Switching Parties?
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| Judd Garrett |
At what point will we, as Americans, be allowed to stop beating ourselves up over crimes that were committed in our country over 150 years ago? When will we be able to get beyond the sins of our forefathers? 500 years from now, if the United States of America still exists, will people still be held accountable for the evils that occurred in the first 87 years of this country? Will those crimes still define America regardless of how much we have changed and evolved? Is any change necessary or worth it, if we are perpetually tethered to the sins we have evolved away from? Were the 600,000 deaths in the civil war to abolish slavery worth it if we are prevented from acknowledging and realizing the victory those deaths ushered in? Was the Civil Rights movement worth it if we continually act like the movement accomplished nothing? Did Martin Luther King die in vain? Was his life insignificant if we do not recognize any of his accomplishments?
We are continually told that present-day Americans must account for the history of racism in America, even if they never committed an act of discrimination in their life. That is the impetus for reparations legislation. It does not matter that America no longer has slavery or Jim Crow, or that white people in America never owned a slave, never discriminated against anyone based on race, they will still have to pay the reparations, pay for the crimes of people long dead and gone who happened to share skin pigmentation as them. It is hard to get through one day in America without reading an article, seeing an item on the Internet or watching a TV program that does not bring up the history of racism in America. Our collective past must be accounted for in the present by somebody.
No institution in America is immune from this type of transgenerational accountability for racism, except one; The Democrat Party. Somehow, someway, the Democrat Party has been able to escape accountability for its historic racism. There is absolutely no doubt that the history of the Democrat Party is one of extreme racism. The Democrat Party was the party of slavery. The Democrat Party was the party of Jim Crow and segregation. The Democrat Party started the Ku Klux Klan. The Democrat Party was the party that blocked and filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights act. Racism is weaved and embedded into the history of Democrat Party. There is no sidestepping that reality. It is a historical fact.
But amazingly, The Democrat Party somehow has been given a pass. They have never been held accountable for the documented sins of their racism. Why? How are they immune? The Democrat Party escapes responsibility because they perpetuate a lie. They claim that at some point in the late 1960s, the political parties switched; the Democrats became the Republicans, and the Republicans became the Democrats. Therefore, all the bad things, all the racist acts that are in the history of the Democrat Party are now superimposed on the Republican party. It is an interesting slight-of-hand because the Democrats never give up their good past; they still claim Presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F Kennedy. If the parties did in fact switch, those two Presidents should be considered Republicans? The Democrats can’t pretend that Abraham Lincoln is one of theirs without relinquishing FDR and JFK. It doesn’t work that way. They cannot look back through history and cherry pick all the good people, all the effective policies, all the historic achievements of American, and take them for themselves, while hoisting all the bad people and bad policies onto their opponents. Also, if The Democrat Party legitimately wanted to renounce its racist past, why didn’t it change its name which is tied to so much racism? Because it didn’t.
Their claim that the parties switched originates from the 1968 Presidential campaign when Richard Nixon had a “Southern strategy”. It all sounds very sinister, a “Southern strategy”. But is it? Richard Nixon is not the first nor the last Presidential candidate to have a strategy to win different parts of the country? Every Presidential candidate worth his salt has had campaign strategies to win the South, or the Midwest, or the Rust Belt, or the Northeast, or the West? So, Nixon having a so-called “Southern strategy” means absolutely nothing. It is not unique.
They claim that Nixon’s “Southern strategy” was different because his strategy required that he and the Republican Party embrace a racist platform to win the Southern vote. So, how did Nixon’s “Southern strategy” work out? Yes, Nixon won the 1968 Presidential election, but he did not win a single state in the deep South; he did not win Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas or Arkansas. So, we’re to believe that Nixon embraced racism and turned the Republican Party racist to win the South, but did not win one Southern state while winning 32 of the remaining 44 states? So, his racist “Southern strategy” caused him to lose the entire south, but win 73% of the rest of the country. It makes no sense. In 1972, Nixon won the entire South, but he also won 49 of the 50 states, so once again his platform resonated throughout the entire country, and not just in the South.
In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the Presidential election mainly because he won the entire South. So, did Carter win that election because he and the Democrat Party devised a racist platform? Throughout the 1980’s, Republican Presidential candidates consistently won the South and the general election, but their platforms had a national appeal. Ronald Reagan won 44 and 49 states in his two victories, while George HW Bush won 40 states in his 1988 win. Republicans have won the South in every Presidential election since, but is that a sign of racism or some other issue?
In 1973, around the time when Democrats claim the parties switched, the Supreme Court handed down their Roe v Wade decision, making abortion a guaranteed Constitutional right. This issue, more than anything else changed the political landscape of the South. The Southern United States is often called the “Bible Belt” because it has the largest percentages of Evangelical Christians. Abortion is one of the main issues that determines the Evangelical vote. Since 1980, over 70% of Evangelical Christians have voted for Republican Presidential candidates. So, it has been the legalization of abortion which Democrats have unabashedly supported, and Republicans have tirelessly fought against which has turned the South red, and not a fake accusation of racism, or the fantasy of the parties switching.
Racism is embedded into the history of the Democrat Party, and the Democrat Party’s racism is the racist history of America. So, when Democratic politicians assail America’s history of racism, they should be condemning their own party. But instead of holding a mirror up to their own faces, they’ve adroitly been able to flip that mirror around and point it at their opponents thus making innocent people guilty of the crimes they committed, and escaping the guilt of their racist past.
The Democrat Party is still the party of racism because it views every issue and every person through the lens of race, and it crafts its policies accordingly. Their present-day embracing of identity politics is simply the offspring of their past history of separating and judging people based on their skin color. It is time that The Democrat Party is held accountable for both of their past history and their present expressions of their racist philosophies.
The Democrat Party has been on the wrong side of history from its founding and throughout its existence, and even today with its embracing of the abortion culture, censorship of political opponents, totalitarian control of the people, Communist leanings, the destructive woke culture and their racist identity politics. If America survives these Democrat scourges, future Americans with look back at them in the same light as we look back at slavery and Jim Crow, and the Democrats will do what they always do, blame Republicans for their own sins.
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Judd Garrett writes for Objectivity is the Objective. His most recent non-writing job was as Director of Advanced Scouting with the Dallas Cowboys. He is a frequent contributor on the topics of sports and politics to Real Clear Politics.
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