Obama: Doing the right thing the wrong way

People generally defer to the devil they know, and in this case, they knew conservative Southern Democrats. As they died or retired, Southern voters overwhelmingly switched to conservative Republicans. Seems they understood better than gturner what they were doing, voting on policy rather than party label.

Obama hasn't got that long left in office, about a year to go, this is his parting gift to the Dems. With a stroke of a pen he manufactures 4 million brand new loyal dem voters, thus ensuring every president for decades to come, if not ever, will be a dem.

One thing to rember with labeling people conservative or liberal is the times in which they lived.

In the 60s civil rights was a big issue and Barry Goldwater was known as Mr.Conservative due to his opposition to the civil rights bill. He campaigned against LBJ and the entire social welfare state.

Then in the 70s and 80s abortion and other social issues were brought front and center and Goldwater was considered a traitor to the conservative cause do his belief that those issues had no place in government. He also opposed Jerry Falwell and the moral majority and thought gays should be allowed to serve in the military.

So was Barry Goldwater a liberal or a conservative?

He was a classical conservative but not a social conservative. That seems obvious.

The problem you seem to have is in believing that everything good must be leftist, and everything bad must be on the right. That's incorrect. It's the right that strongly asserts individual liberty and responsibility, and in that light a man owning another man is simply unacceptable. The left still treats people as groups, groups with group identities and needs. Obama himself just described Hispanics as "fruit pickers", as if that's their assigned role in life. The right insists that all people are equal, and thus opposes affirmative action, as system of race-based preferences. Democrats support race-based preferences as strongly as they once supported race-based slavery. Democrats think they've always been at the forefront of women's issues, ignorant that Susan B Anthony went to jail for voting the straight Republican ticket.

They forget that blacks were kept out of government jobs by Democrat heroes like Woodrow Wilson - while Warren G. Harding went to Montgomery and told a mixed audience that blacks should have full political, educational, and economic equality. He pushed an anti-lynching bill, which garnered only eight out of 131 Democrat votes in the House but passed with 284 of 301 Republican votes. but Senate Democrats stopped it with a filibuster - while the Republicans held 59 seats and only needed to pick up 7 Democrats to break the filibuster and pass the bill. They couldn't even get close to it, and gave up.

So now the Democrats focus on the Hispanics, seeing them as a new monolithic voting block, and decry everyone opposed to illegal immigration as racists, having already pigeonholed all the immigrants as a single race, and a brown oppressed one at that. That would come as a shock to a lot of countries south of the border that are way whiter than we are. A lot of these Hispanic illegals would trace their ancestry back to Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal, England, and Spain. There are whole states south of the border where you could get by just as well speaking German. There are 50,000 Mexicans who aren't even allowed to speak Spanish - because proper women should speak German. In large parts of Brazil, varieties of German are the second official language spoken by half the population - who came from Germany and Austria. Why do you think all the Nazis fled to Argentina? It's so they could blend in.

Why does Mexican music sound like German polka? Because it is German polka, which spawned other forms like tejano, one of the many Mexican musical styles descended from Germans. Why does Mexican beer taste like German beer? Because it is German beer. They founded the Mexican brewing companies. In fact, Negro Modelo is a Vienna-style lager - brewed by Germans - in Mexico. The style isn't even brewed in Germany anymore. Did you ever wonder why Mexican President Vincente Fox was named Fox instead of Rodriguez? It's because he's German.

So Democrats: Will they ever dial back the racism?

No, GT, I do not think everything good must be leftist. I do believe in being historically accurate though and that is why your posts needed correcting. When you attempt to attribute the actions of last generation's conservatives to modern liberals then you are just being dishonest. Those were, and in many ways still are, the positions of conservatives. Acknowledging that fact is just being truthful.

He's also trying to attribute the actions of previous generations' liberals to today's Republicans. I applaud the Republican party of old. Gturner is so virulently partisan that he responds to the label of Republican more than any actual policies. Perhaps he lauds the principles of the 19th century party, yet he refuses to recognize how those ideals do not fit so well with today's party of the same name.

If he was not a social conservative then why did he oppose the civil and voting rights act? Seems to me that opposing such measures on the basis that that they were unconstitutional would make him socially conservative.

No, they really only switched when they got fed up with Clinton. I'll pick a random Southern State post civil rights era and prior to Clinton. So Georgia, 1984, which had 10 Representatives. (All data for national races from 1984 is here).
District 1. Lindsay Thomas (D), who was first elected in 1982 (he's not a holdover from segregation). He didn't even graduate college until 1966. He defeated his Republican opponent 126,082 to 28,460, which is 81.5% of the vote.

In 1992 he didn't even run again, and was replaced by the Republican who still holds the seat, Jack Kingston.

District 2. Charles Hatcher (D), unopposed, who got over 100,000 votes for, and 5 against.

In 1992 he was replaced by a black Democrat.

District 3. Richard Ray (D), who was first elected in 1982 (he's not a holdover from segregation). He defeated his Republican opponent 111,061 to 25,410, which is 81.3 percent.

In 1992 he was replaced by a Republican.

District 4. Pat Swindall (R) defeated incumbent Elliot Levitas (D) - who was first elected in 1974 in response to backlash over Watergate, by 120,456 to 106,376 (which is 53 percent). It's a suburban district of Atlanta. Swindall served until 1988, when he was facing 10 counts of perjury in an FBI sting involving a Columbian drug cartel, and he was crushed in that election by "Cooter" from The Dukes of Hazard, Democrat Ben Jones.

In 1992 Ben Jones ("Cooter") lost his seat to a Republican. Neither Levitas nor Jones were holdovers from segregation.

District 5. Wyche Fowler (D) ran unopposed and got 151,233 votes, with 17 opposed. He went on to win a Senate seat and was replaced by John Lewis (D), who is black and who still holds that seat.

In 1992 Wyche Fowler lost his Senate seat to Republican Paul Coverdale.

District 6. Newt Gingrich (R) defeated Gerald Johnson 116,655 to 52,061. He'd first won the seat in 1978, and faced many close elections. His strongholds were the suburban areas, whereas his Democrat opponents did well in rural areas.

In 1992, Gingrich led the revolution.

District 7. George Darden (D) defeated Bill Bronson (R) 106,586 to 86,431. It was Darden's first election to that seat, replacing a Congressman killed on Korean airlines flight 007, which was shot down by evil leftists. He was not a hold over from the segregation era.

In 1992 Darden retained his seat, but lost it to Bob Barr in the following election.

District 8. J. Roy Rowland (D) ran unopposed and won 100,936 to 4. First elected in 1982, he is not from the segregation era.

In 1992 Rowland held his seat, but was replaced by Republican Saxby Chambliss in 1994.

District 9. Ed Jenkins (D) defeated Frank Cofer (R) by 109,422 to 52,731. First elected in 1976, he was not from the segregation era. He even challenged Dick Gephardt for House majority leader, but lost.

In 1992 he was replaced by Democrat John Deal, who then switched to the Republican party in 1994. John Deal is the current governor of Georgia.

District 10. Doug Barnard Jr (D) ran unopposed and won 116,364 to 10. First elected in 1976, he was not from the segregation era.

In 1992 he was replaced by Democrat Don Johnson (no, not that one), who was defeated in 1994 by Republican Charlie Norwood.

Senate: Sam Nunn (D) defeated Mike Hicks (R), 1,344,104 to 337,196, which is 79.9 percent.

Sam Nunn was never in the House and was first elected to the Senate in 1972 (he was not from the segregation era). He served until 1997.

President: Reagan carried Georgia 1,068,722 to 706,628.

*****

So, in 1984, long past the civil rights battles, Democrats were firmly in control of Georgia's House seats, with Republican only holding 2 of 10. None of the Democrats were hold overs from the segregation era. Many ran unopposed, and those that were usually won handily, like a Democrat in Massachusetts today.

That was unchanged until 1992, when they lost 5 seats to Republicans, and then in 1994 they lost everywhere except the two districts that are still held by Democrats.

Under the post-Clinton liberal narrative, all these Democrats who first won their seats in the late 1970's and early 1980's were actually racist KKK members. But if that's true, why didn't other Democrats at the time think so? How were they any different from the Northern Democrats who got defeated in the 1992 Gingrich revolution?

What do you claim is the post-Clinton narrative? Transitions take a bit of time. When Sam Nunn was elected, to use one of your examples, many Southerners still associated Republicans with Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. They would not vote for a Republican, no matter the transition that had already occurred in party alignment. But that only works for so long. Nunn gets in because of the (D) that follows his name. A few others still manage that trick, and only under Reagan as President, did Southern conservatives begin to feel safe with the idea that (R) actually represented their interests.

A few others? The Senate seat and 8 out of 10 House seats went to Democrats in 1984, and kept doing so up until 1992. Zero of these eleven seats went to the old Southern segregationist Democrats. Only two seats went to Republicans. These new Democrat politicians were hardly different in outlook or background than Wendy Davis or Mary Landrieu or any other Southerner the Democrats run today. They were no different in outlook than Bill Clinton himself, and not a bit more racist. All the Southern Democrats were well over any racism by then, and throughout the 1980's. National Democrats had no remaining racial issues with the Southern Democrats at all. So if, by the 1980's, the Southern Democrats were no longer racist, and nobody else was getting any votes, where were all these alleged Southern racists who later alleged to have become Republicans? Indeed, it's a narrative concocted simply because Democrats needed to explain why Clinton, a Southerner, cost them almost the entire South and why they can't regain it.

I am so sick of people confusing the name of the thing for the thing itself.

How about we just agree that you can't compare ANY group of today with the past? I doubt many of the founding fathers conservative or liberal would be happy that both women and minorities have equal status and that white men are no longer considered the superior class. Most of them guys had no issue with owning slaves and considered them to be nothing more than property.

Which is why I would rather vote based on the candidate than the party. We're not Canada.

Well, that would be fine, except for the bizarre self-serving, self-absolving liberal narrative that those racist Southern segregationist Democrats stayed racist and just turned Republican - sometime back in the 1960's. They didn't stay racist and they stayed loyally Democrat for decades afterwards. But they are and always have been pro-defense, pro-gun, anti-communist, and against confiscatory tax rates, weakness, and hippies. The Democrat party used to be pro-defense, pro-gun, anti-communist, and against weakness - though wobbly on tax rates and hippies. When Clinton took office (with massive Southern support) they suddenly found out that the new policy was a gay in every foxhole (Don't ask, don't tell), gun control, a draft dodger in the White House (weakness), high tax rates, universal health care (Hillary!), and hippies everywhere who were still hung over from Woodstock.

The Democrats suffered heavily in the South, and it was the Southern blue dog Democrats who kept the party from drifting way off to the left, toward Berkeley hippies and Northern liberals like Dukakis. They suffered even more Southern losses in subsequent elections, leaving the Democrat party more and more controlled by its liberal wing, a wing whose positions are anathema to much of Southern culture. Even to this day, when a Southern Democrat runs, they often have to run against their own party on a huge host of issues, from gun control to immigration to tax policy to EPA regulations.

It's very interesting how you're choosing not to look at their votes in presidential elections.

As he himself publicly admitted later in life he was blinded by racial hatred. He truly thought whites were superior and that blacks were mentally unfit to get the vote because that is what he was taught growing up. He said that for decades after his failed presidential campaign he would get letters and phone calls from black leaders inviting him to speak, not because they wanted to berate him or punish him for his racist views, but because they wanted to have an open dialogue on a person to person level. It took some time (some 30 years) but he built up a trust and friendship with several of those black church members and realized that his previous positions were in error. He even had the courage to publicly state that his old views were wrong.

One of those black churchmen ended up becoming his best friend, they each attended the marriages of the other's grandchildren and even stayed in the same senior living facility together because they had both lived their lives in the same town. It is kind of a nice story of redemption and changes of heart.

Oh, and Goldwater was also very anti the courting of the religious right. He said if you get in bed with them then they are going to own you and you would end up alienating everyone else from the Republican party because he knew what a bunch of barking loons they were. Look it up.

The Presidential votes just confirm exactly what I've been saying. The South voted for Nixon against McGovern (as did almost everyone else). McGovern was not strong on defense. The South voted for Carter over Ford, who just up and walked away from Vietnam (and pardoned Nixon). Although Reagan attacked him for being weak on defense, Carter was actually a pretty ruthless hawk who had no qualms about death squads, and who was trained in the nuclear Navy. But with his cancellation of the MX missile and scaling back B-1 production (which was the right move, militarily, and based on cost data from John Boyd's fighter mafia), Carter looked weak on defense, and the Iranian hostage crisis doomed him in the South. So the South went for Reagan everywhere except Georgia (native son).

In 1984 it was Reagan against Mondale. Walter Mondale. He didn't win anywhere but his home state. In 1988 it was Bush, former head of the CIA and Reagan's VP against Michael Dukakis, who wouldn't even keep his own wife from being raped and rode a tank like he was Ronald McDonald. In 1992 the South was split. Bush had raised taxes, and Southerners don't like taxes, but do like Southerners on the ballot. In 1996 they split again, because it was a draft dodger (but Southerner!) versus war hero Bob Dole - who campaigned about like a corpse. In 2000 it was George Bush, former fighter pilot and governor of Texas against Al Gore - who was a wacko environmentalist associated with the guy who'd been bopping interns.

Trying to explain any of that with race, which disappeared as a major issue after Nixon's 1968 election, doesn't get you anywhere. It has no explanatory power. The South will not vote for hippie liberals, peaceniks, or gun grabbers, and with the exception of Clinton and Carter, who were both competitive in the South (and they had perfect civil rights credentials), that's all the modern Democratic party has run since LBJ. Having virtually eliminated the various conservative wings of the Democrat party, who would be considered old school Democrats in the mold of Sam Nunn, FDR, Truman, or Kennedy, there is not much left to appeal to Southerners. The Democrat Blue Dog coalition that formed in the wake of lost seats under Clinton, and which became crucial to him, once had 54 members dedicated to "the financial stability and national security of the country". There are only 16 of them left.

And proud of it.

Interesting factoid from the blog piece @Nova posted:

- In Congress, there are no more white Democrats from the South. The long flight of the Dixiecrats has concluded.

http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2014/11/the-missing-story-of-the-2014-election/#28114101=0

Dude, don't you know blogs contain no facts. Don't believe me, just ask gul and garamet. They are only opinions.

Unfortunately party matters. More than the candidate. Doesn't mater what your representative believes, unless the chamber is exactly evenly divided and they are the deciding vote and are willing to break caucus, the party in power decides which bills will be taken up by a committee, which bills make it out of committee and which bills get an actual vote.

The Houston Chronicle is pretty legit. Can you point out a white Southern Dem? Should be pretty easy to disprove if he is correct.

There are plenty of white Southern Democrats. Just none that are in national office at the moment.

He's confused (big surprise). He thinks because the blogs he links are usually devoid of facts, that al of them are similarly flawed. Therefore, if a blog posts something that makes him uncomfortable, it must be no more reliable than the ones he continues to use. Or something.

In the meanwhile, back in reality, Federal courts are overturning Southern GOP redistricting plans because they are yet once again attempting to minimize the minority vote in the South.
http://www.thenation.com/article/165976/how-gop-resegregating-south


What a surprise after the GOP controlled Supreme Court overturned key provisions of the Voting Rights Act that protected minorities not two years ago.

You are what you do.

Bubba started voting Republican when the Dems allowed those damn blackies to vote. The Solid South, once blue democrats, started breaking after LBJ signed the voting rights act, and finished transforming itself when there was a Democratic black man in office. No surprise that the last Dem seat disappeared in the South during Obama's administration.

No.