CPAC forum on race devolves into hot mess after someone defends slavery

[BluegrassBlueVote]

Conservatism in the Republican party wasn't the result of a hijacking, stupidity, that is a different story.

This was a very good post, but in all honesty I didn't need a history lesson and I wasn't postulating anything close to the notion that conservatism in the GOP was birthed by the Thurmonds and the Wallaces and the Byrds. I'm well aware of the backgrounds of the two parties and their generational shifts. The KKK was trying to hijack the Democrats' conventions just 40 years before those men switched parties, after all.

My point was that Republicans were happy to accomodate these men by branding themselves as the party that was less friendly to the darkies, and that's all those scumbags like Jesse Helms cared about politically. The GOP did it to strengthen the geography of the party and was wildy successful in doing so, but the Southern Strategy is still an extremely dubious stain to wear in (somewhat) recent political times. This was more relavant to bring up in race relations than anything in Oldiesfreak's potshot about the Civil War. I think the young man in the video knows exactly where his interests lie.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Conservatism in the Republican party wasn't the result of a hijacking, stupidity, that is a different story.

This was a very good post, but in all honesty I didn't need a history lesson and I wasn't postulating anything close to the notion that conservatism in the GOP was birthed by the Thurmonds and the Wallaces and the Byrds. I'm well aware of the backgrounds of the two parties and their generational shifts. The KKK was trying to hijack the Democrats' conventions just 40 years before those men switched parties, after all.

My point was that Republicans were happy to accomodate these men by branding themselves as the party that was less friendly to the darkies, and that's all those scumbags like Jesse Helms cared about politically. The GOP did it to strengthen the geography of the party and was wildy successful in doing so, but the Southern Strategy is still an extremely dubious stain to wear in (somewhat) recent political times. This was more relavant to bring up in race relations than anything in Oldiesfreak's potshot about the Civil War. I think the young man in the video knows exactly where his interests lie.

You did however ground the pro versus anti on civil rights in terms of ideology with Liberals being for it and Conservatives being against it, which is historically innaccurate. Only in the most simplistic of understandings regarding terms as meaning "changing something" versus "keeping something the same", would such be considered accurate. In an era of "defined" ideologies based around sets of core principles, and in which consistency is paramount, you would be hard pressed to find any reasonable conservative (even a hardcore conservative one) who would find anything other then sheer disgust at say, the Dred Scott decision, or popular sovereignty as espoused by Cass and Stephen Douglas, or even segregation. Most examples of such racist policies were the results at one point or another, of abandoning or ignoring something or even some things that Conservatives tend to uphold, in the process of making them. Many of these politicians who did this were ideological opportunists of the highest order. People who would bitch about states rights, only to create a military dictatorship and prior to that were willing to deny northerners their own state's rights with regards to being free states (When Lincoln said the House divided against itself cannot stand, they were one step away from side imposing its will on the other and it wasn't the north demanding such their way be imposed on the South, is in fact the other way around as being the only means to preserve the institution).

Oldiesfreak lacks tact and could certainly use some more depth, lest he become a caricature and thus not be taken seriously. He probably has already crossed that rubicon and thus its too late. It is such a shame to see such potential wasted. Aside from the poor recommendation of a party for Terry, most of it was just quotes of obvious facts that I would hope everyone knows and yes probably irrevelant. But it is easy to ignore historically correct but off topic stuff, as opposed to on topic but historically incorrect feedback, such as described in the first paragraph.

This man may know where his interests lie to be sure and they certainly are not in what is best for the movement, that is for sure. They seem to be about getting attention for himself and his group of kook friends in the instant news era, in a way not to disimilar to the way in which a garden variety terrorist or serial killer would gain attention for their cause by killing people. Hardly a legitimate "movement activist", and more like a self-centered act of attention whoring at the expense of the efforts of the larger movement.

The Southern Strategy is largely overrated in terms of its effect in destroying GOP vote performance amongs the African American community. Another, more accurate, analysis would be the impacts of the history (or perhaps the historical interpretations) of it on preventing a recovery. This is in my view more the result of a combination of lack of effort, combined with some really effective misinformation as well as some really intense scare tactics by the other side to preserve the current margins. It would take a multi-cycle effort to bust through and politics is done election by election tactical desicion making, as opposed to long term strategic decision making in most cases. The Southern Strategy wasn't created in 1968, in fact it goes back at least seven decades prior to that. Busing was one of the key issues used as a tacticial move to gain support from the Helms of the world, and yes it most certainly worked and for sure hurt amongst the Black community. However, it wasn't an embrace of slavery or segregation. Did Nixon even oppose the VRA or CRA? I don't beleive so. It was about being the lesser of two evils for sure, but it wasn't really that big a change for the GOP to take such a position. If anything the party of Lincoln became the party of the South by staying where it was for the most part. Success moved the issue of civil rights to left and ironically that is why the successes stopped in the late 1960's for the civil rights movement and the excesses like busing became a target, because it had moved beyond where the middle of America was willing to go at the time. A "liberal" on civil rights in the 1940's could easily find himself a "conservative" by 1970. In spite of that, Nixon still did work in other areas to push through the more traditional arenas, those which he would have been the considered a civil rights advocate for back in the 1950's, such as pushing the south to continue to desegregate. This is what Wallace meant when he claimed there wasn't a dimes worth a difference betweent the two parties, referring that both the Humphrey Democratic party and Richard Nixon's GOP were both against Segregation, and thus what he stood for. For him the lesser of two evils, was still a largely pro-civil rights party and thus he wasn't interested.

Anyway, the GOP as the more Conservative party would have been hard pressed to compete for a largely impoverished community seeing as it would tend to oppose the very programs that were topping the priority list, against a Democratic party determined to advance government as a cure for the country's social ills like it was doing in the 1960's. African Americans had already been largely economic focused since the 1934 elections when they began to switch over to the Democrats (I recommend reading about Oscar De Priest's defeat in the South Side of Chicago) and hence why the GOP would max out at onl 39% of the black of the vote and generally ranged between 25% and 39% in the 1950's. Ironically though the Southern Strategy was old by this point. In VA and some states, there had been a general surrender once the second generation kooks had taken over (The Bilbos and such who were sons of Civil War Generation) and removed what little black voting still happened, the GOP essentially surrendered and sought to be a white party. This got elevated up to the national level in 1928 as part of Hoover's campaign, however; the black vote remained loyal until the New Deal era. What destroyed the GOP amongst the black vote wasn't adherence to the southern strategy, which was primarily aimed at the southern suburbs and the outer South (The idea was to emphasize a set of issues that brought a large piece of the South into a coalition with northern white ethnics, suburbs and the Western states and thus anything that was aimed at the South, couldn't alienate the rest), as opposed to the Goldwater campaign, which was a disaster on many levels. It was certainly not an adherence to some grand plan to acheive a long term electoral majority. The two points which were decisive in destroying GOP support amongst African Americans, were points at which the plan either was irrelevant (1934 and 1936) or had been deviated from (1964). I read an article about two years ago detailing how some operatives in the Democratic party are beginning to re-examin the standard assumptions regarding the Southern Strategy (along the lines which I have described) to see if it is possible to regain some of those poor white voters. It is probably still on this site somewhere. What the strategy in 1968 did do at worst was send a single of more of the same, and it certainly didn't make up for Goldwater's sin of opposing the CRA, a law which every nominee since has supported to little effect with regards to getting back that 20%-39%.

Any effort to gain that back at the very least, will be difficult with a media that is both baised and conflict oriented and thus as Mecha pointed out, they misrepresented the reaction of the crowd. That combined with an opposition party that will do anything to maintain its base, will make any GOP efforts even more challenging in this regard and I don't know if the GOP has realized that it has to try every cycle, regardless.

[BluegrassBlueVote]

You did however ground the pro versus anti on civil rights in terms of ideology with Liberals being for it and Conservatives being against it, which is historically innaccurate.

And I respectfully disagree. Obviously the labels are far different now than they were over a century and a half ago, but abolition was a socially liberal stance to take (as it was the very essence of the pursuit of equality) while pro-slavery was a sense of social conservatism and cultural preservation, much like modern day conservatives oppose changes to their view of marriage and advocate a return to traditional social norms on many fronts.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

CPAC: The Woodstock for crazy people.

Not at all. At Woodstock, they played decent music. At CPAC, they blare "Life is a Highway" between every single speech for no reason at all.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Two things:
1. K Carl Smith is black.  I doubt he's defending slavery and segregation; he's just saying that keeping blacks dependent on government handouts is essentially another form of slavery, and that it is worse than segregation.  This comment has been taken out of context.

2. Frederick Douglass was a Republican, and it was Republicans who fought to end slavery and segregation.  If Terry knew the history, he would be a Democrat, especially since he had a George Wallace button.

Seeing how all those Dixiecrats are the foundation of the modern GOP, I would say he is in the right party.

Not true.  The vast majority of Dixiecrats never became Republicans.  George Wallace, Bull Connor, Bob Byrd, Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, Sam Ervin, Herman Talmadge, Fritz Hollings, etc. remained Democrats for life.

Conservatism in the Republican party wasn't the result of a hijacking, stupidity, that is a different story.

This was a very good post, but in all honesty I didn't need a history lesson and I wasn't postulating anything close to the notion that conservatism in the GOP was birthed by the Thurmonds and the Wallaces and the Byrds. I'm well aware of the backgrounds of the two parties and their generational shifts. The KKK was trying to hijack the Democrats' conventions just 40 years before those men switched parties, after all.

My point was that Republicans were happy to accomodate these men by branding themselves as the party that was less friendly to the darkies, and that's all those scumbags like Jesse Helms cared about politically. The GOP did it to strengthen the geography of the party and was wildy successful in doing so, but the Southern Strategy is still an extremely dubious stain to wear in (somewhat) recent political times. This was more relavant to bring up in race relations than anything in Oldiesfreak's potshot about the Civil War. I think the young man in the video knows exactly where his interests lie.

The Southern strategy had nothing to do with race.  It would have made no sense to do that in 1968 because George Wallace was running.  And although a few Dixiecrats became Republicans, most of the did not,.

2. Frederick Douglass was a Republican, and it was Republicans who fought to end slavery and segregation.  If Terry knew the history, he would be a Democrat, especially since he had a George Wallace button.

Ever wondered why scumbag racists like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms switched parties? Liberals ended slavery, and southern conservatives happily fought against that... just like they opposed the Reconstruction amendments, women suffrage, segregation, and several more dubious social crusades that establishment Republicans pretend to have never happened.

We took the Deweys and Rockefellers of the world, you took the Thurmonds and the Wallaces and the Byrds.

Wrong again.  The vast majority of the segregationists never became Republicans.  George Wallace never became a Republican; Bob Byrd was a Democrat as recently as 2010, when he died.
Frederick Douglass was liberal for his time, and George Wallace was conservative for his time, but that doesn't change the fact that Douglass was a Republican and Wallace a Democrat.  Anyway, this guy clearly does not represent the majority of conservatives now, and most people, liberal or conservative, would consider him to just be an extremist.

[BluegrassBlueVote]

The Southern strategy had nothing to do with race.

...

The vast majority of the segregationists never became Republicans.

Oh, so that's why the segregationist South quickly became a reliable Republican voting bloc in presidential elections, right?

I didn't say the change was overnight. It took many years for the liberal Eastern Establishment and the Dixiecrats to switch sides, but the break was obvious and imminent.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

They didn't screen their speakers first to make sure this wouldn't happen?

Republicans don't even screen their Senate Majority Leaders, as you might know from a certain Trent Lott comment in 2002.

[Indy Texas]

Not true.  The vast majority of Dixiecrats never became Republicans.  George Wallace, Bull Connor, Bob Byrd, Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, Sam Ervin, Herman Talmadge, Fritz Hollings, etc. remained Democrats for life.
***
The Southern strategy had nothing to do with race.  It would have made no sense to do that in 1968 because George Wallace was running.  And although a few Dixiecrats became Republicans, most of the did not
***
Wrong again.  The vast majority of the segregationists never became Republicans.  George Wallace never became a Republican; Bob Byrd was a Democrat as recently as 2010, when he died.
Frederick Douglass was liberal for his time, and George Wallace was conservative for his time, but that doesn't change the fact that Douglass was a Republican and Wallace a Democrat.  Anyway, this guy clearly does not represent the majority of conservatives now, and most people, liberal or conservative, would consider him to just be an extremist.

George Wallace stayed a Democrat, but he also recanted his racist views.
Bull Connor? A town sheriff qualifies as a prominent representative of a national party?
Robert Byrd repudiated his former KKK affiliation.
Orval Faubus and Sam Ervin retired or lost election well before it would have made any sense for them to switch parties.
Fritz Hollings is your idea of what a racist Dixiecrat looks like? Why don't you look at the guy he served with for decades? You know, the one who joined your party in 1964. I can't imagine what might have happened in 1964 that might have prompted that switch.

The Southern Strategy had to be about race precisely because George Wallace was running! Nixon needed those votes. Third parties never exist to win elections in America. They're like viruses - they inject a little bit of their DNA into one of the major parties and then die off. And Wallace's ticket forced Nixon to inject a small strain of virulent racist resentment into the GOP to persuade some people who were leaning to Wallace that they'd be throwing their vote away and would be getting a similar package if they just voted for Nixon.

I know you mean well, OldiesFreak, really I do. But I don't know why you cling so fervently to a party that has left you behind. It's like listening to my grandmother, a lifelong Republican, complain about the Tea Party and Rick Perry, and having to resist the urge to tell her the ugly truth that it's 2013 and she's never going to be able to vote for Republicans like Eisenhower and Ford again in her lifetime. It's just not going to happen.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The hilarious thing is, all it take is a look at the map to deconstruct Oldiesfreak's claim about 1968 as absurd:



If Wallace swept the South or something he might have a point, but that's clearly not the case. In addition there's only two states where Wallace won a majority.

[7,052,770]

Gee, I wonder what might have happened to cause the Solid South to disappear for the first time in a century in 1964...

[BluegrassBlueVote]

I still can't fathom what point Oldiesfreak is trying to argue. It's utterly nonsensical, whatever it is.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I still can't fathom what point Oldiesfreak is trying to argue. It's utterly nonsensical, whatever it is.

That whatever positions the two parties held 60 years ago are indelible and should be the current basis of what one votes on, not the current positions. So yes, utterly nonsensical.

Of course also entirely irrelevant since this was the Conservative Political Action Conference, not Republican Political Action Conference.

[TNF]

Seriously guys, are you still trying to argue with Oldies? The guy is a special kind of historical revisionist and should probably just be ignored from this point on when this issue comes up.

As for this thread itself, all that I can say is lol. The Republicans sure are making it easy for the Democrats to destroy them for decades to come as that new, non-white majority generation makes it to the polls.

[pbrower2a]

Two things:
1. K Carl Smith is black.  I doubt he's defending slavery and segregation; he's just saying that keeping blacks dependent on government handouts is essentially another form of slavery, and that it is worse than segregation.  This comment has been taken out of context.

2. Frederick Douglass was a Republican, and it was Republicans who fought to end slavery and segregation.  If Terry knew the history, he would be a Democrat, especially since he had a George Wallace button.

As is not my usual practice, I am showing a map without a legend. I would like people to think of the significance of the color design.

Hints:

1. White stands for an even split in something, if not everything.

2. This map involves four Presidential elections in which two Presidents were the winners.

3. As is conventional in this Forum, red stands for Democrats and blue for Republicans.

4. In the last two Presidential races in which someone won electoral votes as an independent candidate running on a segregationist platform, Leip uses the color green (which is not a reference to Robert LaFollette winning Wisconsin in 1924).

5. Figure why I have no deep red but plenty of deep blue.

I have an educational purpose for such an eccentric practice. I want to see some responses before I give the key.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The hilarious thing is, all it take is a look at the map to deconstruct Oldiesfreak's claim about 1968 as absurd:



If Wallace swept the South or something he might have a point, but that's clearly not the case. In addition there's only two states where Wallace won a majority.

I'm not sure what you are claiming that map shows. 

[Brittain33]

Atlas forum on CPAC devolves into hot mess after someone defends Southern Strategy

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Atlas forum on CPAC devolves into hot mess after someone defends Southern Strategy

Congratulations, Phil!

[DINGO Joe]

CPAC: The Woodstock for crazy people.

Not at all. At Woodstock, they played decent music. At CPAC, they blare "Life is a Highway" between every single speech for no reason at all.

May be the only non-Hank Williams Jr./Ted Nugent song they could get the rights to.

[Brittain33]

CPAC: The Woodstock for crazy people.

Not at all. At Woodstock, they played decent music. At CPAC, they blare "Life is a Highway" between every single speech for no reason at all.

May be the only non-Hank Williams Jr./Ted Nugent song they could get the rights to.

That's what I was thinking...

[Sopranos Republican]

Jesus. We don't need this. We just don't need this.

The man may be black, but my goodness he should know not to say such things. Even if, as Oldiesfreak said, that what he said was taken out of context, he shouldn't say that. Do these people know how open their mouths, without saying something stupid? This is quite possibly the Republican party's biggest problem at the moment, Republicans saying dumb things.

[Link]

I am always baffled when Republicans point to President Obama's landslide in the black community as some kind of problem.  What I can't figure out is who the other 1% who didn't vote for Obama are... other than this clown.  Okay I guess some voted for the Green Party, but what about the others?

Would it be a problem if 99% of white people didn't vote for Farrakhan?  Would that be racist... or just common sense?

If this is the kind of stuff you have to say to get into the good graces of hard core Republicans who can blame African Americans for having some dignity and choosing other people to represent them.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The Southern strategy had nothing to do with race.

...

The vast majority of the segregationists never became Republicans.

Oh, so that's why the segregationist South quickly became a reliable Republican voting bloc in presidential elections, right?

So reliable that rogue Dixiecrat George Wallace won five Southern states in 1968 and  Jimmy Carter won much of the South in 1976?

The process was not "quick." That needs to be cleared up: there were always tensions between the Southern wing of the Democratic Party and the more "liberal" (as we understand that word, anyway) Northern wing, going back to the New Deal, but maybe even before that, when Northern Irish Catholic Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President.

Also, most of the people who vote Republican today in the South were not Dixiecrats, certainly not for very long, anyway. The Republican Party has attracted many white evangelicals (who often, in the past, didn't vote or didn't participate much in politics) to its party, especially those that have gotten wealthier and better educated than their Dixiecrat parents and moved from rural (or in some cases, urban) poverty into suburbs and exurbs. There has also been an influx of transplants from the North into the South over the last half-century, which often only added to the Republican trend in the South.

If anything, the more rural, poorer, and older Dixiecrats were the last group of Southern whites to switch to the GOP-not just at the Presidential level, but the state and local levels too.

[Link]

If anything, the more rural, poorer, and older Dixiecrats were the last group of Southern whites to switch to the GOP-not just at the Presidential level, but the state and local levels too.

To this day there are Democrats running unopposed in rural Texas.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.texastribune.org/2010/10/08/rural-white-democrats-in-republican-sights/

After the Civil War and Reconstruction Republicans were HATED in the South.  Being a Democrat is just a strong tradition down there.  But anyone that denies what happened after the signing of the Civil Rights act is deluding themselves.  That put a lot of southern Democrats in a tough position.  Some stayed Democrats and changed their views and a bunch of others slowly but surely threw in the towel and headed over to the Republicans so they could enjoy the dog whistle politics.

I think a lot of simplistic statements are made and accepted by people who have not spent much time in the South.  Anyone who is honest and spent some time down there knows the deal.

[All Along The Watchtower]

If anything, the more rural, poorer, and older Dixiecrats were the last group of Southern whites to switch to the GOP-not just at the Presidential level, but the state and local levels too.

To this day there are Democrats running unopposed in rural Texas.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.texastribune.org/2010/10/08/rural-white-democrats-in-republican-sights/

After the Civil War and Reconstruction Republicans were HATED in the South.  Being a Democrat is just a strong tradition down there.  But anyone that denies what happened after the signing of the Civil Rights act is deluding themselves.  That put a lot of southern Democrats in a tough position.  Some stayed Democrats and changed their views and a bunch of others slowly but surely threw in the towel and headed over to the Republicans so they could enjoy the dog whistle politics.

I think a lot of simplistic statements are made and accepted by people who have not spent much time in the South.  Anyone who is honest and spent some time down there knows the deal.

Oh I agree that the Civil Rights Act drove out a lot of racists and bigots in the South (and elsewhere...) from the Democratic Party, into the arms of the Republican Party (who, of course, did what any opportunistic party would do...). I just think that it's been way over simplified into  "the Southern Democrats bolted the party overnight, and today form the core of the GOP." That has some degree of truth, but really obscures the historical record and the nuances of what happened.

[Link]

If anything, the more rural, poorer, and older Dixiecrats were the last group of Southern whites to switch to the GOP-not just at the Presidential level, but the state and local levels too.

To this day there are Democrats running unopposed in rural Texas.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.texastribune.org/2010/10/08/rural-white-democrats-in-republican-sights/

After the Civil War and Reconstruction Republicans were HATED in the South.  Being a Democrat is just a strong tradition down there.  But anyone that denies what happened after the signing of the Civil Rights act is deluding themselves.  That put a lot of southern Democrats in a tough position.  Some stayed Democrats and changed their views and a bunch of others slowly but surely threw in the towel and headed over to the Republicans so they could enjoy the dog whistle politics.

I think a lot of simplistic statements are made and accepted by people who have not spent much time in the South.  Anyone who is honest and spent some time down there knows the deal.

Oh I agree that the Civil Rights Act drove out a lot of racists and bigots in the South (and elsewhere...) from the Democratic Party, into the arms of the Republican Party (who, of course, did what any opportunistic party would do...). I just think that it's been way over simplified into  "the Southern Democrats bolted the party overnight, and today form the core of the GOP." That has some degree of truth, but really obscures the historical record and the nuances of what happened.

Yes I agree with you.  That's what I was saying.  Being a Democrat in the South was a big tradition.  Nothing was going to change that overnight.  The people people that point to Jimmy Carter picking up states in the South as 100% proof that the Civil Rights Act had no effect are deluding themselves.  The hatred Southern Whites had for Republicans took a long time to die out.  And like I've said there are southern whites who will go to their graves as Democrats no matter what.

It also brings up another interesting point.  Because of the fact a lot of racist whites in the South were Democrats it was not uncommon to find blacks that were Republicans.  A lot of old black people that are Republicans are Republicans because they grew up in the South decades ago.  They are in an awkward position now because the party has changed.  Look at Rod Paige.  Rod Paige is a member of the NAACP and was a dean at a historically black college in Houston.  Not exactly what you would call a sell out.