Opinion of Lyndon B. Johnson

[DevotedDemocrat]

FF, he made the Democrats not racist.

“I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." -Lyndon Johnson

Too bad thre isn't a tape to prove he actuall said hat and tat that quote isn't just someone claiming h said that to discredit him after he was dead.

Also, he wasn't socially conservative. He was very much in favor of birth control. Also, he wasn't a war monger, he felt going to Vietnam was the only option.

[DevotedDemocrat]

Extremely flawed FF and he's one of my favourite Presidents after FDR.

FF, he made the Democrats not racist.

“I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." -Lyndon Johnson

He was right about that. Besides, which party is the party full of racists now? And don't let the man's personal beliefs get in the way of anything.

That quote seems a bit unbelievable. It seems a bit counter-intuitive that he's a racist (which he technically was, but not to the degree I think people purport him to be) but he's glad to have black people voting for him? As he was signing the Civil Rights Act he also lamented that the Democrats had lost the South for a generation. So he's glad that black people will be voting Democratic even though it loses his own constituency? Both quotes can't be true.

Also, if LBJ was a racist, why did he use precious political capital in spearheading not one, but THREE civil rights laws--1964, 1965, and 1968? Why would he have wasted his time as a lame duck in 1968 to the cause of a fair housing bill? Would a committed racist have wasted his energy?

LBJ was known to cater his speech to his audience, to win them over; he'd tailor his talk and rhetoric to suit his intended target and get them to do as he pleased. If he used the N word, it was probably in the presence of someone not fond of blacks.

As in, if he wanted support for a civil rights bill , then to a racist legislator, he'd say: "we have to give these Negroes a little something because they're getting uppity and they'll cause mayhem if we don't do it."

To a more liberal legislator, he'd say: "We have to do this because it's the right thing."

The effect being that he'd get both legislators to support said civil rights bill.

[DevotedDemocrat]

Why would you just judge a president on his belief instead of his actions? Even if he was personally a virulent racist (which is debatable), he did more to advance the position of black Americans than arguably any non-Abraham Lincoln president.

Because he passed liberal commie social programs to help poors. We can't have that.

[DevotedDemocrat]

It's amazing that Nixon and GW Bush will probably get a higher rating than LBJ

[DevotedDemocrat]

I wouldn't have health insurance if not for LBJ. My mother wouldn't have become a nurse and I would not be here if not for LBJ's Nurse Training Act. Civil rights might have been delayed had it not been for LBJ's legislative skill and devotion to civil rights; millions of elderly people would've been dead without health insurance or deeply in debt if not for LBJ, the environment might be in much worse shape and our roadways and highways might still be messy and shim and his wife. Millions of immigrants, legal immigrants, who have brough new life and diversity to our shores, would not be here if not for his Iimmigration Act of 1965. Millions of children would not have had access to schools.

To be liberal and denounce LBJ is to denounce liberalism. The man and his flaws and complexities and yet greatness mirror liberalism itself. I see liberals here complaining about the tea party and how we've drifted rightward as a nation, and yet you put down the last truly liberal President we had, the last New Deal supporting liberal who fought for the Great Society because he believed in the vision of FDR and wanted to finish it.

LBJ may have been a pragmatic, opportunistic politician when he was on the rise, but when he had full executive power, the guy devoted t to liberal causes, even at the price of his political capital and the New Deal Coalition. Democrats worship a do nothing President like Clinton and praise his Third Way wife when we should be trying to rehabilitate LBJ.

Many of the same so called 'liberals' who voted HP for LBJ will vote FF for Reagan You guys deserve the Tea Party.

[DevotedDemocrat]

Even worse, a large chunk of HP voters are probably more upset over the latter.

Usual caveats about reading the human soul aside, I think that everyone who has held the White House since Nixon and LBJ has, at some level, at least been attempting to do good. Not those two. They're terrifying.

Why? If a dietician puts you on a strict diet of birthday cake and liquor, he doesn't deserve to be canonized. If he had good intentions and he was pioneering something new, perhaps his incompetence could be forgiven, but LBJ was not without economic data nor did he have good intentions.

For God's sake man, is making sure the elderly and poor have health insurance such a terrible thing?

[DevotedDemocrat]

For God's sake man, is making sure the elderly and poor have health insurance such a terrible thing?

Is it terrible to feed your child so much cake that he becomes a morbidly-obese diabetic?

This is why Democrats cannot be trusted. They'll pat themselves on the back for placing tax burden on the middle class, putting them out of work, while simultaneously spending 50% more than any other nation to "help" seniors live 3-4 years less than in other developed nations.

Yes. It's genuinely terrible and an embarrassment to our nation. That's why Obama tried backdoor Medicare reform with the first ACA bill, which caused AARP to unleash the hell hounds to protect their pile of pork. More recently, Obama is trying to skirt Congress by changing the enforcement regulations for Social Security deferment. Our entitlements are genuinely terrible, and that's just FICA.

And what would you replace them with? How would we care for the elderly and poor?