The unapologetic thoughts and meanderings of a patriot that was blessed by God beyond measure to be born in the United States of America
Monday, August 10, 2020
Mark Little Praises President Trump for Helping Black Americans
While this video from the Daily Caller News Foundation was obviously shot before the Covid-19 epidemic took hold, the truths that Mark Little states in it are inarguable. The video is refreshing accordingly. Enjoy!
Little is dishonestly ignoring the fact that white conservative Southern Democrats called "Dixiecrats" and Southern Republicans voted against the Civil Rights Act. It was the regional divide, not a partisan split the deceivers on the Right love to spin. In a way, the Civil War never ended. The confederate flag and soldiers have a new president in Trump.
Racists and dishonest Republicans want to erase the terms "Dixiecrats" and "Southern Strategy" from history.
More Inarguable Facts:
Aug. 2011 the Bush Recession produced black unemployment rate 16.7%
January 2017, the black unemployment rate was at 7.8 percent.
Under Obama the black unemployment rate dropped 8.9%. Trump crows about a 3.4% drop.
The Black president did the heavy lifting and got no credit from the racist Birther or his cult.
Not ONE con-servative admits to these facts. All praise to the “Only One”.
Racism and ignorance are the only logical explanations for worshiping the bigoted white guy's 3.4% drop, while refusing to recognize the Black guy's role in reducing Black unemployment by 8.9%.
As I am sure Dave would not intentionally lie, I am going to assume that he simply bought leftist revisionist history and rhetoric regarding the Dixiecrats, Nixon, and the “southern strategy.” Here are the facts of the matter as reported by POC Dinesh D'Souza.
“Nixon had an excellent record on civil rights. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was an avid champion of the desegregation of public schools. The progressive columnist Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times, ‘There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.’
Upon his taking office in 1969, Nixon also put into effect America’s first affirmative action program. Dubbed the Philadelphia Plan, it imposed racial goals and timetables on the building trade unions, first in Philadelphia and then elsewhere. Now, would a man seeking to build an electoral base of Deep South white supremacists actually promote the first program to legally discriminate in favor of blacks? This is absurd.
Nixon recognized the South was changing. It was becoming more industrialized, with many northerners moving to the Sunbelt. Nixon’s focus, Phillips writes, was on the non-racist, upwardly-mobile, largely urban voters of the Outer or Peripheral South. Nixon won these voters, and he lost the Deep South, which went to Democratic segregationist George Wallace.
And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none. Among the racist Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was the sole senator to defect to the Republicans — and he did this long before Nixon’s time. Only one Dixiecrat congressman, Albert Watson of South Carolina, switched to the GOP. The rest, more than 200 Dixiecrat senators, congressmen, governors and high elected officials, all stayed in the Democratic Party.
The South, as a whole, became Republican during the 1980s and 1990s. This had nothing to do with Nixon; it was because of Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America.’ The conservative appeal to patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, pro-life and Christianity had far more to do with the South’s movement into the GOP camp than anything related to race.
Yet the myth of Nixon’s Southern Strategy endures — not because it’s true, but because it conveniently serves to exculpate the crimes of the Democratic Party. Somehow the party that promoted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and racial terrorism gets to wipe its slate clean by pretending that, with Nixon’s connivance, the Republicans stole all their racists. It’s time we recognize this excuse for what it is: one more Democratic big lie.”
Next, it was 9/11 that caused the recession; not Bush. That is an inarguable fact. Your statement was another fallacy. Some of Bush’s leftist tactics in fighting the recession certainly did not help though. As for Obama, of course progress was made in the unemployment rate, even for black Americans during his administration. Obama caught the problem near its trough. Ridiculous amounts of “quantitative easing” and ten trillion in additional debt, including on mainly non-existent “shovel ready jobs” was bound to have some effect with the foolish spending. Trump reduced red tape and cut taxes and let the American people make the economy take off, including historical bests for most all people of color in home ownership and employment rates. Obama never saw economic growth greater than 2% throughout his whole administration despite DOUBLING the national debt. Before Covid and the asinine spending sprees that both parties are guilty of, Trump unleashed Americans to bring prosperity; not the government with its poor return on investment that Obama did. THAT is the truth.
Darrell, Thank for telling me I was mistaken in my facts. I really appreciate the fact you cannot cite any incorrect fact, but simply make the accusation.
You did provide evidence from D'Souza supporting my point, “Racists and dishonest Republicans want to erase the terms "Dixiecrats" and "Southern Strategy" from history.”
And thank you for noting Obama had it much easier than Trump by inheriting the 2008 economic collapse that you blame on 9-11-01. No supporting evidence was provided
I find it enlightening that you conclude I “bought leftist revisionist history and rhetoric” by presenting the radical Right prevarications of propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, the sleazy campaign finance felon who was pardoned by fellow campaign finance criminal Trump.
The radical far right propagandist has a Bachelor of Arts in English, so that makes him an authority on everything, including history. (I imagine a bachelors degree in engineering bestows similar expertise in your case.)
Here are some additional points of wisdom from your chosen authority on these matters:
D'Souza first came to prominence as a student at Dartmouth, where he was one of the first editors of the Dartmouth Review, a conservative campus publication. During his time there, the Review:
Published an interview with a Ku Klux Klan leader accompanied by a "doctored photo of a black student being lynched on campus." This spurred then-Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) to resign from the publication's board.
Ran an anti-affirmative action article written entirely in ebonics and headlined, "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro."
Posted a list of members of the campus Gay Straight Alliance, some of whom were still closeted.
He went on to prove that lies and false accusations are what “annoys and disturbs liberals”: “One way to be effective as a conservative is to figure out what annoys and disturbs liberals the most, and then keep doing it.”
And how about his enlightened views on slavery, civil rights, and Obama?
“In summary, the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
"Am I calling for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Actually, yes. The law should be changed so that its nondiscrimination provisions apply only to the government."
“Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Tweeted a picture of Obama with the caption, “My position on beheading is that I now be heading to play golf”.
Who was who said, “Racism isn’t racism to racists”?
I’ll see your Dinesh D’Souza and raise you Nixon historian Steven Ambrose: “Nixon had to be hauled kicking and screaming into desegregation on a meaningful scale, and he did what he did not because it was right but because he had no choice.”
D'Souza spins, “And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none.”
Let’s compare your propagandist with the degree in English to another real historian:
Dinesh D’Souza on Twitter : “Okay let’s see a list of the 200 or so racist Dixiecrats who switched parties and became Republicans. Put up or shut up”
Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse took D’Souza up on the request:
"As I've noted before, focusing solely on Southern Democratic politicians who officially switched parties -- instead of ordinary voters, as scholars emphasize -- intentionally misses the thrust of the party realignment on matters of race and civil rights:
First, it's important to note that, yes, the Democrats were indeed the party of slavery and, in the early 20th century, the party of segregation, too. (There are some pundits who claim this is some secret they've uncovered, but it's long been front & center in any US history.)
But, sure, let's ignore what scholars have written on this and meet this question on D'Souza's own chosen ground -- racist Southern Democratic politicians who switched to the GOP. No, 200 politicians didn't switch -- that's a laughably high bar -- but there were plenty.
1. First and foremost, of course, there's Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat presidential candidate, who was welcomed into the GOP in 1964 -- and, importantly, allowed to keep his seniority and thus all the power that came with it in Congress. (No other Southern Democrats were.) 2. But before Thurmond, John Tower left the Democrats in the early 1950s and won election as the first GOP senator in the modern South. Tower spoke out against civil rights, joined with S. Dems to plot filibusters, and voted against the Civil Rights Act & Voting Rights Act. The House was quicker to see changes. 3. Rep. William C. Cramer, the first GOP rep in Florida, for instance, switched from the Democrats in 1949, won election in 1954, urged Ike to withdraw troops from Little Rock in 1957 and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 4. Likewise, Rep. Edward Gurney, the second GOP representative in Florida, also abandoned the Democratic Party in the early 1960s, ran for Congress as a Republican in 1962 and won, and then voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 5. Rep. Dave Treen (R-LA) -- protege of legendary segregationist Leander Perez and a 1960 elector for the States Rights Party (a.k.a. "the Dixiecrats") -- switched to the GOP in 1962. He lost a few early races, but then won his seat in 1973 and later became governor in 1980. 6. Rep. Iris Faircloth Blitch, a segregationist who represented Georgia in Congress as a Democrat from 1955-1962, left the party over civil rights in 1964 and campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
(Continue) 7. Rep. James D. Martin (R-AL), originally a Democrat, joined the GOP in 1962 & won a House race in 1964. During the Selma protests, he denounced MLK Jr. as a "rabble-rouser who has put on the sheep's clothing of non-violence while he pits race against race, man against law." 8. Rep. Bill Dickinson (R-AL), originally elected as a Democratic judge, likewise switched to the GOP and made headlines during the Selma-to-Montgomery march. He insisted, from the House floor, that the civil rights marchers were actually a radical group engaged in wild orgies. 9. Rep. Bo Callaway (R-GA) likewise abandoned the Democrats over civil rights and won a spot as the first Republican congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction. A staunch segregationist, he promised to repeal the Civil Rights Act & then voted against the Voting Rights Act. 10. Meanwhile, in South Carolina -- where Sen. Strom Thurmond, the original Dixiecrat, had just bolted to the GOP -- a congressman did the same. Segregationist Rep. Albert Watson publicly backed Goldwater in 1964. In retaliation, House Dems stripped him of his seniority. So Rep. Watson resigned from Congress in 1965 (after voting against the VRA), became a Republican, and retook his old seat in a special election. After he won, he called for investigations into "subversive" civil rights groups." 11. In Mississippi, Thad Cochran -- a lifelong Democrat -- switched to the GOP in 1964 in opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He then went on to head Nixon's Mississippi campaign and then win elections as a congressman and then senator. 12. Meanwhile, Rep. Trent Lott had been an aide to Dixiecrat William Colmer, who stayed a Dem because seniority made him the head of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Colmer chose Lott to succeed him in 1972, but had him run as a Republican. 13. Jesse Helms made the same transition. He'd grown up a Dem, helping Democrat Willis Smith run a race-baiting campaign for a senate seat in 1950 (see the ad below). When Helms ran for the Senate on his own in 1972, however, just like Lott, the former Dem ran as a Republican.
These are just examples of party switchers who *won*. Several Dems switched to the GOP for Senate runs and didn't make it. See: 15. Taylor O'Hearn in Louisiana 16. W.D. Workman in South Carolina 17. Marshall Parker in South Carolina
If you look beyond Congress -- again, the place where party switches were *least* likely to happen for institutional reasons -- you can see several more examples. 18. In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Mills Godwin, an outspoken leader of the state's Democratic segregationist resistance, switched parties and won re-election as a Republican in 1973.
State legislatures had more switches. Again, this isn't what historians stress in party realignment, but yes, it happened. Here's a terrific new book on it, by the way:
For some examples in state legs: 19. SC Rep. Arthur Ravenel Jr. 20. SC Rep. Floyd Spence 21. Texas Rep. Jack Cox 22. Mississippi Sen. Stanford Morse 23. Alabama Rep. Albert Goldthwaite 24. Louisiana Rep. Roderick Miller 25. South Carolina Sen. Marshall Parker Etc etc.
Or you can consider the switches made by state-level elected officials. 26-30. For instance, in 1968, five of the top officeholders in Georgia switched from the Democrats to the Republicans:
All right, that's probably more than enough to make the point. Again, looking at elected officials is the worst way to measure these changes. (And, of course, that's why D'Souza insists on doing it that way.)"
The Republicans’ Southern strategy has been documented for decades — including by Republicans who were a part of it.
The facts about the Southern strategy
For this fact-check, we interviewed historians and reviewed news articles from the civil rights era.
Joseph Alsop, an influential syndicated newspaper columnist, called it "basically a segregationist strategy" in a 1962 column.
When Republican Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, his Southern surrogates played up the fact that he had just voted against the Civil Rights Act. That paid off in the Deep South where he won a handful of states, but he ultimately lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.
By 1968, the Republicans fine-tuned their approach and packaged it in a way they could win, said Maxwell, the Arkansas professor and an expert on southern politics.
Republican nominee Richard Nixon reached out to white Southerners by opposing school busing and promising that his administration would not "ram anything down your throats" and would appoint "strict constructionist" Supreme Court justices.
The strongest evidence of the Southern strategy comes directly from Republicans at the time.
That includes Clarence Townes, who served as director of the Minorities Division of the Republican National Committee in the 1960s. Harvard professor Leah Wright Rigueur wrote about Townes in her book "The Loneliness of the Black Republican."
When Nixon disbanded the division, Townes told reporters in 1970, "There’s a total fear of what’s called the Southern strategy. Blacks understand that their wellbeing is being sacrificed to political gain. There has to be some moral leadership from the president on the race question, and there just hasn’t been any."
In 1969, Nixon White House aide Lamar Alexander, who now represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate, wrote about the Southern strategy in a memo following the unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination of Clement Haynsworth, who was opposed by civil rights groups.
"SOUTHERN STRATEGY — we flat out invited the kind of political battle that ultimately erupted when we named a Democrat-turned-Republican conservative from South Carolina. This confirmed the Southern strategy just at a time when it was being nationally debated," Alexander wrote.
Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips openly discussed the Southern strategy in a newspaper article in 1973:
"If the New Washington liberal crowd could tear themselves away from Watergate ecstasy and the lionizing of Daniel Ellsberg for a little look-see below the Mason-Dixon line, they might glean a useful political insight, namely that the GOP 'Southern Strategy' seems to be rolling along — and rolling up local victories — just as if G. Gordon Liddy had never existed." (Ellsberg released the Pentagon papers in 1971 while Liddy was an FBI agent convicted of illegal wiretapping.)
Phillips told the New York Times in 1970 that the Republicans were never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the "Negro vote and they don't need any more than that."
"The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans," he wrote. "That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Ultimately, winning over white Southern voters required using coded language, as campaign consultant Lee Atwater, who worked on Reagan’s 1980 campaign, explained in an interview 1981. In audio, he can be heard describing how in 1954, a racial slur could be used to describe black Americans, but that "backfired" by 1968 — requiring a pivot to use more abstract language.
"So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites," he said.
Reagan used language such as "states’ rights" and "welfare queens," which critics said was coded racist language.
"The partisan shift in the South from the 1960s to George W. Bush is the greatest partisan shift in all of American history," Maxwell said.
From FOX: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-poised-to-add-more-debt-than-obama-in-first-term
Obama in 2010-2013, the first four fiscal years for which he was fully responsible, tacked $4.4 trillion onto the national debt. Trump, between fiscal 2018 and 2021, is projected to add more than $7.6 trillion to the national debt, mainly on the back of projected $3.8 trillion and $2.1 trillion deficits in 2020 and 2021, according to the fiscal watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Trump's projected debt growth still exceeds Obama's even if the massive $1.4 trillion federal deficit in 2009, which included measures like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama signed but also leftover federal spending from former President George W. Bush, is added to his predecessor's total.
== And the Fed announced $1.5 trillion in capital injections to boost money markets.
Intolerance of evidence is why conservatism is a dangerous doctrine that enables bigots, racists, and pathological liars.
Trump....Roger Stone...White power...Proud Boys...It's as plain as day.
Stay obtuse. Shun facts. Deny evidence. Hide from the truth. Watch the racist criminals sabotage our Post Office to deny rights of Americans to vote by mail. His Majesty and his chosen have the right. The rest stand in line during a pandemic.
"Pro-life" my ass. It is biological warfare on our citizens. How many more must die from that man's dereliction, malfeasance, and lust for power?
Not a concern for con-servatives. Winning and holding power are all that matters. Never mind what is destroyed and who will die in the process.
There is no compassion, no decency, and NO respect for our democratic institutions, or for our people. He and his party have become autocrats.
Theirs is the path to despotism. Do you think the public is as willfully blind as the Trump cult to the evils being perpetrated in our name?
This fanaticism is how Hitler rose to power. Hate, blame, anger, accusations, lies. We plainly see it in the cult. MOST Americans are better than that. Most will vote against him again.
Fair elections are the enemy of tyranny. They will cheat and lie and obstruct all the way.
Got it, Dave. Dinesh D’Souza is also a racist who supports the KKK. You do realize that he too is a person of color and would likely be a target of them accordingly? I don’t support everything he said or stands for. Hell, I have many friends and loved ones that I don’t support everything they do or say either. In this case though, I think Dinesh makes some excellent points. I understand the leftists’ penchant for ignoring the facts of a message if they despise the messenger though.
Billknowles of Free Republic also provides some context that further proves the lie of the lefts’ southern strategy narrative.
From that article which specifically rebuts your comments: “The third aspect for establishing the Southern Strategy myth was laid with another falsehood; that all the former Dixiecrats had joined the Republican Party after Nixon allegedly used the used the Southern Strategy. The Dixiecrat Party was a third party that splintered from the Democrats because of their dissatisfaction with Harry Truman over the civil rights issue during the 1940s. The goal of the Dixiecrat Party was to continue segregation and white supremacy in the southern states. Senator Strom Thurmond left the Democrats and became their presidential nominee in 1948. After losing the election, Thurmond returned to the Democrat Party, but later switched to the Republicans in 1964. However, almost all the other former Dixiecrats remained in the Democrat Party until they either retired or died. Fulbright, Wallace, Gore and Byrd retired as Democrats.
It was the next generation of white southern politicians who joined the GOP. This represented a passing of the torch from the segregationists to those who had accepted the civil rights revolution.
The Claremont Institute has published a much more comprehensive analysis of the fallacy of the Southern Strategy. You can read it here: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp”
The economy under Trump has done magnificently well. That is inarguable. The enormous amount of debt added under this administration to combat Covid is inexcusable, I agree. And yet Nancy walked away from negotiations because Trump wouldn’t agree to even more trillions in spending and socialist entitlements. You blame Trump for this excessive spending, but your fellow political travelers are ticked that he won’t spend even more. Nice try. And then we come to the inevitable Hitler comparisons. It would be funny if it weren’t so predictable and sad. Dave, I will even print your whiny last comment here to show the readers that you throw tantrums because I didn’t post your comments right away. It might surprise you, but I don’t have a staff for my blog. I have to attend to it around my job and family life. I will gladly delete your comments when they serve no purpose other than to further hatefulness. That said, I am hardly afraid of any arguments you may propose. Further, I will admit when I or conservatism is wrong. That is something unheard of by you or most leftists.
By the way, do you HONESTLY think that no voter ID and mail-in ballots will foster good election integrity? Or, like the dishonest leftist politicians, do you not care as long as the means justify the end in manipulating an election to rid yourselves of Adolph Trump? You do realize that by doing that, along with the intended vote harvesting, as has already been proven to be rampant with fraud in NY and NJ, you are simply disenfranchising the voices of legitimate citizens of all colors in the United States. I guess your desire to impose a Stalin on the country in order to replace a perceived Hitler justifies this for the left.
10 comments:
Here's another inarguable fact:
Little is dishonestly ignoring the fact that white conservative Southern Democrats called "Dixiecrats" and Southern Republicans voted against the Civil Rights Act. It was the regional divide, not a partisan split the deceivers on the Right love to spin. In a way, the Civil War never ended. The confederate flag and soldiers have a new president in Trump.
Racists and dishonest Republicans want to erase the terms "Dixiecrats" and "Southern Strategy" from history.
More Inarguable Facts:
Aug. 2011 the Bush Recession produced black unemployment rate 16.7%
January 2017, the black unemployment rate was at 7.8 percent.
Under Obama the black unemployment rate dropped 8.9%. Trump crows about a 3.4% drop.
The Black president did the heavy lifting and got no credit from the racist Birther or his cult.
Not ONE con-servative admits to these facts. All praise to the “Only One”.
Racism and ignorance are the only logical explanations for worshiping the bigoted white guy's 3.4% drop, while refusing to recognize the Black guy's role in reducing Black unemployment by 8.9%.
As I am sure Dave would not intentionally lie, I am going to assume that he simply bought leftist revisionist history and rhetoric regarding the Dixiecrats, Nixon, and the “southern strategy.” Here are the facts of the matter as reported by POC Dinesh D'Souza.
“Nixon had an excellent record on civil rights. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was an avid champion of the desegregation of public schools. The progressive columnist Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times, ‘There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.’
Upon his taking office in 1969, Nixon also put into effect America’s first affirmative action program. Dubbed the Philadelphia Plan, it imposed racial goals and timetables on the building trade unions, first in Philadelphia and then elsewhere. Now, would a man seeking to build an electoral base of Deep South white supremacists actually promote the first program to legally discriminate in favor of blacks? This is absurd.
Nixon recognized the South was changing. It was becoming more industrialized, with many northerners moving to the Sunbelt. Nixon’s focus, Phillips writes, was on the non-racist, upwardly-mobile, largely urban voters of the Outer or Peripheral South. Nixon won these voters, and he lost the Deep South, which went to Democratic segregationist George Wallace.
And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none. Among the racist Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was the sole senator to defect to the Republicans — and he did this long before Nixon’s time. Only one Dixiecrat congressman, Albert Watson of South Carolina, switched to the GOP. The rest, more than 200 Dixiecrat senators, congressmen, governors and high elected officials, all stayed in the Democratic Party.
The South, as a whole, became Republican during the 1980s and 1990s. This had nothing to do with Nixon; it was because of Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America.’ The conservative appeal to patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, pro-life and Christianity had far more to do with the South’s movement into the GOP camp than anything related to race.
Yet the myth of Nixon’s Southern Strategy endures — not because it’s true, but because it conveniently serves to exculpate the crimes of the Democratic Party. Somehow the party that promoted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and racial terrorism gets to wipe its slate clean by pretending that, with Nixon’s connivance, the Republicans stole all their racists. It’s time we recognize this excuse for what it is: one more Democratic big lie.”
Next, it was 9/11 that caused the recession; not Bush. That is an inarguable fact. Your statement was another fallacy. Some of Bush’s leftist tactics in fighting the recession certainly did not help though. As for Obama, of course progress was made in the unemployment rate, even for black Americans during his administration. Obama caught the problem near its trough. Ridiculous amounts of “quantitative easing” and ten trillion in additional debt, including on mainly non-existent “shovel ready jobs” was bound to have some effect with the foolish spending. Trump reduced red tape and cut taxes and let the American people make the economy take off, including historical bests for most all people of color in home ownership and employment rates. Obama never saw economic growth greater than 2% throughout his whole administration despite DOUBLING the national debt. Before Covid and the asinine spending sprees that both parties are guilty of, Trump unleashed Americans to bring prosperity; not the government with its poor return on investment that Obama did. THAT is the truth.
Darrell,
Thank for telling me I was mistaken in my facts. I really appreciate the fact you cannot cite any incorrect fact, but simply make the accusation.
You did provide evidence from D'Souza supporting my point, “Racists and dishonest Republicans want to erase the terms "Dixiecrats" and "Southern Strategy" from history.”
And thank you for noting Obama had it much easier than Trump by inheriting the 2008 economic collapse that you blame on 9-11-01. No supporting evidence was provided
I find it enlightening that you conclude I “bought leftist revisionist history and rhetoric” by presenting the radical Right prevarications of propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, the sleazy campaign finance felon who was pardoned by fellow campaign finance criminal Trump.
The radical far right propagandist has a Bachelor of Arts in English, so that makes him an authority on everything, including history. (I imagine a bachelors degree in engineering bestows similar expertise in your case.)
Here are some additional points of wisdom from your chosen authority on these matters:
D'Souza first came to prominence as a student at Dartmouth, where he was one of the first editors of the Dartmouth Review, a conservative campus publication. During his time there, the Review:
Published an interview with a Ku Klux Klan leader accompanied by a "doctored photo of a black student being lynched on campus." This spurred then-Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) to resign from the publication's board.
Ran an anti-affirmative action article written entirely in ebonics and headlined, "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro."
Posted a list of members of the campus Gay Straight Alliance, some of whom were still closeted.
He went on to prove that lies and false accusations are what “annoys and disturbs liberals”: “One way to be effective as a conservative is to figure out what annoys and disturbs liberals the most, and then keep doing it.”
And how about his enlightened views on slavery, civil rights, and Obama?
“In summary, the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
"Am I calling for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Actually, yes. The law should be changed so that its nondiscrimination provisions apply only to the government."
“Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Tweeted a picture of Obama with the caption, “My position on beheading is that I now be heading to play golf”.
Who was who said, “Racism isn’t racism to racists”?
I’ll see your Dinesh D’Souza and raise you Nixon historian Steven Ambrose: “Nixon had to be hauled kicking and screaming into desegregation on a meaningful scale, and he did what he did not because it was right but because he had no choice.”
D'Souza spins, “And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none.”
Yeah, that’s a mighty narrow gauge, Casey Jones.
Let’s compare your propagandist with the degree in English to another real historian:
Dinesh D’Souza on Twitter : “Okay let’s see a list of the 200 or so racist Dixiecrats who switched parties and became Republicans. Put up or shut up”
Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse took D’Souza up on the request:
"As I've noted before, focusing solely on Southern Democratic politicians who officially switched parties -- instead of ordinary voters, as scholars emphasize -- intentionally misses the thrust of the party realignment on matters of race and civil rights:
First, it's important to note that, yes, the Democrats were indeed the party of slavery and, in the early 20th century, the party of segregation, too. (There are some pundits who claim this is some secret they've uncovered, but it's long been front & center in any US history.)
But, sure, let's ignore what scholars have written on this and meet this question on D'Souza's own chosen ground -- racist Southern Democratic politicians who switched to the GOP. No, 200 politicians didn't switch -- that's a laughably high bar -- but there were plenty.
1. First and foremost, of course, there's Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat presidential candidate, who was welcomed into the GOP in 1964 -- and, importantly, allowed to keep his seniority and thus all the power that came with it in Congress. (No other Southern Democrats were.)
2. But before Thurmond, John Tower left the Democrats in the early 1950s and won election as the first GOP senator in the modern South. Tower spoke out against civil rights, joined with S. Dems to plot filibusters, and voted against the Civil Rights Act & Voting Rights Act.
The House was quicker to see changes. 3. Rep. William C. Cramer, the first GOP rep in Florida, for instance, switched from the Democrats in 1949, won election in 1954, urged Ike to withdraw troops from Little Rock in 1957 and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
4. Likewise, Rep. Edward Gurney, the second GOP representative in Florida, also abandoned the Democratic Party in the early 1960s, ran for Congress as a Republican in 1962 and won, and then voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
5. Rep. Dave Treen (R-LA) -- protege of legendary segregationist Leander Perez and a 1960 elector for the States Rights Party (a.k.a. "the Dixiecrats") -- switched to the GOP in 1962. He lost a few early races, but then won his seat in 1973 and later became governor in 1980.
6. Rep. Iris Faircloth Blitch, a segregationist who represented Georgia in Congress as a Democrat from 1955-1962, left the party over civil rights in 1964 and campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
(Continue)
7. Rep. James D. Martin (R-AL), originally a Democrat, joined the GOP in 1962 & won a House race in 1964. During the Selma protests, he denounced MLK Jr. as a "rabble-rouser who has put on the sheep's clothing of non-violence while he pits race against race, man against law."
8. Rep. Bill Dickinson (R-AL), originally elected as a Democratic judge, likewise switched to the GOP and made headlines during the Selma-to-Montgomery march. He insisted, from the House floor, that the civil rights marchers were actually a radical group engaged in wild orgies.
9. Rep. Bo Callaway (R-GA) likewise abandoned the Democrats over civil rights and won a spot as the first Republican congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction. A staunch segregationist, he promised to repeal the Civil Rights Act & then voted against the Voting Rights Act.
10. Meanwhile, in South Carolina -- where Sen. Strom Thurmond, the original Dixiecrat, had just bolted to the GOP -- a congressman did the same. Segregationist Rep. Albert Watson publicly backed Goldwater in 1964. In retaliation, House Dems stripped him of his seniority. So Rep. Watson resigned from Congress in 1965 (after voting against the VRA), became a Republican, and retook his old seat in a special election. After he won, he called for investigations into "subversive" civil rights groups."
11. In Mississippi, Thad Cochran -- a lifelong Democrat -- switched to the GOP in 1964 in opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He then went on to head Nixon's Mississippi campaign and then win elections as a congressman and then senator.
12. Meanwhile, Rep. Trent Lott had been an aide to Dixiecrat William Colmer, who stayed a Dem because seniority made him the head of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Colmer chose Lott to succeed him in 1972, but had him run as a Republican.
13. Jesse Helms made the same transition. He'd grown up a Dem, helping Democrat Willis Smith run a race-baiting campaign for a senate seat in 1950 (see the ad below). When Helms ran for the Senate on his own in 1972, however, just like Lott, the former Dem ran as a Republican.
These are just examples of party switchers who *won*. Several Dems switched to the GOP for Senate runs and didn't make it. See:
15. Taylor O'Hearn in Louisiana
16. W.D. Workman in South Carolina
17. Marshall Parker in South Carolina
If you look beyond Congress -- again, the place where party switches were *least* likely to happen for institutional reasons -- you can see several more examples.
18. In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Mills Godwin, an outspoken leader of the state's Democratic segregationist resistance, switched parties and won re-election as a Republican in 1973.
State legislatures had more switches. Again, this isn't what historians stress in party realignment, but yes, it happened. Here's a terrific new book on it, by the way:
For some examples in state legs:
19. SC Rep. Arthur Ravenel Jr.
20. SC Rep. Floyd Spence
21. Texas Rep. Jack Cox
22. Mississippi Sen. Stanford Morse
23. Alabama Rep. Albert Goldthwaite
24. Louisiana Rep. Roderick Miller
25. South Carolina Sen. Marshall Parker Etc etc.
Or you can consider the switches made by state-level elected officials. 26-30. For instance, in 1968, five of the top officeholders in Georgia switched from the Democrats to the Republicans:
All right, that's probably more than enough to make the point. Again, looking at elected officials is the worst way to measure these changes. (And, of course, that's why D'Souza insists on doing it that way.)"
Politifact on Candace Owens' false statement that the Southern strategy is a myth
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/10/candace-owens/candace-owens-pants-fire-statement-southern-strate/
The Republicans’ Southern strategy has been documented for decades — including by Republicans who were a part of it.
The facts about the Southern strategy
For this fact-check, we interviewed historians and reviewed news articles from the civil rights era.
Joseph Alsop, an influential syndicated newspaper columnist, called it "basically a segregationist strategy" in a 1962 column.
When Republican Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, his Southern surrogates played up the fact that he had just voted against the Civil Rights Act. That paid off in the Deep South where he won a handful of states, but he ultimately lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.
By 1968, the Republicans fine-tuned their approach and packaged it in a way they could win, said Maxwell, the Arkansas professor and an expert on southern politics.
Republican nominee Richard Nixon reached out to white Southerners by opposing school busing and promising that his administration would not "ram anything down your throats" and would appoint "strict constructionist" Supreme Court justices.
The strongest evidence of the Southern strategy comes directly from Republicans at the time.
That includes Clarence Townes, who served as director of the Minorities Division of the Republican National Committee in the 1960s. Harvard professor Leah Wright Rigueur wrote about Townes in her book "The Loneliness of the Black Republican."
When Nixon disbanded the division, Townes told reporters in 1970, "There’s a total fear of what’s called the Southern strategy. Blacks understand that their wellbeing is being sacrificed to political gain. There has to be some moral leadership from the president on the race question, and there just hasn’t been any."
Politifact:
In 1969, Nixon White House aide Lamar Alexander, who now represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate, wrote about the Southern strategy in a memo following the unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination of Clement Haynsworth, who was opposed by civil rights groups.
"SOUTHERN STRATEGY — we flat out invited the kind of political battle that ultimately erupted when we named a Democrat-turned-Republican conservative from South Carolina. This confirmed the Southern strategy just at a time when it was being nationally debated," Alexander wrote.
Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips openly discussed the Southern strategy in a newspaper article in 1973:
"If the New Washington liberal crowd could tear themselves away from Watergate ecstasy and the lionizing of Daniel Ellsberg for a little look-see below the Mason-Dixon line, they might glean a useful political insight, namely that the GOP 'Southern Strategy' seems to be rolling along — and rolling up local victories — just as if G. Gordon Liddy had never existed." (Ellsberg released the Pentagon papers in 1971 while Liddy was an FBI agent convicted of illegal wiretapping.)
Phillips told the New York Times in 1970 that the Republicans were never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the "Negro vote and they don't need any more than that."
"The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans," he wrote. "That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Ultimately, winning over white Southern voters required using coded language, as campaign consultant Lee Atwater, who worked on Reagan’s 1980 campaign, explained in an interview 1981. In audio, he can be heard describing how in 1954, a racial slur could be used to describe black Americans, but that "backfired" by 1968 — requiring a pivot to use more abstract language.
"So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites," he said.
Reagan used language such as "states’ rights" and "welfare queens," which critics said was coded racist language.
"The partisan shift in the South from the 1960s to George W. Bush is the greatest partisan shift in all of American history," Maxwell said.
From FOX:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-poised-to-add-more-debt-than-obama-in-first-term
Obama in 2010-2013, the first four fiscal years for which he was fully responsible, tacked $4.4 trillion onto the national debt. Trump, between fiscal 2018 and 2021, is projected to add more than $7.6 trillion to the national debt, mainly on the back of projected $3.8 trillion and $2.1 trillion deficits in 2020 and 2021, according to the fiscal watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Trump's projected debt growth still exceeds Obama's even if the massive $1.4 trillion federal deficit in 2009, which included measures like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama signed but also leftover federal spending from former President George W. Bush, is added to his predecessor's total.
==
And the Fed announced $1.5 trillion in capital injections to boost money markets.
Sad and disappointing, but not unexpected.
Intolerance of evidence is why conservatism is a dangerous doctrine that enables bigots, racists, and pathological liars.
Trump....Roger Stone...White power...Proud Boys...It's as plain as day.
Stay obtuse. Shun facts. Deny evidence. Hide from the truth. Watch the racist criminals sabotage our Post Office to deny rights of Americans to vote by mail. His Majesty and his chosen have the right. The rest stand in line during a pandemic.
"Pro-life" my ass. It is biological warfare on our citizens. How many more must die from that man's dereliction, malfeasance, and lust for power?
Not a concern for con-servatives. Winning and holding power are all that matters. Never mind what is destroyed and who will die in the process.
There is no compassion, no decency, and NO respect for our democratic institutions, or for our people. He and his party have become autocrats.
Theirs is the path to despotism. Do you think the public is as willfully blind as the Trump cult to the evils being perpetrated in our name?
This fanaticism is how Hitler rose to power. Hate, blame, anger, accusations, lies. We plainly see it in the cult. MOST Americans are better than that. Most will vote against him again.
Fair elections are the enemy of tyranny. They will cheat and lie and obstruct all the way.
The stench is only getting stronger, buddy.
Got it, Dave. Dinesh D’Souza is also a racist who supports the KKK. You do realize that he too is a person of color and would likely be a target of them accordingly? I don’t support everything he said or stands for. Hell, I have many friends and loved ones that I don’t support everything they do or say either. In this case though, I think Dinesh makes some excellent points. I understand the leftists’ penchant for ignoring the facts of a message if they despise the messenger though.
Billknowles of Free Republic also provides some context that further proves the lie of the lefts’ southern strategy narrative.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/2787426/posts
From that article which specifically rebuts your comments:
“The third aspect for establishing the Southern Strategy myth was laid with another falsehood; that all the former Dixiecrats had joined the Republican Party after Nixon allegedly used the used the Southern Strategy. The Dixiecrat Party was a third party that splintered from the Democrats because of their dissatisfaction with Harry Truman over the civil rights issue during the 1940s. The goal of the Dixiecrat Party was to continue segregation and white supremacy in the southern states. Senator Strom Thurmond left the Democrats and became their presidential nominee in 1948. After losing the election, Thurmond returned to the Democrat Party, but later switched to the Republicans in 1964. However, almost all the other former Dixiecrats remained in the Democrat Party until they either retired or died. Fulbright, Wallace, Gore and Byrd retired as Democrats.
It was the next generation of white southern politicians who joined the GOP. This represented a passing of the torch from the segregationists to those who had accepted the civil rights revolution.
The Claremont Institute has published a much more comprehensive analysis of the fallacy of the Southern Strategy. You can read it here: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp”
The economy under Trump has done magnificently well. That is inarguable. The enormous amount of debt added under this administration to combat Covid is inexcusable, I agree. And yet Nancy walked away from negotiations because Trump wouldn’t agree to even more trillions in spending and socialist entitlements. You blame Trump for this excessive spending, but your fellow political travelers are ticked that he won’t spend even more. Nice try.
And then we come to the inevitable Hitler comparisons. It would be funny if it weren’t so predictable and sad. Dave, I will even print your whiny last comment here to show the readers that you throw tantrums because I didn’t post your comments right away. It might surprise you, but I don’t have a staff for my blog. I have to attend to it around my job and family life. I will gladly delete your comments when they serve no purpose other than to further hatefulness. That said, I am hardly afraid of any arguments you may propose. Further, I will admit when I or conservatism is wrong. That is something unheard of by you or most leftists.
By the way, do you HONESTLY think that no voter ID and mail-in ballots will foster good election integrity? Or, like the dishonest leftist politicians, do you not care as long as the means justify the end in manipulating an election to rid yourselves of Adolph Trump? You do realize that by doing that, along with the intended vote harvesting, as has already been proven to be rampant with fraud in NY and NJ, you are simply disenfranchising the voices of legitimate citizens of all colors in the United States. I guess your desire to impose a Stalin on the country in order to replace a perceived Hitler justifies this for the left.
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