The racists in the GOP were once Democrats. Back then they were called Dixiecrats, a moniker that signaled that they were somehow different from mainstream Dems. "Dixie" was a strong clue as to how they were different, and the party treated them differently. Keeping their strongest biases in check while recognizing the need for their votes in order to govern, the Democrats slowly advanced a progressive agenda.
When the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Dixiecrats bolted, and the GOP and Richard Nixon opened their arms to them with the Southern strategy.
For the regressive right it was a marriage made in heaven.
The rest of the political spectrum is now learning that the only similarity between heaven and where that marriage was made is in the white robes worn by all.
I addressed this topic in a post on February 14, 2014. I offer that post again today…
The Tea Party Two-Step
The other day I saw this picture on Facebook.
The rest of the political spectrum is now learning that the only similarity between heaven and where that marriage was made is in the white robes worn by all.
I addressed this topic in a post on February 14, 2014. I offer that post again today…
The Tea Party Two-Step
The other day I saw this picture on Facebook.
BLACK HISTORY PHOTO OF THE DAY: Mrs. James Dascomb and Mrs. Charles Finney take their rightful place among 15 women graduates of Oberlin College's Class of 1855. In 1835, Oberlin became the first predominately white college to admit African American male students and two years later it opened its doors to all women, becoming the first coeducational college in the U.S. If you stand for equality, please like and share!
Yet, 179 years after Oberlin integrated its campus, there are still a whole lot of Americans, who don't like the fact that the White House is inhabited by a Black man, and they are doing everything they can think of to undermine his presidency.
We will have matured as a nation when such people are identified as bigots and thereby deemed unsuitable for public office by the voters of their local and state communities.
A friend then replied:
Too often, however, bigots get elected because bigots vote for bigots. What needs to happen is for Society (and the media) to begin condemning bigots publicly, but we know that's never going to happen since the media "must" be "fair" in its coverage. After all, you can't call Candidate A a bigot if you don't have a similar disparaging remark to make about Candidate B. That might give Candidate B (the decent human being) an "unfair advantage." Phooey.My friend's description of the media's song and dance routine is accurate, and in writing "must" in quotation marks he correctly implies that this way of being "fair" is disingenuous. Of course it is. "The media" is an agglomeration of for-profit businesses. No business wants to alienate its customers, and the music to which any business dances is always played on the cash register. Thus, the media's "fairness" policy is a subterfuge which enables them to retain that sizable portion of their revenue stream which flows from the pockets of the bigots found in the general population.
The media are not the only dancers who have learned the choreography. For decades the Democratic Party excelled at the political version of that disingenuous dance. To hold on to its Dixiecrat faction and thereby maintain majority control of Congress, it not only danced, but baked. As it tripped the light fantastic, it twisted its policies and positions into half-baked pretzels, which it served to the country as "the best we can do" without bothering to mention that they could do better if the voters demanded more from them. The ringing cash register dictated that they not modify the well-rehearsed steps of the dance.
But when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the music changed; and whenever that happens, dancers with a limited repertoire usually leave the dance floor. The Dixiecrats found themselves unable to dance to the new, national tune of integration and equality, and their bigotry made it impossible for them to even consider learning a new routine.
So the Dixiecrats fled to the GOP, which eagerly embraced them under the mantle of its "Southern Strategy." There they discovered they could spread hatred and bigotry throughout the party by co-opting the two social forces moderate conservatives had long used to gain the unquestioned loyalty of their constituents - religion and patriotism. The moderates had danced conservatively; the newcomers garishly brandishing the trappings of unassailable religion and patriotism and turned the dance into a bacchanal. Eventually they abandoned all pretense to mainstream republicanism and rebranded themselves as "Tea Party Patriots."
Unlike the Democratic Party, the GOP has not been able to come up with a political pretzel recipe to simultaneously advance its conservative agenda and also maintain control over their bigots. In fact, the former Dixiecrats appear to be writing the music to which the GOP must now dance; and, thanks to the Tea-Party Two Step, the "Party of Lincoln" appears to be on the verge of becoming the Party of Jefferson...Davis, that is.
