On The Idiot's Hackneyed Assertion That Leftists Claim *All* Segregationist Dixiecrats Ultimately Became Republicans

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. 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 ~ Richard Nixon (1/9/1913 to 4/22/1994) the 37th POTUS, serving from 1969 to 1974, when he became the only president to resign the office.

This recent straw man from the blog of a fiscally Conservative Libertarian-leaning idiot..

Willis Hart: On the Hackneyed Leftist Assertion that all of those Segregationist Dixiecrats Ultimately Became Republicans... I gotta go, false, on this one, folks. Al Gore Sr. never became a Republican. John Stennis never became a Republican. Sam Ervin never became a Republican. James Eastland never became a Republican. Everett Jordan never became a Republican. William Fulbright never became a Republican. George Wallace never became a Republican. Lester Maddox never became a Republican... I mean, yeah, you did have Strom Thurmond switching over but one is a hell of a lot different than all and this is one bromide that really needs to be put to rest, I'm thinking. (5/20/2014 AT 8:18pm).

The argument, I'm fairly certain, is that the majority of the vote that used to go Democrat from racially biased Southerners ultimately flipped to the Republican Party. The argument isn't that every single racially-biased Democratic politician who identified with the Dixiecrats switched the political affiliation to GOP.

How easy it is to disprove an argument when you set it up as a straw man! The straw man in this case being the inclusion of the word "ALL" as well as narrowing who we're talking about to politicians. People become set in their ways and cling to their bigotries. That many Dixiecrats stayed with the Democratic Party until their deaths is NOT a big surprise.

The ACTUAL Leftist argument is that the vote of those inclined to racial bigotry flipped from Democrat/Dixiecrat to Republican over time as those people (had a change of heart) or, (more frequently) died. And it is a known fact that Richard Nixon specifically courted the racist Southern vote (people who would have, if they had been alive during the time of the Dixiecrats) voted Democrat.

But this attempt to smear modern day Democrats with the sins of Democrats of yore is old hat for the Hartster. Conveniently he ignores the reality of the situation (which is that the Party that represents the racist vote flipped from D to R) in order to paint the Democrats as the Party of the "real" racists.

The Truth About Republican Racism and the "Southern Strategy": it's easy to say Lincoln was a Republican and the KKK was largely built by Democrats, but by doing so you only prove your own ignorance of history. You're ignoring the fact that as Democrats evolved to embrace equality for African Americans, Southern racists were left looking for a new political party — and they found one that not only embraced their racism and bigotry, it sought it out. (Excerpt from the Forward Progress 6/4/2013 article by Allen Clifton).

What the actual takeaway from this history should be is that the Democrats progressed while Republicans have regressed. The fact is that now/today it is the Repubs who most racially biased voters identify with (the Tea Party wing of the GOP in particular).

Wikipedia: The Republican Party was founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers [and] quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Southern Democratic Party. [But the Republican Party eventually turned away from their anti-slavery roots...] Though the "Solid South" had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery before the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation. The [Southern] strategy was first adopted under future Republican President Richard Nixon and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater in the late 1960s. The strategy was successful in winning 5 formerly Confederate states in both the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. It contributed to the electoral realignment of some Southern states to the Republican Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black voters to the Democratic Party. (Excerpts from the Wikipedia Pages "Republican Party (United States)/Founding and 19th century" AND "Southern Strategy".

Talk of the Democratic Party having a racist history (which it does) somehow excusing/negating the Republican Party's racist PRESENT is one bromide that really needs to be put to rest, I'm thinking. And we can also awaken people to the FACT about where the Dixiecrat (racist) vote went too (it went to the GOP... which actively courted it).

7/6/2015 Update: Willis frequently posts on the same topic (and says essentially the same thing) many times. As if restating the same belief over and over will validate his bullshit. That, or he simply forgets he already wrote a blog post on the topic.

Willis Hart: On the Fact that Al Gore Jr., John Stennis, Sam Ervin, James Eastland, Everett Jordan, William Fulbright, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox All Got Buried with Their Democratic Boots on... So much for the Democratic racists changed parties narrative. (7/1/2015 AT 9:36am).

As I already pointed out, it is NOT the "narrative" that the politicians changed parties. The "narrative" (reality) is that the voters switched parties. And I'm referring to "voters" as in people who vote, not individuals. The fact that the South is solidly Republican is proof positive that this "narrative" is 100 percent accurate. That Willis insists that the "narrative" is that the politicians changed parties is another of Willis' infamous strawmen (the reason why I call him "Willis I love strawmen Hart").

SWTD #255, wDel #61.