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

[BluegrassBlueVote]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[BluegrassBlueVote]

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