Don’t you just love the way the left re-writes history so people believe the Democrats, and the Democrats alone, have been the crusaders of civil rights in America? In reality, it was the Republicans who were responsible for abolishing slavery and passing civil rights legislation.
Thanks to Republicans beginning to appreciate the heritage of our Grand Old Party, it has become better known that Republicans in Congress supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act much more than did the Democrats. Indeed, the legislator most responsible for breaking the Democrat filibuster was a Republican senator, Everett Dirksen.
And now, the question that should be before us: How did that landmark legislation come to be? The answer to that is a source of pride for all Republicans today.
The origin of the 1964 Civil Rights Act can be traced back to the Reconstruction era. That was when the Republican Party enacted the first civil rights act ever, the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Never heard of it? Democrat history professors would rather you didn’t. With that law, Republicans took a big step toward making Abraham Lincoln’s vision for “a new birth of freedom” a reality.
Ominously, the assassination of the Great Emancipator had left the presidency to his Democrat vice president, Andrew Johnson. Senator Lyman Trumbull (R-IL), co-author of the 13th Amendment banning slavery, also wrote the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Republican support was nearly unanimous, while Democrats were unanimously opposed. This would be the first time Congress overrode a presidential veto of a significant bill.
Read the whole thing. The article was written by Michael Zak who blogs at The Grand Old Partisan.
I saw this earlier, and almost forgot to post it until I was reminded by Smitty’s post.
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It is true that *socially moderate* Republicans like Dirksen worked with Democrats to pass civil rights legislation and oppose Southern Democrat segregation.
In 1960, running against JFK, Richard Nixon won 40% of the black vote. (If Romney could do that today, he would win the 2012 election in a landslide.) But Nixon was more moderate on domestic social issues than his critics gave him credit for.
But the track record of *conservatives* in the GOP on civil rights is not so good.
In the 1950s, the National Review opined that the Federal Government didn’t have the authority under the principle of Federalism to enforce desegregation of the South. On legal/constitutional grounds, they were likely right. But politically this stance was a non-starter. So when liberals on the Supreme Court started using the Commerce Clause and the Equal Protection Clause and any other legalistic tricks they could get their hands on to ban segregation and racial discrimination, the conservatives were largely left on the sidelines. (Even on the Supreme Court, conservatives often dissented from these rulings.)
And in 1964, the GOP nominee for President, Barry Goldwater, opposed the Civil Rights Act on libertarian grounds.
Prior to the 1970s, the GOP was more moderate on social issues. There were even actual Republican liberals, like Senator Jacob Javits and Senator Ed Brooke. Even by comparison with the Democratic Party, they were liberal.
When socially conservative Southern whites and white urban ethnics in the North moved into the GOP beginning in the 1970s, all that began to change. And when Christian evangelicals abandoned Jimmy Carter and moved into the GOP to back Reagan and other conservatives, that changed even more.
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Lonely Conservative: History of the GOP’s Role in Passing Civil Rights Legislation
Lincoln was a Republican, after all. Since that time, though, the Republicans became the party of of business interets, while the Democrats were a coalition between progressives, workers and conservative Southern segregationists. Blacks started moving to the Democrats early in the twentieth century, especially in the North, and the Democratic Party became the central battleground for civil rights. Indeed, the Democratic Party tore itself apart over the issue, such as the fracture in 1948 over Truman’s integration of the military that nearly cost him the election. When the Republican presidential candidate of 1964, Barry Goldwater, came out against Civil Rights legislation, it led to a complete exodus of blacks from the Republican Party.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/04/blacks-and-the-democratic-party/
Today, the Democratic Party is largely a party of minorities.
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Joseph Hall: I’m sure you have been indoctrinated by your progressive professors to think in such small terms about the history of the GOP…His name is Theodore Roosevelt.
Um, Roosevelt was a progressive.
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Joseph Hall: You may use the word progressive to describe Roosevelt, …
That’s what Teddy Roosevelt called himself when he formed the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party specifically advocated many progressive policies; including social insurance, a national health service, an eight-hour workday, the income tax, restraining the power of corporations over government, the direct election of Senators, and women’s suffrage.
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Joseph Hall: I see that you have come around to my point of view about how great Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt have historically upheld basic civil rights.
Um, we never held otherwise. Zachriel: Lincoln was a Republican, after all.
Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive, ironic, in light of your original comment.
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Zachriel comes masked as the angel of memory, but his accuracy is diminished by this less than true progressive thought!
Nice try staggering brain!
Hot debate. What do you think?
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