Posted on 08/31/2009 4:51:24 AM PDT by Scanian
After nearly a week of incessant post-mortem vacuity, not a single commentator has hit upon the real legacy of the late Kennedy political dynasty.
The Kennedys are largely responsible for making African Americans dependent on an alliance with liberal Democrats. The result--highly unstable in a democratic society -- 90% of black voters regularly pull the Democrat lever.
The 90% solid black vote tips the balance in favor of Democrats in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Without these votes, Democrats would simply cease to function as a national party. Without the Kennedys around to check anti-black electoral dynamics within the Democrats' ranks, it is an open question as to how much longer this arrangement can continue. The end of the dynasty could mark the beginning of the liberation of black voters from dependency on government.
It was the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy which finally brought the majority of black voters out of the Republican camp and into the Democratic Party -- for 95 years the party of segregation, and before that the party of slavery. Communist Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK in 1963. Taking Kennedy's place, President Lyndon Johnson forced passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. In spite of the fact that Republican support was required to overcome Democrat segregationists in both houses of Congress, the votes sealed the liberal Democrats' deal with black voters. Younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, while campaigning for the Democrat Presidential nomination, would be murdered by Palestinian Arab Nationalist Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.
The price of Johnson's support for civil rights would be the "Great Society" programs which have done so much to destroy black families and--with disastrous consequences--weld black communities into dependence on the government-and the liberals who control social spending.
Their media acolytes endlessly portray the Kennedys' trajectory as morally based, but political calculation is more likely. John F Kennedy had been a close ally and personal friend of Senator Joe McCarthy and a staunch anti-communist throughout the 1950s. But as New England liberals, the Kennedys needed to manufacture a political base within the Democratic Party. Writing in Human Events, Frances Rice points out:
Sadly, it was Goldwater that marked the low point for support (even despite the fact that he was pro-Civil Rights, he just opposed aspects of the CRA for being overreaching).
The point I wanted to make is how the media can say the same about Palin and yet they have NO proof of what they report yet it still gets reported note she has baned the msm from her over seas report.Now keep an eye on what the media reports on her for the next week it’s a matter of who the msm likes!.
Yes and no. Black in Northern areas became Democrat (as did their White counterparts), but a good reason for that was because they had little choice in the cities. If you valued your job, your livelihood, etc., you had to support the Dem cause. Witness Chicago, which had a huge Black GOP body, and from the ‘30s until the ‘60s, it gradually declined to nothing. However, Blacks in the South, those that could vote, remained heavily GOP for 3 more decades past their Northern counterparts (but because so many were prevented from voting, or only allowed to do so under certain circumstances, only a modest number of Black elected officials existed, and none in the legislature until the ‘60s, when they had become Democrats by and large).
Agreed. Although that’s rather an insult to tomcats.
This article calls to mind Einstein’s definition of insanity.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
In the Emerging republican majority Kevin Phillips pointed out that the South did indeed have a higher GOP proportion of blacks than the north. But, Not a big minority much less a majority. They were Dem’s to from my recollection.
As I said, the Dems pretty much unified with their Northern brethren once the ‘64 election occurred (however, some Southern Blacks weren’t as uniformally hostile to supporting some Republicans — indeed, in my state, a Black Dem crossed over to elect the first GOP House Speaker in TN in 1969 in a century. They also were the deciding factor in electing a GOP Mayor in Birmingham in that era and tossing the Seg Dems that had controlled the office to that point).
Other than some racist rants from the time from the garden variety of Dixiecrats.....I never found any info linking MLK directly to the commumist party.
Do you have a source?
I’m thinking Vaduz may be referring to examples of some of MLK’s influential colleagues, such as Bayard Rustin, who had been a member of the Communist Party.
“some Southern Blacks weren’t as uniformally hostile to supporting some Republicans”
That is a statement I could agree with.
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