.
Its not surprising that Donald Trump would make this argument. What is surprising is how it took him so long to get to this point.
“The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. Not bad,” said Trump, speaking at a rally in the Seattle suburb of Everett. “Not bad. It’s also the party of freedom, equality and opportunity.”
“It is the Democratic Party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow and the party of opposition,” Trump said, drawing boos from the supportive crowd, which was heavily white.
As the Washington Post reported, Trump was reading from prepared remarks, which sometimes gives him trouble: his mention of “party of opposition,” for example, was supposed to be “party of oppression.”
However, it was only a matter of time before Trump, being more pundit than candidate, cited one of the more popular historical arguments embraced by conservatives.
Unfortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, it’s a point he doesn’t seem to understand especially well.
It doesn’t matter how often conservatives are reminded of their gross error in historic fact, Trump is eagerly spreading this particular piece of right wing BS. So, here is another reminder of the facts concerning the GOP’s and Democrats’ racial history.
The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to two broad, competing constituencies: southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled with this conflict for years, before ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.
The result was a dramatic shift in both parties. After “Dixiecrats” began their exodus in 1948, and in the wake of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Republican Party welcomed segregationists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform.
It was right around this time when figures like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond made the transition – leaving the progressive, diverse, tolerant Democratic Party for the intolerant, conservative GOP.
In the years that followed, Democrats embraced their role as the party of inclusion, while Republicans became the party of the “Southern Strategy” (which is another fact right-wingers consistently deny), and the opposition to affirmative action. The GOP campaigns then turned to race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, and other unethical methods by politicians like Helms, Thurmond, and others and continues to this day.
To be sure, Trump’s surface-level understanding of history isn’t entirely wrong: Southern Democrats were, for generations after the Civil War, on the wrong side of the issue. Practically all of the major segregationists of that era were Dixiecrats.
The problem, however, is with the relevance of the observation. Which matters more in contemporary politics: that segregationists were Southern Democrats or that segregationists made a new home in the Republican Party in the latter half of the 20th century?
Democrats have no reason to ignore this or sweep history under the rug: they eventually got it right, and dispatched the segregationists to the GOP, which welcomed them in the party fold.
If history ended a half-century ago, Trump may have a slightly more legitimate point. But given what we’ve seen over the last 50 years, the more salient point is that Democrats have been part of the solution, not part of the problem, on race. This is something conservatives are loath to admit.
Trump calls Democrats the party of ‘slavery’ and ‘Jim Crow’
.
Its not surprising that Donald Trump would make this argument. What is surprising is how it took him so long to get to this point.
“The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. Not bad,” said Trump, speaking at a rally in the Seattle suburb of Everett. “Not bad. It’s also the party of freedom, equality and opportunity.”
“It is the Democratic Party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow and the party of opposition,” Trump said, drawing boos from the supportive crowd, which was heavily white.
As the Washington Post reported, Trump was reading from prepared remarks, which sometimes gives him trouble: his mention of “party of opposition,” for example, was supposed to be “party of oppression.”
However, it was only a matter of time before Trump, being more pundit than candidate, cited one of the more popular historical arguments embraced by conservatives.
Unfortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, it’s a point he doesn’t seem to understand especially well.
It doesn’t matter how often conservatives are reminded of their gross error in historic fact, Trump is eagerly spreading this particular piece of right wing BS. So, here is another reminder of the facts concerning the GOP’s and Democrats’ racial history.
The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to two broad, competing constituencies: southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled with this conflict for years, before ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.
The result was a dramatic shift in both parties. After “Dixiecrats” began their exodus in 1948, and in the wake of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Republican Party welcomed segregationists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform.
It was right around this time when figures like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond made the transition – leaving the progressive, diverse, tolerant Democratic Party for the intolerant, conservative GOP.
In the years that followed, Democrats embraced their role as the party of inclusion, while Republicans became the party of the “Southern Strategy” (which is another fact right-wingers consistently deny), and the opposition to affirmative action. The GOP campaigns then turned to race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, and other unethical methods by politicians like Helms, Thurmond, and others and continues to this day.
To be sure, Trump’s surface-level understanding of history isn’t entirely wrong: Southern Democrats were, for generations after the Civil War, on the wrong side of the issue. Practically all of the major segregationists of that era were Dixiecrats.
The problem, however, is with the relevance of the observation. Which matters more in contemporary politics: that segregationists were Southern Democrats or that segregationists made a new home in the Republican Party in the latter half of the 20th century?
Democrats have no reason to ignore this or sweep history under the rug: they eventually got it right, and dispatched the segregationists to the GOP, which welcomed them in the party fold.
If history ended a half-century ago, Trump may have a slightly more legitimate point. But given what we’ve seen over the last 50 years, the more salient point is that Democrats have been part of the solution, not part of the problem, on race. This is something conservatives are loath to admit.
Trump calls Democrats the party of ‘slavery’ and ‘Jim Crow’
.
