David Duke certainly doesn't represent me or the majority of conservatives, (your 2nd race baiting lie.)
Now if you could actually prove your statement I'd be willing to read it...
And yet you just trotted out this "Democratic Party sponsored KKK" song and dance?
Having it both ways: priceless.
The KKK has never been "sponsored" by anything outside its own membership. Nor was it ever founded by politics. It was founded by six bored college-age Confederate veterans on Christmas Day of 1865. This is why it came up with the humorous alliteration schemes of "klaverns" and "kleagles" and the whole Greek mythology reference -- the whole thing was a joke, a lark by bored young men in a small town. It wasn't even founded for terrorism.
What was also going on at the time was mass persecution of newly-freed Africans... lynchings, rapes, burning, even being skinned... for the crimes of asking for a fair wage or daring to walk into town. This became organized into vigilante terrorism groups such as the White League and the Knights of the White Camelllia, inevitably by Confederate war veterans, for the purpose of insurrection against "carpetbaggers", Northerners and Republicans (overlapping terms), to prevent emancipation from taking hold, and in effect to continue the War. Into this prank KKK group came this element, seeking an organization as a vehicle. Having no specific original purpose other than as a joke, the KKK was quickly taken over by that element.
To that quest for legitimacy the KKK recruited Nathan Bedford Forrest, a noteworthy Civil War general (again, not a politician) to be its figurehead (1867), and thereby grow its membership base. But the aforementioned element got so out of hand that less than two years later, even Forrest -- who had himself been a slave trader and heavily implicated in a racial massacre during the war -- decided it was over the top, disbanded the KKK in January of 1869, and dissassociated himself, even denying ever having been part of it.
That didn't stop the Element, who went on with the name and trappings and without a figurehead which simply further demonstrates it as a cultural movement rather than an organized or political one) and continued their murderous rampage for another decade until they were exterminated by the end of the 1870s.
That would have been it for the Klan, and it would have been relegated to the obscurity of history along with the Knights of the White Camellia, had it not been for William Simmons. Simmons RE-started the Klan, the version we're more familiar with in our time, exactly one hundred years ago after viewing some liberal Hollywood crap called "Birth of a Nation". Simmons was an inveterate club-joiner and salesman -- and once again, not a politician. He brought in the whole burning cross thing (taken directly from the film) consecrating the group with a fiery cross atop Stone Mountain in Georgia, and expanded the KKK mission to not just the racial/cultural interests of the South but a Morality Police raging against foreigners (xenophobia being big at the time along with racism) as well as Jews, Catholics, communists, adulterers and loose women.
He also brought in PR personnel to spread the Klan gospel nationwide, making deep inroads into the midwest and west, especially Indiana and Colorado, where it got Senators and Governors elected to office (Republicans btw) in its first forays into actual political campaigning. It also disrupted the 1924 Democratic convention, working to put down an Alabama Senator candidate who had denounced the KKK and railing against Al Smith because he was a Catholic.
That KKK political push peaked fortunately after the 1920s and by World War II the KKK was dead again. Until another assclown, who I apologize, can't think of his name off the top of my head, re-restarted the Klan in the late 1940s and stirred the shit for a few years until happily, he dropped dead of a heart attack and went to hell.
He wasn't a politician either.
The Klan has always been a far-right cultural vigilante group. Its only interests in politics have been as an avenue to that cultural agenda, and to that end it worked with Democrats or Republicans, whichever worked at that time in that place.
So much for your bullshit link, Lumps.
And speaking of that bullshit link -- it says, and I quote,
"Fact: In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, a Republican, integrated the US military and promoted civil rights for minorities."
Uh-- no, not "fact" at all. That would be Harry Truman, 1948, Exectutive Order 9981. Look it up. You don't establish a fact by typing the word "Fact:" before it. Nor do you make a case with lines like "Funny how that works".
Which brings us to another bullshit line:
Fact: The Republican Party was founded primarily to oppose slavery, and Republicans eventually abolished slavery. The Democratic Party fought them and tried to maintain and expand slavery.
The first part about the RP is basically true; slavery and its abolition were burning issues at the time of its founding in 1854. As to the second part, watch this --
In the election of 1860, the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates were Lincoln and Douglas respectively.
-- How many states/electoral votes did the Republican Lincoln win in the South? Zero.
-- How many states/electoral votes did the Democrat Douglas win in the South? Also Zero.
That's because the South found its unholy allliance with the DP unworkable, bolted and ran its own candidates (actually two, Breckenridge and Bell). Just as it had found the DP stance unacceptable in 1948 (see above) when it bolted and formed another party under Strom Thurmond. Just as George Wallace also did in 1968 and 1972 -- and had to be talked out of doing so in 1964 by Barry Goldwater, who Wallace had petitioned to be his running mate. Just as the KKK disrupted the Democratic convention of 1924 (further above) and the one in 1860 which had to be closed and rescheduled.
The racist element of the South had long ongoing feuds with the Democratic Party going all the way back to before the Civil War. So much so that they formed their own opposition parties four times before capitulating to join the party of Lincoln, the guy who had conquered and humiliated them. To suggest the two pieces of that unholy alliance equated ideologically is mindlessly transparent partisan hackery.
