While I'd like it to be true, there's no absolutely proof MLK was a Republican and Fieldmarshaldj has explained this several times. In this thread alone, posts #12, #17, and #22 debunk it. Georgia didn't register voters by party so MLK was never a "member" of the Republican Party and certainly didn't ever publicly claim to be a Republican OR ever support Republican Party events. At best, you could say his FATHER, Martin Luther King SR., leaned Republican pre-1960 and endorsed some Republicans. In 1960, MLK SR. switched to the RATs and his son followed suit and supported leftist Democrats from that date. By the time he died in 1968, MLK Jr. had become pretty solid left and supported exclusively Dems.
Posting stuff like this just makes our side look bad because the facts show otherwise. It's like the gays coming up with baseless claims that "Abraham Lincoln was gay". Come on.
>> Hell...by today’s standards...JFK would be a Republican if he were alive. I won’t go so far as to say he’d be a Conservative but he sure as hell wouldn’t be a Democrat. His views and statements on economics were right in line with the great Ronaldus Maximus. <<
I would certainly disagree with this claim as well. It's another myth that seems to have surfaced only in the past decade or so. Prior to that, conservatives wouldn't be caught dead praising the mobbed-up womanizing CINO (Catholic In Name Only) Kennedy.
Both Ronald Reagan and JFK himself refuted that Kennedy was in any way like modern day Republicans. Most telling is that Reagan was still a card-carrying Democrat in 1960, and even then he REFUSED to support Kennedy because Kennedy was too liberal. Reagan was a "Democrat for Nixon" in 1960.
Kennedy gave a speech to the Liberal Party of New York in the 1960 election, explaining why he wasn't conservative and why he believed in "progressive" values. He mocked conservatives as backwards looking, heartless, puppets of big business, etc., the same stuff you hear from leftists today. The Liberal Party only allows "progressive" Democrats to run on their line. They would never slate a conservative or even a "moderate" Democrat.
If you listen to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, Kennedy invokes the mantle of "progressives"" like Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman as his inspiration. He talks about how the wonderful RAT party passed all kind of important federal programs like social security, new deal legislation, etc. that the mean ol' Republicans opposed. Kennedy promised to continue in that vein and promised all kinds of wonderful social programs to voters, why pointedly NOT explaining how he would pay for it. Then he attacked Nixon for being against all these get federal handouts of education, health, etc. The only kind of "Republican" today that would bear any resemblance to Kennedy would be a RINO like Schwarzenegger.
It's true Kennedy passed tax cuts and was anti-communist, but that doesn't mean the other 80% of his agenda was anything like today's Republicans, especially on economic policy. Ronald Reagan was right that someone who is with me 80% of the time is not my enemy, and by the same token, someone who is with me 20% of the time is not my friend. There's probably several dozen RATs in the House who supported Bush's tax cuts and oppose communism, and they're no more "Reaganesque" than Kennedy was. They're simply liberals who occasionally cast a decent vote. Ditto with JFK.
There's a reason why leftists love the MLK and JFK of the 60s so much. They were liberals. History revisionism won't change that fact.
If you want to admire someone, there's an earlier post that mentions Senator Ev Dirksen (R-IL) was a conservative Republican and one of the most instrumental voices in fighting for race equality and getting the civil rights act of 1964. Now THERE'S something the media won't report on that we should be shouting from the rooftops!
When I see this King and JFK worship on a conservative forum I feel like someone musta slipped something in my Diet Dr Pepper.
Either these folks here touting this nonsense are agitators from the same nest...some are trust me...they are always on any race oriented thread saying the same viewpoint.
Or that dis-ingenuousness aside, it just shows how well even the Right has been programmed by a politically correct media and academia to where conservatives now think liberal icons like JFK and MLK were actually great...lol
If this is our future on the right...God help us.
What's next?
David Brooks will write a book about Ronald Reagan's fond memories of when Abbie Hoffman was hiding out at the Santa Barbara ranch.
Or we'll start to tout Nixon's wage and prices controls as sound governmental influence in the economy...Nixon was GOP afterall you know.
” Senator Ev Dirksen (R-IL) was a conservative Republican”
I remember Everett Dirksen and his odes to marigolds. Dirksen was considered a moderate in his time.