No. of Recommendations: 3
Interesting thread...
The Republican argument in a nutshell: In 1865 the republican party was not made up of homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist clodpolls. True!
The Democrats argument: Unfortunately the year is 2023 and the republican party is currently made up in large part of homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist clodpolls. Also true!I don't think that fairly characterizes the Republican argument. That doesn't make the Republican argument
right - but it should be accurately presented.
The GOP argument in a nutshell is that in
1964 the Republican party was not made up of xenophobic or racist clodpolls. That in fact, the largest contingent of xenophobic and racist clodpolls were in the
Democratic party. And that therefore, the successful adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be considered part of the legacy of the GOP
and not the Democrats.
All but that last bit is very defensible. During the Civil Rights Movement, the racists and segregationists - at least in political leadership - were mostly Democrats, not Republicans. And they weren't a
tiny portion of the Democrats, either -
frickin' 40% of Democratic Senators signed the
Southern Manifesto, arguing that public spaces should continue to be segregated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_ManifestoBut that last bit also ignores that the majority of the Democratic party, and especially the leadership (both JFK and Johnson, but also party leaders in both chambers) in pushing the CRA forward. Because the Democrats led the way, they also ended up taking the political hit as angry white Southern conservatives (most visibly in folks like George Wallace, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond) pushed away from the party. As much as GOP support for the actual CRA should be to its credit, its rapid shift to welcoming these reactionary conservatives who opposed the Civil Rights Movement - and elevating Goldwater (one of the few GOP opponents to the CRA) - was to its shame. Though as I mentioned upthread, the Democrats didn't cover themselves in glory, either, allowing the rabid segregationists to remain welcome members of their coalition for many years after the CRA as well.
But both parties continued to "sort" on political ideology very quickly after that. Democrats became more the party of liberals who believed in robust federal power, and Republicans became more the party of conservatives who were suspicious of federal power. Within a decade or so after its passage, the CRA (a massive liberal expansion of federal oversight into vast areas of formerly state-regulated public and private activity) fit far more neatly into the political ideology of the Democratic party than the GOP. Put simply, the GOP started purging their liberals and the Democrats started purging their conservatives - and the CRA had been supported by liberals and opposed by conservatives. While support for the CRA was previously across both parties and divided by political ideology, the parties shortly thereafter realigned along the party ideology that the CRA was split over. And the GOP took the conservative side, which was the side that opposed the CRA. The Democrats took the liberal side....but tried very hard to hold onto its former conservative white Southern base.
It's really complicated history, and neither political party looked like or acted like their modern versions.
