She whines:
And why does the Left get to claim Rosa Parks? Brave American. Inspiring American. Does she need to become a liberal icon?
Here’s a clue: Rosa Parks was a liberal. The NAACP was packed to the gills with liberals. Those were liberals out in the street protesting, threatened with fire hoses and police dogs. Liberals were the ones who made America face up to its racial evil, and it was conservatives who were on the other side, the side where Rosa Parks would have to go sit in the back of the bus.
What’s wrong with these people? Can they read? Or do they just make this stuff up for fun?
Except of course the racist southern Democrats went running into the arms of the Republican party, and they’ve never let each other go.
I’m baffled. Why shouldn’t liberals venerate Rosa Parks? For that matter, why shouldn’t conservatives venerate Rosa Parks? Unless, of course–brace yourself–there’s still a bit of unfinished business about race in America. Ms. Lopez doesn’t do much to move the case along, does she?
He sure started out that way, supporting JFK. It wasn’t until later in his life that he descended into wingnuttia.
Remember how George Wallace used to thunder about “liberal agitators?” Even today you can find folks on FreeRepublic denouncing MLK as a communist. Of course, back in those days there were racially progressive Republicans, like Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon’s Southern strategy sure took care of that little problem. Now Southern conservatives, having whitewashed their history and blamed all racism on the Democratic party (but never Southern conservatism, no!) just sit back, pat themselves on the back, and rewrite history as they please while they rack up the white vote.
Charlton Heston was a liberal?
Umm… yes. Man, you really felt good about that one too, didn’t you?
TomY – Does it not strike you as the least bit ironic that the Wallace you quote was one of your beloved Democrats ?
Liberals were the ones who made America face up to its racial evil, and it was conservatives who were on the other side, the side where Rosa Parks would have to go sit in the back of the bus.
Charlton Heston was a liberal?
Conservatives like to pretend that their movement has only ever been the ideology of William F. Buckely. Southern conservatism, however, has always been a very different kettle of fish. It’s a turn-back-the-clock, us-vs.-the-blacks, aggressively militaristic mentality that people from other parts of the country, especially other conservatives, really don’t understand. Whether enacted by Dixiecrats or today’s Southern Republicans, the politics of the average white Southerner is big-government, at least in terms of fat subsidies, highway programs, etc., esp. from the federal government; it’s hyper nationalistic (so it’s not uncommon to see people with both the confederate battle flag *and* the u.s. flag); and it’s intrusive on people’s personal lives when it comes to religion and sex. All this usually prompts other conservatives a chance to say it’s not really conservatism, because it’s fairly statist and paternalistic and not like, say, what Goldwater and Reagan were allegedly about. Well, that may be true, but it’s a real ideology, and everyone knows it a lot better these days, because it’s the ideology that’s captured the Republican party, much to the harm of the country.
Yeah, somewhere during his Ben-Hur phase he decided the Party had left him so he conjoined with the Party of Soylent Green.
Ironic? Not at all.
We have LBJ to thank for running those rascals right out of the party. For all his personal failings, Johnson was a political master.
The white, southern allegiance to the Democratic party dated to the Civil War. The radical Republicans pushed and won emancipation and they imposed a punitive reconstruction on the south. White southerners didn’t forgive them for nearly 100 years.
Johnson single-handedly pulled the rug out from under the likes of Wallace. He signed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. The worst elements of the Democratic Party fled, as OW points out, into the arms of the so-called “Party of Lincoln.”
Like Robert Byrd?
Byrd was a Dixiecrat. How many Dixiecrats switched parties?
Good boy, JWG. You’re nothing if not reliable.
Keep ignoring the links between conservatism and racism, JWG. How many Dixiecrats switched parties? If you were actually interested in finding out the truth, rather than sweeping it under the conservative rug, you would look at the Southern states that had voted Democrat for 100 years*, who then switched for some weird reason to vote Republican in 1964. In ‘68 they voted against the Democrats again, but then for some reason went with Nixon. Carter got them back, but with a much smaller margin, then lost them to Reagan. Clinton peeled off a few, but the South has been completely switched over since ‘64, and the amazing thing is how little time it took. But the dynamic that switched Southern conservatives from Democrats to Republicans was the fact that liberals — notably liberals from places like Minnesota, New York, and Massachussetts — drove them out. Do you really deny this fact?
*Except when Al Smith ran — not Protestant enough!
Apparently, none of you have ever read Heston’s autobiography. He was not a liberal. Of course, one has to assume he was a liberal because there’s JUST NO WAY a conservative would have ever marched with MLK.
It’s really amusing. You people have NO idea that the only thing that separates so many of your favored blue state Kerry/Clinton/Gore voters from from those evil southerners is their accent. Yet, you believe in your warped minds that any person who votes for a Republican is the second coming of Bull Connor and anybody who votes for a Democrat is an enlightened angel.
More like Strom Thurmond. West Virginia’s not exactly the South, of course. JD: are you aware that the liberals Wallace most hated were also Democrats, particularly hubert Humphrey? The Democratic Party does have a hideous legacy when it comes to the South. But that responsibility is and has always been rightfully placed around the neck of Southern conservatism, a truth current conservatives only ever deal with by ignoring it.
Reliably accurate.
Jay – the fact of the matter is, the conservative movement and its political vessel, the Republican party, accepts and absorbs all manner of racism and it has for some time now. No, Jay, conservatives didn’t march with Dr. King in any large measure, they were either on the sidelines or helping to bar the doors with George Wallace.
You claim that to conflate the south with racism is prejudice, but isn’t it the south where the confederate flag and confederate pride are held up as the pillars of society? How is a black person to reconcile the reverence to the slave trade and days of oppresion so omnipresent in many quarters of the south, used by conservatives to win political office?
Yes, I seem to recall that Arkansas officially observed “Confederate Flag Day” during Clinton’s entire 12 year term as governor. Was he just trying to keep republicans happy?
“the southern switch does not hold true for the state governments”
This is because the association of liberalism is more with the national party than with the local ones. It’s been a gradual process for a region of the country that had a consensus on politics and a single political party to shift that political consensus over to the other party, but indeed that is what has happened.
TomY, there is no doubt that southern democrats started voting for republicans more often. But there are only three southern states that have voted reliably for the non-democratic presidential candidate since 1964 (except for Carter). The South is made up of more than 3 states. Additionally, several of the elections have been landslides with even “reliable” northern democratic states voting republican.
I should also add that the “southern switch” does not hold true for the state governments. Why not?
“Yet, you believe in your warped minds that any person who votes for a Republican is the second coming of Bull Connor and anybody who votes for a Democrat is an enlightened angel.”
That’s bullshit. No doubt there are racist Democrats in Boston or Chicago, but who gives a fuck? As a Southerner, I know that there is a particular kind of conservatism that is native to the South that is enduring and savage, and that it must be fought by those of us who want something better. I know plenty of moderate, non-racist conservatives, but to deny that the former even exists, or that it’s solely the reponsibility of the Democratic party — or worse, liberalism — simpy abets that evil.
Based on what evidence?
“Was he just trying to keep republicans happy?”
Yes, he was. Clinton could be a bastard that way. That’s also the reason he executed that retarded guy — to make soulless Republicans happy. And it worked!
I already linked to a source to refute your statement. Please identify which states are considered “southern,” then compare that to the elections since 1964 which is the goalpost YOU selected.
Quaker:
Actually, please list the democrats who switched parties (as I asked before). You won’t even get close to the number of politicians who stayed in the party. So rather than “one notable exception” I provided the common example.
Democrats ran the South for 100 years. There were no Republicans. The Mississippi Republican party had no office in 1950 — it was just a post office box. South Carolina didn’t even have secret ballots until the 40s – it was a one-party system, like Mexico, and blacks simply couldn’t vote. The system was predicated on keeping things the same, and defined its politics in opposition to “liberals.” This is in and of itself, perfectly conservative, even if different from how, say, Burke, would define the term. This worked fine regionally, but nationally the coalition was much broader. It was the Democratic desire to gain the votes of black factory workers in the north. Southern electoral power came from its senators — all Democrats who supported the porkier aspects of the New Deal — but whose most vicious battles were with progressive fellow Democrats like Hubert Humphrey and JFK who railed against the South. Liberalism vs. conservatism in the South has always been about social issues, never the ’size of government’ debate that we have nationally, so it was the fight over social issues that wrecked the Democratic hold on the South, and which gave the party of Lincoln the chance to move in as the party of the white man. But the southern white vote is still the most monolithic bloc of whites anywhere in the country. Check the last presidential election for that.
Now you put that goalpost right back where you found it, young man.
We were talking “southern Democrats” which is not quite the same as “Dixiecrats.”
And for what it’s worth, you are correct in that one notable exception reformed rather than flee.
I’m not claiming it’s the politicians who changed, JWG, it’s that Southern conservative *voters* became angry with Democrats on the national level because of their stance on race. So, for example, the conservative Democrat most associated with blocking civil rights legislation, Richard Russell, never switched parties, he was still supported by the voters of Georgia, who would still become disenchanted by the party’s presidential candidates (esp. LBJ, Humphrey, McGovern) and liberalism generally. The democratic party s reaction has been overwhelmingly to try to find moderate Democratic candidates who can peel some portion of southern Conservatives off through the virtue of actually *being* Southern: witness Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Edwards. When your average white southerner is faced with a choice between a realtively conservative Democratic candidate who works for a larger liberal party vs. a Republican who runs on an anti-liberal platform that conveniently never mentions race at all, that s how Nixon s Southern Strategy plays out to the Republican advantage year by year. Or do you have some other explanation for the electoral college in 1964 and 1968 than the civil rights bill? And how does any of this discussion explain why conservatives weren t the ones explicitly aligned with racism in the South? I ve admitted that Democrats included some of the very worst conservative racists in American history. If I d been alive in 1950, I might not have been a Democrat at all. But you would still be a conservative, and you can t bear to admit the fellow travelers your ideology has included and still depends upon to win elections.
The whole subject makes me sick to my stomach, because this “Southern strategy” is not only alive and well, it has divided blacks and whites on nearly every vote. When I lived in Alabama, the issue of striking down language in our constitution saying blacks cannot marry whites was defeated.In my opinion this sort of politics is in line with flying Confederate flags. Maybe I am just too sensitive, but the amount of hate and rasicm is vile in the south. And I was silly enough to believe that by moving to Atlanta, it would be a progressive sort of town(LMFAO). THe sad part is that my generation is still young and still holds onto rasicm and prejeduce with a death grip in the South. I seriously believe that until whites begin voting with people like Edwards or more progressive, the make-up will be the handfull of excellent black progressive politicians in the South and the Racist status quo or at least racist appeasers.
I agree wholehartedly with Oliver and others that the antecedents of contemporary GOP ideology are all southern and race based. When W was back east at Yale learning how to be a good patrician, daddy was back home in Texas doin’ his best imitation of a redneck politico running for the Senate.
From George Bush the Unauthorized biography by Tarpley and Chaitkin
“Bush’s unsuccessful attempt in 1964 to unseat Texas Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough is a matter of fundamental interest to anyone seeking to probe the wellsprings of Bush’s actual political thinking. In a society which knows nothing of its own recent history, the events of a quarter century ago might be classed as remote and irrelevant. But as we review the profile of the Bush Senate campaign of 1964, what we see coming alive is the characteristic mentality that rules the Oval Office today. The main traits are all there: the overriding obession with the race issue, exemplified in Bush’s bitter rejection of the civil rights bill before the Congress during those months; the genocidal bluster in foreign affairs, with proposals for nuclear bombardment of Vietnam, an invasion of Cuba, and a rejection of negotiations for the return of the Panama Canal; the autonomic reflex for union-busting expressed in the rhetoric of “right to work”; the paean to free enterprise at the expense of farmers and the disadvantaged, with all of this packaged in a slick, demagogic television and advertising effort.”
Thus we can see that demagoguery doesn’t fall far from the tree.
It sure doesn’t: Didn’t Chaikin write an article for Slate or Salon, called “Why I Hate Bush” or some such?
Anton Chaitkin.
Jonathan Chait.
Different guys.
I took the time to put the previous 22 presidential election results into a spreadsheet. I compared the number of times a state went for a Democrat before 1964 to the number of times the state voted for a non-Democrat in 1964 and beyond.
I was incorrect in a previous statement. Instead of 3 southern states shifting their “reliable” Democratic vote to a “reliable” non-Democratic vote since 1964, I should have stated four:
South Carolina (91% vs 91%)
North Carolina (91% vs 82%)
Alabama (82% vs 91%)
Mississippi (82% vs 91%)
Depending on your definition of “reliable” you could add some more states:
Georgia (100% vs 73%)
Arkansas (100% vs 64%)
Louisiana (82% vs 73%)
Texas (73% vs 73%)
Virginia (64% vs 91%)
Of course, you should consider how many Democratic governors and senators these states have elected as well.
You may want to consider why the following states also made a significant switch from pre-1964 to post-1964 (Dem to non-Dem):
Oklahoma
Nevada
New Mexico
Missouri
Illinois
Utah
Arizona
Montana
Idaho
Ohio
Are they “racist” as well?
Wait, you’re saying Ohio, the state that gave us Hayes, McKinley, Mark Hanna, Harding, and the Taft dynasty was a Democratic stronghold comparable to Alabama? Ohio was one of the bedrock states of Republican politics since the founding of the GOP. You’re a fucking idiot JWG. Read a book.
In the South, economic conservatism never won out against pork, even today. But appeals against liberals, and appeals to state’s rights — and most importantly, Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Act on the basis of states rights — that carried a whole hell of a lot of weight. In your time poring over electoral college spreadsheets, did you at least notice that the South had been a) monolithic for 100 years before 1964, b) switched en masse for some weird reson in 1964, and c) only ever voted for the conservative candidate or a decreasingly effective Democratic Southern candidate after 1964? Because that’s a fucking trend, JWG. Civil rights broke the democratic ice, and it’s been trending Republican ever since.
[...] ef=”http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/03/abramoff/index_np.html”>Salon.com via Oliver Willis and The Daily Kos [...]
You’re disputing the fact that the South of the old Confederacy AL, MS, SC, NC, TN, GA, AK, and marginally TX was utterly dominated by the Democratic party from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Act with the exception of 1928? And you’re disputing the idea that it was the Civil Rights Act that broke the Democratic lock on the South? For real?
GOP political guru Lee Atwater, explaining the Southern strategy in 1981, one year after Reagan gave his states rights speech in Philadelphia, MS, site of the lynching of three “liberal agitator” civil rights activists:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
“And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’ ”
Deny that, you willfully ignorant GOP liar.
I don’t deny that there are racists. I do deny that racists are any more important to the Republican party than they are to the Democratic party
I also deny that I support the GOP.
Compare the 11 elections before 1964 and after. How many times did Ohio go for the Dem before? How many times did it go for the non-Dem after? I look at the facts.
I gave you the percents in my post above since 1922 (11 elections prior to 1964). The “South” was not “monolithic.” Please tell me who you consider the “South.”
I should also point out that the “South” is certainly not “monolithic” in their support of non-Dems since 1964.
It is obvious that the South in general has aligned with the “heartland” in their support for conservatives. The obvious break for the “South” began in 1964, but it’s not consistent. It’s also been 50 years and you attribute their continued support for conservatives as racist. What about the other states in the “heartland” that have made a similar shift? Maybe if the Democratic leadership stopped alienating the South (with the support of “enlightened” progressives) there would be more Democratic presidents. Instead, people like you help the Democrats lose and then blame racism.
First off, JWG, you need to make up your mind about whether you re claiming that the South a) wasn t monolithic, and that there was no change from pre-1964 and today; or b) it was monolithic, but changed after 1964 for reasons other than racism, like some sort of nebulous, incoherent national trend you have yet to explain. The first is disproven by looking at electoral college results; the second by the rhetoric of actual politicians and the abiding voting polarization between Southern whites and blacks.
JWG said: “The obvious break for the South began in 1964, but it s not consistent.”
Nor did I claim it was a perfect, immediate switch; 1964 broke the ice and brought the South into play, by cynical, coded appeals on the part of the GOP to “law and order” and “states rights.” But it s also complicated by the fact that after the civil rights act, BLACK PEOPLE COULD ACTUALLY VOTE! The votes of white people remained uniform and polarized against the black-supported candidate. This trend has not changed. I can dig up the data this weekend on Southern white voters to show that they remain the most uniform in their presidential voting patterns, and become increasingly polarized (as in, against the guy that black people like nationally) the more black people that are present in the given Southern state. But since you ve already made up your mind (based on no evidence at all!) that the South s racists are equally present in both parties, I think I ll just say fuck you, you pig-ignorant clueless mouthbreather for now.
To clarify, The South is VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, AL, MS, AK, LA, and sometimes TX. Additionally, I’m not attempting to explain any part of the country but the South, so whatever vague, drive-by claim you want to prove about the southwest or whatever the heartland is, is incumbent upon you to make.
JWG said: “the South is certainly not monolithic in their support of non-Dems since 1964.
Read what I wrote again. It was monolithic before 1964, under Dems. It has been undergoing a transformation over the last 50 years, trending steadily toward the GOP, to the point where now it is the most GOP region of the country in presidential contests. The fact that it only took 50 years is in itself fairly impressive, and it s also impressive given the relentlessly anti-GOP stance of southern blacks, and the (dare I say) slavish devotion to the GOP shown by Southern whites. Cities and black districts in the south remain reliable democratic strongholds, and east Tennessee (home of notorious asshole Glenn Reynolds) has actually never been Democratic, but was Republican even during the Civil War. But among white voters, it s essentially still a one-party region, just like before 1964.
JWG on Ohio: “Compare the 11 elections before 1964 and after.”
I am only dwelling on this detour to demonstrate how shitty your analytical abilities are, and how pointless it is for you to try to use Ohio to argue it was obeying some unarticulated national trend that the South was following as well. They weren t on similar trajectories at all. If anything, Ohio is the opposite of the South. It was strongly Republican, and went Democrat only in cases of a national landslide, but there is no evidence of a shift for the LBJ/Goldwater contest, and really, why would there be? For presidential elections, Ohio was Republican from 1860-1912. Voted for Wilson both times, then went back to Republican for Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Went for FDR and Truman, but then went back to Republican for Eisenhower and Nixon. Went Democrat for LBJ. Your point was to show, somehow, that 1964 was a transformative year for Ohio? Into what? Ohio will vote Democratic if that Democrat is a landslide winner, like Clinton, but otherwise it was mainly Republican before 1964 and it still is. Why don t you compare that electoral history with Alabama s from 1860-present and see if you still think they re obeying similar trends.
There is nothing more cynical or contemptible than for so-called independents like you to delude yourselves into thinking you re being even-handed by declaring both parties equally complicit for racism in our society. The GOP has demonstrably courted the racist vote through the tactics of Nixon, Reagan, and Haley Barbour. But if you are insistent on being willfully ignorant, then there never was any hope for you to begin with.
To summarize: Keep your dumb-shit, racist-abetting, pig-ignorant opinions about the South to your own fucking self next time, JWG.
Found it. Bush s 2004 margin over Kerry among white people nationally (58-41) is nowhere near what it is in the South. White voters in the South vote far more monolithically than do white voters in the rest of the country. For 2004, here are Bush s top states for the greatest victory margin among white voters. The percentage on the right indicates the percentage of black residents in the state. Notice how the more black voters there are, the greater the Bush margin. Maybe you can explain this away without using race and racial politics, but I m hard pressed to see how. Stark, stark results. Notice the correlation between the states with the biggest margins and the states with senators who won t sign on to the anti-lynching resolution, too. Oh, but JWG asserts that all the racists are huddled in that 14% of whites in Mississippi, putting on their klan robes and going down the post office to pull the lever for John Kerry. Riggghhhht.
Mississippi – 85-14 (34%)
Alabama – 80-19 (25%)
South Carolina – 78-22 (30%)
Georgia – 76-23 (25%)
Louisiana – 75-24 (27%)
North Carolina – 73-27 (26%)
Texas – 72-16 (12%)
Virginia – 68-32 (21%)
Tennessee – 65-34 (12%)
Kentucky – 64-35 (8%)
Arkansas – 63-36 (15%)
Florida – 57-42 (12%)
Nationally – 58-41
TomY,
Your eloquence concerning the polarization of the white southern vote and the manifestly racist social undercurrent that causes it is nothing short of astounding. Thank you for thoroughly addressing this so that I don’t have too. The truth sometimes hurts and I for one am glad that you so thoroughly enjoy inflicting that hurt.
So voting for Bush over Kerry demonstrates that they vote Republican based on racism. Got it. There are no other socially conservative issues that matter.
By the way, I’d appreciate a link to the numbers if you’ve got one.
Exactly. You want to isolate the South in order to make the argument that they used to be Dem but switched to Rep due to racism. The fact that they made the switch when dealing with presidential politics in 1964 is clear. You can’t make the case that it continued due to racism. Did the racists miss the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans voted for civil rights?
You claimed earlier that “Democrats ran the South for 100 years. There were no Republicans.” I demonstrated that this a huge exaggeration. You keep referring to Alabama. But if you look at the voting statistics for most of the other southern states, you find that there were quite a few Republican votes. Facts are facts. You try to use one extreme example as your generality. It doesn’t work.
Half of the states you identified as “the South” voted Republican at times, sometimes several, before 1964. Not quite monolithic.
I don’t dispute this. I’m saying you’re exaggerating how “monolithic” it was for the entire “South.” Additionally, the Democratic party is by no means dead within the South…although people like you are helping to kill it.
Here’s the percentage of Republican votes within the time frame you give for a few of the southern states:
TX 12% (but voted Dem in 64, 68 — delayed racism?)
KY 21% (also voted Dem in 64)
VA 22% (also voted Dem in 64)
TN 25% (also voted Dem in 64)
FL 29% (also voted Dem in 64)
Additionally, Carter won more of the South than did Clinton. Coupled with the number of Democratic governors in the South, I argue that the general transition of the entire South from Dem to Rep was more gradual than you make it out to be.
And I remain curious as to why racists would join a party that voted more heavily for the Civil Rights Act. (Well, maybe you could argue that they aren’t the brightest America has to offer, so it may not be a stretch to imagine them missing the obvious.)
[...] amount of anti-Klan protesters? I don t think so. I think its safe to say that those liberals like Rosa Parks won. I should also note that the Klan’ [...]
ytda pjuoirw mchyixd vprshmx onpq qxkiwp unefy
awfjgyx nutqd wanzyj qabo vwpamz jrqf nwlcodaz [URL]http://www.jymuqz.dcnutxorv.com[/URL] qbho fjeigpahm