Guest Commentary
by Michael Schwartz
I have never seen this message better stated than in this video. Louisiana State Senator Guillory’s defection from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party is an important event. It’s an opportunity for Republicans to set history straight and introduce our vision of our country’s future to a new generation of voters. In order to represent our vision, we need to know the facts.
I’ve had conversations with left-leaning friends and read articles by left-leaning authors who have no problem stating matter-of-factly that Republicans are the racist party. When you point out the horrible and racist history of the Democratic Party, their response tends to be along the lines of, “they used to be, but then they all went out and re-registered as Republicans”. Let’s take a look at some numbers and events to see if their claim stands up to reason.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was the final version of a piece of federal legislation that made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, national origin, or sex. It was the federal law that made it illegal to have “white only” restaurants and made it illegal to fire someone because they are African American. The act, in effect, ended the Jim Crow laws passed by Democrats in the 19th century which were still being enforced in the 1960s. Here is the text of the law.
A whopping 31% of Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted against the law and 37% of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted against it. But these numbers do not tell the whole story. Democratic leadership in key Senate committees like the Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee made attempts to prevent a vote on the bill. Fortunately they were unsuccessful, but after the bill made it to Senate floor, 18 Democrats and 1 Republican attempted a filibuster. Eventually a watered-down bill was offered and it gained enough votes to break the 14+ hour filibuster being performed by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Getting this landmark legislation passed was a task and the difficulty was due almost entirely to segregationist, racist Democrats.
Once the history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is heard, the response from the left is usually along the lines of “yeah, but now all the racist, southern states are the ‘red states’ who all stopped voting for Democrats years ago.”
Let’s look at how Republican the so-called “red states” really are. Take a look at the number of elected governors in 10 southern states in the post-Civil War era since the mid-1860s:
• Mississippi has elected 6 Republican governors (three in a row after the Civil War and only three since 1992) and 30 Democratic governors.
• Florida has elected 8 Republican governors (depending on what you call Crist, it is 7) and 29 Democratic governors.
• Georgia has elected 4 Republican governors (2 directly following the Civil War and only 2 since 2003) and 38 Democratic governors.
• Texas has elected 6 Republican governors (2 directly following the Civil War and only 4 since 1980) and 30 Democratic governors.
• Louisiana has elected 10 Republican governors (4 were right after the Civil War and only 3 since 1991) and 33 Democratic governors.
• Tennessee has elected 10 Republican governors (3 directly after the Civil War and only 4 since 1975) and 28 Democratic governors.
• South Carolina has elected 8 Republican governors (3 directly after the Civil Ware and only 5 since 1979) and 36 Democratic governors.
• Kentucky has elected 8 Republican governors (only two Republicans since 1950) and 30 Democratic governors.
• Arkansas has elected 7 Republican governors (4 directly following the Civil War and only 2 since 1981) and 38 Democratic governors.
• Alabama has elected 6 Republican governors (2 right after the Civil War and only 4 since 1987) and 36 Democratic governors; including George Wallace 3 different times and his wife once)
I picked governors because that means a statewide election, unaffected by gerrymandered districts. It is important to know that these same states during the same time period had state legislatures mostly controlled by Democrats and federal representation to the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate that was mostly Democratic. There is a pattern, clearly.
So by this point in the discussion I usually hear, “well…that was true before Nixon and his ‘southern strategy’ when all the disenfranchised racist Democrats went out and re-registered as Republicans to vote for Nixon which is how the Republicans won the south.”
A closer look at presidential races since the 1960s simply doesn’t show this to be the case. But before I jump into the numbers, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was indisputably championed by the Republican Party. Does it logically make sense that racist Democrats became frustrated with the Democratic Party when they opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, so they quit in order to join the Republican Party. which was responsible for the 1964 Civil Rights Act victory?
No. Maybe support a third party, but not side with their enemy.
And that’s exactly what happened. Undisputed racist and Democratic governor of Alabama George Wallace, after a failed attempt to run for president in 1964, ran in 1968 as the American Independent Party nominee on a purely segregationist platform. His campaign split the Democratic Party votes in southern states allowing Nixon to win the race despite that Texas broke Democratic. Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia voted for American Independence Party candidate George Wallace because Democrats liked his racist message. The Democratic control of the south was split by heavy support for Wallace by Democrats in states like Tennessee, Missouri, and both Carolinas allowing Nixon to win in states that were historically Democratic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege1968.svg
So was the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Nixon’s supposed “southern strategy” the end of Democrats in the south? Not even close. The next elected president after Nixon was southern Democrat Jimmy Carter who won the entire south in the general election. Followed by Reagan and Bush, who nobody would claim benefited from race issues, but benefited from President Carter’s failed economic and foreign affairs policies. By the 1994 Republican takeover of congress (under another southern Democratic president Bill Clinton), a generation had passed since the 1964 Civil Rights Act and George Wallace’s campaign. President Clinton attributed much of the credit of the 1994 takeover to the “NRA having a great night” and the Republican’s Contract with America; not resentment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The 1994 Republican victory was the first time Republicans had controlled the House of Representatives since 1954, due to the popularity of southern Democrats for decades. In 1980 Republicans took control of the Senate, beating out Senate Democrats led by KKK member Sen. Robert Byrd, a southern Democrat. Sen. Byrd was the Senate Majority leader throughout the 1970s and again when Democrats took back the Senate in 1987.
“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected,” former President Bill Clinton said of Sen. Robert Byrd at the senator’s memorial service. Sen. Byrd was strongly opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and refused to vote to confirm Supreme Court nominees Thurgood Marshall and Clearance Thomas. Sen. Byrd was the man Democrats chose to lead Senate Democrats for decades. Considering his record and the fact that Sen. Byrd made it to Klan leadership holding titles of “Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops”, it seems unlikely Sen. Byrd simply “was trying to get elected” as Clinton stated. Maybe it depends on what the definition of “was” was?
To be clear, what I am not saying is that all Democrats are racist. What I am saying is that their history, near and far, is racist and it is due to their tendencies towards a collectivist, political philosophy that sees people as groups to be controlled as opposed to seeing individuals with unalienable rights.
Sen. Guillory’s message is important. Don’t use his message to argue with Democrats who won’t change their mind anyway. Sen. Guillory’s message isn’t going to turn more Democrats. Most are too entrenched. Use the information regarding political philosophy, what it led to historically, and how it manifests itself today to reach out to new voters. It can convince fence-sitters that the Republican Party is best for their future. This is an opportunity to tell the poor, tired, huddled masses that judging by history, if they continue to vote Democratic, poor, tired, and huddled is all they will ever be.
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Michael Schwartz is a Republican.