The Great Republican/Democrat switch-er-oo

The switcheroo started with FRD and finally finished when LBJ and MLK Jr. struck a deal to pass the Civil Rights Act by the ending of the democRATS opposition to it. And LBJ’s Great Society he said “ I’ll have them niggers voting for democRAT for the next two hundred years”. Damned if he wasn’t right.

In disgust the Strom Thurmond’s and a few others became Republicans.

That was the end of the Republicans.

We should simply admit that now and move on and create a new party that embraces liberty not socialism lite.

In Reply #ll FreedomPoster provides links that show that your gloss is superficial and your conclusion is wrong. I especially like http://www.freedomsjournal.net/2011/10/22/urban-legends-the-dixiecrats-and-the-gop/, which make points including:

Not all Southern Democrats bolted to the “Dixiecrat” party, and Strom Thurman was one of only three prominent Dixiecrats (out of five Dixiecrat Governors and 21 Dixiecrat Senators) to go over to the Republican Party. The rest returned to the Democrat fold, fought the Civil Rights acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 as Democrats, and retired as Democrats. So Strom Thurman was not at all typical of Dixiecrats in general.

There is a difference between Republicans having respect for the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights, on one hand, and segregationists trying to use the Tenth Amendment to trump the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, on the other. As the example of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) and the Twenty First Amendment (repeal of Prohibition) illustrates, it is nonsense to use an earlier amendment to trump a later amendment.

Democrats have always used the segregationists to tar Republicans and the Tenth Amendment, but no subsequent amendment has actually repealed the Tenth Amendment. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments reflect the fact that the original intent of the framers of the Constitution was to leave out the Bill of Rights, on the principle that the powers of the Federal Government were defined and few, and anything outside of those bounds was forbidden without a Bill of Rights - including things that would not be articulated in any bill of rights which the framers could devise. The Nineth and Tenth Amendments intend to establish that the first eight amendments are to be a floor under our rights - not a ceiling above them, as is all too often the case in practice. Just as the Federalists feared when they opposed the inclusion of a bill of rights.
So appeal to the Tenth Amendment is legitimate - just not the particular appeal made by the segregationists, which Republicans have never been.

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