No. of Recommendations: 3
What I'm asking you to understand history from a factual basis and take a look at the assumptions you're making.Which we are doing. The Republican Party of today is NOT the party of Lincoln. You're skipping over huge chunks of history regarding the morphing of the two parties. I don't even have to go back to TMF for that. Albaby, and others, posted some detailed histories on this very board just a couple of months ago. Before 1964, the parties were more diverse. There were conservatives and liberals within both parties. Then came the 1964 CRA, pushed by a Democrat (LBJ), with the knowledge that the Democrats had just lost the South for a generation.
(recent article...I was going to the wiki, but found this)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/22/we-m...'I said, 'Quite a day, Mr President.' As he reached a sheaf of the wire copy he tilted his head slightly back and held the copy up close to him so that he could read it, and said: 'Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime ' and mine.'
'It was lightly said. Not sarcastic. Not even dramatically. It was like a throwaway sidebar.'Nixon then employed the "Southern Strategy" to win the South for Republicans. (This is well-documented by insiders of the Nixon administration.) It wasn't an overnight thing to polarize the parties. The South started voting RED, unless the Dem was a southern-boy (Carter, Clinton). I suspect I'm older than you by a lot, so when I tell you that I was alive when it was still illegal for me to have married 1poorlady, that may not register with you.
Loving was decided in 1967. If 1poorlady and I were of age, we wouldn't have been allowed to marry in many states. Before the CRA, many of those would have been BLUE states.
Since then, the parties have further morphed into parties of education. Many Republicans now claim that Dems have lost touch with the "common man" (translation: lesser-educated people). And there is some truth to that. Republicans tap into the rage and racism of the common man, while not actually doing anything that would help them (e.g. healthcare...working class folks need access to healthcare a lot more than the wealthy, who can just afford to buy it for themselves). Today, the blatantly racist organizations in our society (e.g. KKK, neo-Nazis, etc), openly endorse candidates, and they are Republicans. That is NOT to say that all Republicans are racist. But most racists (today) are Republican. The CRA, the Southern Strategy, and a mix of other factors (including Reagan's embracing of the "Moral Majority"**) resulted in a migration of voters that has today solidified into a very polarized party system.
Sort of like "all Great Danes are dogs, but not all dogs are Great Danes". Most -but not all!- racists are Republicans, but not all Republicans are racist. I was a registered Republican, and I wasn't a racist. I may have been unaware of my privilege as a white male when I was young (and lower-middle class), but I wasn't racist.
**I always like the retort: The Moral Majority is neither. :-)
