A Study in Irony

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has switched to the Democratic party after twenty-nine years as a Republican lawmaker. This is but the latest in a series of events which underscore the truth of the oft quoted axiom attributed to the American editor and author, Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900), "Politics makes strange bedfellows."

The Democratic party is and always has been a rag-tag coalition of diverse factions within the populace. Will Rogers described it best when he said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." He also observed, "Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."

Until they switched sides, lawmakers from the "Solid South" were Democrats. Known as Dixiecrats, they were but one faction within the Democratic coalition, and their power was necessarily tempered and checked by the need to compromise in order to achieve any of their objectives.

Then in 1964 President Lyndon Johnon signed the Civil Rights Act into law; and, in one of the great ironies in American political history, the champions of Jim Crow Laws defected and were welcomed with open arms into the Party of Lincoln.

Once that had occurred, it was but a matter of time until the other shoe dropped, and drop it most certainly did.

Because of its adherence to conservative principles, the Republican party is ideologically opposed to change. In the past this was its great strength, serving as a check against the hasty passage of irresponsible legislation. But with the addition of the Dixiecrats, it became the GOP's achilles heel.

It didn't take long for the newly minted Republicans to realize that they could dominate the party using the "traditional" tactics of intimidation and fear-mongering which had allowed them to maintain segregation in the South for nearly a century after the end of the Civil War.

Thus, in 2009 America is a country where a black man from the party which coddled the Dixiecrats for so many years serves as President while conversely, and perversely, the once-proud Party of Lincoln has rejected the ideals of the Great Emancipator in favor of those of the Old Confederacy.

Go figure!