ElneClare wrote:
No one is trying to deny that Southern Democrats were not Racists. Before the passage of the CRA, no good old boy in the Confederate states would think of joining the Party of Lincoln. The Civil Rights Act, force busing and fear of violence, were all used by the GOP to bring conservative voters into their fold. By the time Nixon ran against Humphrey, the middle of country was beginning to feel ignored.
Again though, the GOP had been winning ground in the south well before the passage of the CRA. While the Dems were still running on "segregation today, segregation forever" the GOP was gaining districts and electoral votes in the south, running on an economic prosperity platform. GOP gains in the south had *nothing* to do with race. If anything, people flocked to the GOP because they weren't the party of racism and they wanted to distance themselves from those who were (ie: the Democrats). You don't honestly think that everyone just magically forgot what the Dem politicians were doing and saying just a year before the CRA was passed? And you can't possibly think that passage of that act just magically caused all the Dem politicians to abandon their positions?
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Then you only have history that you find that supports your version of history. I actually lived through all of this and the images of police dogs being unleashed on Civil Right protesters is etched in my memory. I had to live during all of this and due to a very visual memory I haven't forgotten how ugly those years were.
Yes. Police dogs released by police appointed by Democratic politicians, in Democratically controlled cities, in Democratically controlled states. It was only the gradual shift of power from the Dems to the GOP that trickled down (yeah, I'll use the phrase here, sue me!) to the city level and the abuses and refusals to comply with the CRA finally stopped. You do remember that the greatest violence occurred *after* the CRA was passed, right? The rioting in 1968? You do remember that, right?
That was the last gasp of the old guard Democrats trying to cling to their racist policies in the face of a new paradigm. It was absolutely not newly elected Republicans appointing racists to positions of power and suddenly enacting new racist policies that people needed to riot against. It took nearly a decade for the effects of the CRA to ripple through the south. And one of those effects was the shift of power from the Dems to the GOP. Not because the GOP adopted racism, but because they were the party that wasn't racist. If you wanted to get rid of the corrupt racist police and DAs, and whatnot, you had to elect Republicans to office.
To the degree that racial politics had anything to do wit it. that's why the GOP gained ground in the south. The southerners were sick of the racists running things and picked a different party. The idea that the racists shifted to the GOP is just plain ridiculous.