The Inconvenient Truth About the Republican Party
When you think of the Republican Party, what comes to mind? If you’re like many Americans, you may associate the GOP with racism, sexism, and general inequality. It’s a commonly pushed narrative by left-leaning media and academia, but as former Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science Carol Swain explains, the Republican Party was actually responsible for nearly every advancement for minorities and women in U.S. history—and remains the champion of equality to this day.
Transcript
Racist. Sexist. Republican.
These words are virtually interchangeable—at least, according to most professors, journalists, and celebrities. So, are they right? Let’s take a look at history.
The Republican Party was created in 1854. The first Republican Party platform, adopted at the party’s first national convention in 1856, promised to defeat, quote, “those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery.”
Those “twin relics” were spreading into the western territories. Republicans feared that as those territories became states, polygamy and slavery might become permanent parts of American life. Polygamy—the marriage of one man to multiple women—devalued women and made them a kind of property. Slavery, of course, did the same to blacks. Literally.
The Democrats were so opposed to the Republicans and their anti-slavery stance that in 1860, just six weeks after the election of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina, a state dominated by Democrats, voted to secede from the union. The Civil War that followed was the bloodiest war in US history. It led to the passage, by Republicans, of the 13th Amendment, which freed the slaves; the 14th Amendment, which gave them citizenship; and the 15th Amendment; which gave them the vote.
In 1870, the first black senator and the first black congressman were sworn in—both Republicans. In fact, every black representative in the House until 1935 was a Republican. And every black senator until 1979 was, too. For that matter, the first female member of Congress was a Republican; the first Hispanic governor and senator were Republicans. The first Asian senator? You get the idea.
Republicans also kept their pledge to defend women’s rights. In 1862, the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress to put an end to polygamy.
In 1920, after 52 years of Democratic Party opposition, the 19th Amendment was ratified thanks to the Republican Congress, which pressured Democratic President Woodrow Wilson to drop his opposition to women’s rights. In the final tally, only 59 percent of House Democrats and 41 percent of Senate Democrats supported women’s suffrage. That’s compared to 91 percent of House Republicans and 82 percent of Senate Republicans. There certainly was a “war on women”—and it was led by the Democratic Party.
But while Republicans had won a major battle for women’s rights, the fight for blacks’ civil rights had a long way to go. In the 1920s, Republican President Calvin Coolidge declared that the rights of blacks are “just as sacred as those of any other citizen.”
By contrast, when famed sprinter Jesse Owens, a staunch Republican, won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he was snubbed by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt only invited white Olympians to the White House.
Two decades later, it was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, who sent the 101st Airborne Division to escort black students into Little Rock’s Central High when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus—a Democrat—refused to honor a court order to integrate the state’s public schools.
The Civil Rights Act of 1960, which outlawed poll taxes and other racist measures meant to keep blacks from voting, was filibustered by 18 Democrats for 125 hours. Not one Republican senator opposed the bill. Its follow-up bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is one of the landmark pieces of legislation in American history. That, too, survived a filibuster by Democrats thanks to overwhelming Republican support.
But, you might be thinking, all that’s in the past. What have Republicans done for women and blacks lately? The answer you’d hear from professors, journalists and celebrities is… “not much.” And this time, they’d be right. They’d be right because the Republican Party treats blacks and women as it treats everyone: as equals.
The Democratic Party never has, and it still doesn’t. Today’s Democrats treat blacks and women as victims who aren’t capable of succeeding on their own.
The truth is, this is just a new kind of contempt.
So, there is a party with a long history of racism and sexism…but it ain’t the Republicans. https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2018/01/inconvenient-truth-republican-party/
That's hysterical.
Well, watching you squirm is for me. I'm glad you enjoy it too. Can you string together an actual argument using facts or do you just want to continue pouting like a fourth grader and stringing together random stereotypes? Seriously, step up your game. s if they all died or moved away in the 30 year timeframe you mention
I didn't say they did. The median voter is typically in their late 40's. So by the 1990s, over half the electorate couldn't even have voted Over decades, people die, move etc.etc.. Do you think they don't? If the CRA would have been a catalyst for a switch to Republicans, it would have happened in the 1960s when those Civil Rights Act was contested, instead of the 1990s and 2000s when the voting pool had turned over. The idea that Rights Act was some watershed is simply pure fantasy that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Dwight "integrate schools at gunpoint" Eisenhower did better in the South than Goldwater, who opposed the CRA. Educate yourself and deal with the actual history of sothern voting patterns as opposed to spewing juvenile stereotypes.
If you do actually look into it, you'll see that the movement of the south towards the Republicans started in the 1930's and culminated in the 2000s as the democrats became exclusively left wing.
The rest of your argument is simply pathetic. I don't know if you don't understand the topic or you are just disengenous.:
he fact is Northern liberals also support gun rights
Are your really that ignorant that you think southerners and northern liberals define gun rights the same way? Given that you believe northern liberals and conservative southerners agree on gun rights, why do you think it's such a contentious issue. Please explain this.
NO liberals are "pro-abortioni berals are "pro-abortion
First, haven't you learned not to argue in absolutes. Second, again do you really think conservatives and northern liberals agree on abortion? The point is not whether abortion is right or wrong, it's that liberal northerners and Conservative Southerner tend to disagree on it. How can you not understand that? Someone who believes abortion is murder almost certainly vote for a Democrat, given that democrats have made that litmus test of their party.
But, again, feel free to explain how northern liberals and conservative southerners have the same view on abortion.
iberals believe in low taxes for low and middle income Americans while reco
Blah Blah Blah, save your propaganda speech. Unless you think Conservatives and Northern liberals share the same views on taxes and regulation, you have no point.
I can't believe I need to explicitly state this, but conservatives and liberals have different views on guns, abortion, the economy, regulation etc..... Unless you think they don't, stop with silly talking points. Conservatives will support the party that best represents their views on these issues, so will liberals. Southern conservatives support the conservative party and left the democrat party as it became more extreme and less diverse on all of those issues. It's just that simple.
This is what a rational, factually based argument would look like in support of the thesis that the Civil Rights Act caused Southern Democrats to become Republicans:
1. A stable or rising percentage of democratic support in the South prior to the Civil Right Act becoming an issue.
2. While the issue was a "hot button" topic (mid 1960s) you would see:
a) a rejection of democratic candidates who supported the CRA in favor of Republicans who didn't.
b). Democrats in Congress who opposed the CRA would switch parties.
c.) Democrats who didn't switch parties would lose elections.
d.) legislatures would quickly switch to Republican
e). Democrats in the deep, rural south would fare the worst.
f). in more tolerant areas like border states and suburbs, democrats would fare better
3. By 1970 when the voting pool still closely resembled the pool of the mid-60s
a. Republicans would be elected to the majority of southern senate seats.
b. Republicans would control southern state houses.
c . The elected Republicans would be as economically and socially liberal as northern democrats, with the exception of opposition to the CRA.
Of course, none of these things happened. So it's impossible to construct a factual argument to support the thesis.
A known Republican Trump supporter deficiency