******y and the Democratic party like rats from a ship.
There was no switch there was an evacuation from the party that finally stood up for e******y and what is right.
The Republican Party and the backward creeps hung out a great old net to catch all of those fallen soul simply to grap power.

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

I was speaking to the claim often made by some, that individual politicians and prominent people of the time, actually switched parties.



I agree, platforms have changed in our history. 👍

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

An often mentioned form of revisionist history; yes.

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), r****m — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there. That is because those southerners who defected from the Democratic party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century. There is no radical break in the Republicans’ civil-rights history: From abolition to Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, there exists a line that is by no means perfectly straight or unwavering but that nonetheless connects the politics of Lincoln with those of Dwight D. Eisenhower. And from s***ery and secession to remorseless opposition to everything from Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, there exists a similarly identifiable line connecting John Calhoun and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Supporting civil-rights reform was not a radical turnaround for congressional Republicans in 1964, but it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the Democrats. The depth of Johnson’s prior opposition to civil-rights reform must be digested in some detail to be properly appreciated. In Congress, Johnson had consistently and repeatedly v**ed against legislation to protect b***k A******ns from lynching. As a leader in the Senate, Johnson did his best to cripple the Civil Rights Act of 1957; not having v**es sufficient to stop it, he managed to reduce it to an act of mere symbolism by excising the enforcement provisions before sending it to the desk of President Eisenhower. Johnson’s Democratic colleague Strom Thurmond nonetheless went to the trouble of staging the longest filibuster in history up to that point, speaking for 24 hours in a futile attempt to block the bill.

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

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So why are you and others on the left trying so hard to change the facts? Hmmmmmm?

northernlights

Which t***sition of the republican party are you disagreeing with?

northernlights

You state (your opinion I must add), that Republicans were the enlightened ones in the 1960's and had been for a century...? That is some stretch of the t***h, considering those enlightened ones were the people with s***es. There wasn't a radical break more of a slow departure, gravitating to the party more with company interests and less for the people.

How you say it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the democrats is beyond me, as one of the many laws passed during his administration which he was actually most proud of, was the "v****g rights act". This bill outlawed literacy tests and other unfair practices that white southerners used to keep b****s from registering to v**e. Does this sound slightly familiar? A year later Thurgood Marshall was appointed first black justice to sit on court.