Civil Rights Ads: Liars, Damned Liars, And Republicans

By Manifesto Joe

Living in a state like Texas, which is considered safe for Scumney, we don't get to see these kinds of bullshit ads very much. I hear that the Republican Party is taking credit for getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, and for Lincoln freeing the slaves.

I've got news for however many innocent Republicans remain out there: This is not your grandfather's GOP. (I'll steal a line from my bud Cletis Stump -- it is if your grandfather was Benito Mussolini.)

For one thing, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is something that Republicans can disingenuously claim something about, because for the Republicans of the time, they did actually vote for the bill in higher percentage than Democrats did. But ...

That was back when there were a lot of "Dixiecrats" left in the Democratic Party. Led by the defection of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-Segregation Forever, they moved to the Republican Party in droves after that. There were many reasons, but it was mainly that one of the few prominent Republican votes cast against the bill was by one Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who went on to be the Republican Party nominee for president that year.

It was a vote cast in "libertarian" protest. Goldwater, being half-Jewish (at a golf course he once asked, "can I just play 9 holes?"), had run into discrimination before. I get the impression that he was a very honest, albeit foolish, sort of guy, and sincerely believed that it just wasn't the place of the federal government to get that involved in ordinary human affairs.

But Goldwater went on to be the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the Deep South. A handful of states there, and Arizona, were all that he racked up in a devastating loss.

That was the beginning, though, of the Southern white migration to the Republican Party. Now, those states are generally lockups for them.

Of all people left in American politics, who still thinks that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a bad idea? Um, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Among a few others.

I could bring up the fact that it was President Harry Truman who desegregated the military by executive order, or that LBJ, upon signing the Civil Rights Act, lamented that the Democrats had just given the South away for at least a generation.

The main problem here is the Republican LIE factor, their bogus claim that they have somehow been a vanguard of civil rights in America, and trying to sell themselves to black voters in such a mendacious manner.

I don't think Abraham Lincoln would recognize the current Republican Party, or want to be associated with it in the least. Nor should anyone else.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.