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FROM THE RECORD: Whitewash: The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget
The Wall Street Journal ^ | December 24, 2007 | BRUCE BARTLETT

Posted on 12/23/2007 10:00:02 PM PST by Aristotelian

In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported "states' rights." Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism.

Others, including Mr. Krugman's Times colleague David Brooks and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, have come to Reagan's defense, denying that he was a racist or had any racist intent in his 1980 speech. That's fine but unlikely to change the minds of those like Mr. Krugman who are determined to smear the Republican Party with the charge of racism, and who are adept at finding racist code words like "law and order" by Republicans that are completely convincing to liberals and Democrats in support of this accusation, even though they are invisible to those with no political ax to grind.

However, if a single mention of states' rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn't bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and "Jim Crow" laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bartlett; bookreview; democrats; dems; dnc; jimcrow; krugman; paulkrugman; ratbastards; rats
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To: Aristotelian

Just read this on the OpinionJournal.com site and then checked to see if it was posted here at FR.

BTTT


21 posted on 12/24/2007 1:33:00 PM PST by DogByte6RER ("Loose lips sink ships")
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To: Aristotelian

The democrats accuse the republicans of having a mindset of “let them eat cake,” while they are busy scraping off the icing and swilling it down with champagne from the backside of the cake.


22 posted on 12/24/2007 1:38:10 PM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Aristotelian

racist bump


23 posted on 12/24/2007 2:05:34 PM PST by Luigi Vasellini (What do you call 2 toddlers and some duct tape??........muslim body armor!!!!!!!)
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To: Aristotelian
The Democrat welfare plantation has done more to destroy the black family and its culture than any other economic force.

Democrats celebrate depraved popular culture which has abetted destruction of that social fabric more than any other cultural force.

The Democrat Party upholds abortion which has done more to dissipate black political power than any other social force.

Krugman is therefore a charter member of the party of indentured constituency. They're a bunch of racist pigs.

24 posted on 12/24/2007 2:10:01 PM PST by Carry_Okie (Duncan Hunter for President)
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To: Aristotelian

This will be a good list to have.

Thanks.


25 posted on 12/24/2007 2:14:26 PM PST by The Mayor ( A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.—Proverbs 16:9)
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To: spyone
Wait till he sees what happens if his beloved Democrats nominate Obama. The racism will come from disaffected democrats and will be something to behold.

However, you can count on the MSM to depict the "disaffected Democrats" as "conservative racists".

26 posted on 12/24/2007 7:08:17 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: Aristotelian

bump


27 posted on 12/24/2007 7:12:10 PM PST by sport
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Comment #28 Removed by Moderator

To: Old Professer

The democrats accuse the republicans of having a mindset of “let them eat cake,” while they are busy scraping off the icing and swilling it down with champagne from the backside of the cake.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dr. Phil once had a black man on his show who said he had a problem because his black friends said that he acted too white. As it happens I know the man, he sat on my couch one day and we talked and he brought up the subject of how blacks vote so heavily for Democrats. He said that he just cannot understand why they do. I told him I certainly don’t understand it either, it seems to make as much sense as a Jew voting for Adolf Hitler. Most of them even seem to believe that Lincoln was a Democrat! Of course, almost none understand that Lincoln himself was convinced that blacks were inferior and wanted to send them all back to Africa.


29 posted on 12/25/2007 7:21:47 AM PST by RipSawyer (Does anyone still believe this is a free country?)
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To: RipSawyer

The last part is not historically accurate; if you substitute sophisticated for superior and their antonyms, you will be closer to the mark.

Lincoln did entertain the notion of repatriation as a solution to the post-emancipation era but realized the economic and logistical impracticability of doing such a thing as an executive decision while the Congress and his cabinet were in negotiations over how to deal with reconstruction.

Booth closed the book on Lincoln’s personally-held convictions that would have altered the history had he been able to enjoy his triumph and set the order he so desired in place.


30 posted on 12/25/2007 10:33:03 AM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

DJ, you’ve mentioned this in some of your prior postings.


31 posted on 12/25/2007 10:34:02 AM PST by Clintonfatigued (You can't be serious about national security unless you're serious about border security)
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To: Old Professer

Some say Booth dealt the cruelest blow of all to the south!
I don’t know what to believe about that.


32 posted on 12/25/2007 10:41:44 AM PST by RipSawyer (Does anyone still believe this is a free country?)
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To: Aristotelian

Democrats—the party of slavery, segregation, and the welfare plantation.

The party of homosexual rights, gay marriage, and abortion.

The party of treason.

The party of socialism.

The party of unchecked illegal immigration and amnesty—guaranteeing a rebirth of slavery.

Did I miss anything?

The racism and anti-Americanism of the Dems needs to be shouted far and wide.


33 posted on 12/25/2007 10:57:28 AM PST by exit82 (How do you handle Hillary? You Huma her.)
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To: Riley; USFRIENDINVICTORIA
MHO, people who are always spotting “code words” are projecting — they, themselves, never say what they mean, or mean what they say; so they think that everyone else must be speaking in secret code words.

Exactly right. I had this concept introduced to me by a lefty friend; I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I walked away from the conversation concluding that 'code words' was some kind of liberal thing that was, as is the case with so much that they do, incomprehensible to the rest of us.


I agree, and have another another example, “being in denial.” The first time I head someone make the accusation that someone was “in denial,” I just shook my head. It sounded absurd. Why would anyone deny reality. Good news should be welcomed. In the case of bad news, one should recognize it, and respond appropriately. What good can possibly come from denying the truth?

I’ve slowly come to the realization that liberals do deny unpleasant realities. If you just say it isn’t so and convince others that it isn’t so, then it isn’t so.

There is a recent book that claims to (and probably does) debunk the JFK assassination conspiracy theories. My current thinking (inspired by an article) is that liberals, who loved JFK, could not accept the simple explanation that an anti-communist JFK was shot by a communist American. Liberals loved JFK, but were also fond of communism. They lived with the inconsistency. When a pro-communist American shot the anti-communist JFK, this precipitated an cognitive crisis. Their response was to do intellectual somersaults to avoid admitting the truth. In their minds, a “right-wing” CIA conspired to assassinate a tax cutting, anti-communist President. Ronald Reagan was another tax cutting, anti-communist President who was shot. But since there was no love lost between liberals and Ronald Reagan, we were spared theories of a “right-wing” CIA assassination attempt in his case.

34 posted on 12/25/2007 11:46:05 AM PST by ChessExpert (Reagan dismantled the Russian empire of 21 conquered nations)
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To: Aristotelian

This is a pretty good video:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4FVlKY8Ispg


35 posted on 12/25/2007 12:24:42 PM PST by Snoopers-868th
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To: Aristotelian

There is very little point in trying to define the parties by their positions decades, let alone centuries, ago.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, and the Democrats were the party of the South. After World War II, things began to shift.

Truman’s decision to integrate the military was the first crack in the New Deal coalition. Ike sent the 101st Airborne to protect the Little Rock seven.

There was actually a dust-up between Martin Luther King, Jr. and MLK, Sr., in 1960. King Jr. was a Kennedy supporter. King Sr. had always supported the party of Lincoln, which was largely a symbolic gesture, because a black man and a Republican were about equally likely to be elected in Georgia. Which is to say, not even a tiny bit likely.

In 1964, it was a Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, a master of strong-arm back-room politics, who presided over the most significant advances in civil rights since the 13th amendment. He did so with an ad hoc coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans; Southern Democrats were almost uniformly opposed.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Republican party adopted Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”: not opposing civil rights legislation, but downplaying it as an issue. Some of the former Democrats and former segregationists switched to the GOP: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott, for example. Some didn’t switch parties, e.g. Howell Hefflin, Robert Byrd, and George Wallace.

The parties have shifted constituencies enough times that a fifty-year comparison means jack squat. It was a Republican who wrote the emancipation proclamation, and the Republicans who passed the 13th and 14th amendments. It was a Democrat who desegregated the armed forces, and the wife of a Democrat who invited Marian Anderson to hold a concert on the National Mall when the DAR turned her away.

Affirmative action was the creation of Republicans. The first civil rights legislation was passed by Republicans. But they abandoned the high ground and Dems stepped into the breach. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, those were embraced by Republicans but driven by Democrats.

Neither party has clean hands, and no one is lily-white (an unfortunate phrase, but you know what I mean), Politics is the art of the possible, after all.


36 posted on 12/25/2007 12:26:43 PM PST by ReignOfError
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To: Aristotelian

I grew up in the Segregated South which was run by Democrats, to the tune of about 90%. The Dems kept the Blacks suppressed and were the biggest biggots in history. It was a GOP President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who actually started the Civil Rights Movement when he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to desegregate the public schools.

It was the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, who freed the slaves in the first place. But, there is no loyalty when the Dems guarantee to keep your family with a welfare check, food stamps and Medicaid for four generations. Someone needs to tell Jesse Jackson that is no way to “Keep Hope Alive”.


37 posted on 12/25/2007 12:40:31 PM PST by no dems (FRED THOMPSON: The only Conservative running who can beat Hillary or Obama.)
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To: Clintonfatigued

It’s like a gold mine.


38 posted on 12/25/2007 7:16:30 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: Aristotelian
co-optation

Is that even a word?

39 posted on 12/25/2007 7:18:22 PM PST by CaptRon (Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead)
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To: Aristotelian
Photobucket
40 posted on 12/26/2007 7:22:01 PM PST by DogByte6RER ("Loose lips sink ships")
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