A little early....didn't think Obama would stoop this low, so soon

[Michael Tee]

<<Did you even look at the numbers . Hillary only carried the over 45 white crowd.>>

Such data are meaningless without knowing what percentage of the "over-45-whites" were of total white voters.  Nit-picking like that will involve us in endless minutiae which in the end will prove nothing.  The big picture tells the story - - what used to be the Solid South until the Democratic Party conclusively turned its back on racism, went Republican in a big way afterwards.  Sheer coincidence?  Bullshit.  Southern Strategy more likely.

<<When is the last time you were even in the South?>>

February 2008.  If you want to count Miami Beach as the South.  What does that have to do with anything?  It's like asking someone who gave an opinion on Iraq when was the last time he had been to Iraq.  It's like asking someone with an opinion on Nazi Germany when he was last in Nazi Germany.  Sometimes those who WERE there will come up with the most distorted views of all:  Racist?  Us?  Hell no, not us!!  I don't give added points for being part of the problem - - there is such a thing as being too close to the situation.

<<Jim Crow died with Brown vs Board of Education. >>

The hell it did!!  It died with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

<<Took a Republican appointed Supreme Court to do it.>>

Really?  They were all Republican appointees?  Brown was a unanimous decision of the court, there was no liberal/conservative split on it.  Besides, how many "Republican-appointed Supreme Courts" upheld Jim Crow, claimed the Negro was only 3/5 of a human being, said that Dred Scott's owner had a right to reclaim his property?

<<Took a republican president to enforce it. >>

A pretty reluctant Republican president, if you're referring to Little Rock.  It took a Democratic AG to enforce the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, and THAT enforcement was followed by the racists deserting the Democratic Party in droves in the South and flocking to the Republican banner for the first time since Reconstruction.

[Plane]

"...went Republican in a big way afterwards."


Not a fact is it?

How many Republican Govenors , Senators or Congressmen were Southern Republicans in the six years following the Voteing rights act?

Go for twelve years , still almost a solid south for the Dems?
Yep.

Piffle always finds a buyer , you have bought this piffle.

Besides, how many "Republican-appointed Supreme Courts" upheld Jim Crow, claimed the Negro was only 3/5 of a human being, said that Dred Scott's owner had a right to reclaim his property?

None , never even one. Justice Tanney and all of the court that found against Dread Scott were Democratic administration appointees.

[Xavier_Onassis]

None , never even one. Justice Tanney and all of the court that found against Dread Scott were Democratic administration appointees.

===========================
Before 1856, the Republican Party did not even exist. Before 1860, it was not taken seriously.
The Whigs and the Democrats were both split over the slavery issue. The Whigs were the party of the business elite. The Southern elite was the plantation elite, and they were not usually Whigs. In 1860, the Whigs split into the Constitutional Union Party and the Republicans. The Democrats split into a Norther and a Southern faction, and each fielded a candidate. After the Civil War, nearly all the Whigs were Republicans in the North and a nervous combination of former slaves and carpetbaggers in the South. After 1876, the Democrats agreed to accept the minority candidate Hayes over the winner Tilden for an end to the occupation troops and a withdrawal of the Freedman's Bureau. Jim Crow Laws were passed after that date.

The supporters of Jim Crow transferred from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party between 1963 and 1980. Georgia voted for Goldwater, a converted Jew and an outspoken fellow who was not really into Civil Rights in 1964. It took a while for the GOP to accept the segregationists into their ranks, because they had opposed them for reasons other than bigotry for so long. The number of Southern Black voters was negligible until at least 1968. The Republicans ended up with nearly all of George Wallace's segregationist supporters.

It is futile to claim that creeps like Jesse Helms were against Jim Crow Laws, so stop trying please.
a

[Michael Tee]

<<Piffle always finds a buyer , you have bought this piffle. >>

Well, here's some more piffle for you, then - -

Mississippi Senators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_Mississippi

James O. Eastland was the 10th in an unbroken line of Democratic Senators stretching back to 1877; he served for a term in 1941 and then from 1943 to 1978; one of the South’s political traditions is to re-elect the incumbent, especially a good ol’ boy who knows how to keep you-know-who in their place.  The voters knew Eastland as a racist and a fascist and they weren’t going to punish HIM because the party had been turned around by a bunch a God-damn Jews and n-----s but when Eastland retired, guess who succeeded him?  Thad Cochran, a Republican.  A Republican who held the seat from 1978 to now.  What kind of Republican?  Just ask Wikipedia:

Cochran grew up as a Democrat but became a Republican sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s. He served as head of Richard Nixon's Mississippi campaign in 1968.  Gee:  a lifetime as a Democrat until “sometime in the mid-to-late sixties.”  Hmmm, now WHAT could have caused such a dramatic change in the guy’s political career?  The Civil Rights Act?  The Voting Rights Act?  RACISM?  Naaaaah!  Chalk it all up to coincidence.

Mississippi’s other Senator at the time of the passage of the VRA and CRA was John C. Stennis, who had the seat since 1947 and held it till 1989.  (They like their racists old and seasoned in Mississippi.)  Again the white racist voters of Mississippi knew a good racist when they saw one, and they weren’t about to turf him out just because of the actions of a bunch of Jews and n-----s from the East Coast.  Stennis was the sixth in an unbroken line of Democratic Senators that started in 1881, but when he retired, guess who succeeded to HIS seat?  Omigod, ANOTHER Republican!  the infamous Trent Lott.  Is that a coincidence or what?

Not a racist, of course not, but by ANOTHER Amazing Coincidence, Lott had also been a lifelong Democrat until sometime between the passage of the VRA and the CRA and 1972, when Wikipedia says he ran as a Republican.  Lott, BTW, in a little-known achievement of his own, led a successful battle to keep blacks out of ANY chapter of his college frat, not that he’s a racist, for sure not, he probably just didn’t feel their skin colour would match the wallpaper in any of the frat-houses across the country.    http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399310,00.html

 I don't have the time or the necessity to go through each of the states as I did with Mississippi, but I skimmed through them, and in each case, the pattern is more or less identical:  a virtually unbroken stream of DEMOCRATIC U.S. Senators, with maybe one or two exceptions only, from the 1870s until just a few years after the passage of the CRA/VRA, and then Republicans, either solid or mixed (alternating) with Democrats showing the first Republican successes in the U.S. Senate in 90 years or more - - all AFTER the CRA and VRA.  And more often than not the "Republicans" who stepped into formerly Democratic offices were themselves former Democrats.

Anyone who claims that the so-called Southern Strategy was anything OTHER than a successful harvesting by the Republican Party of white southern racists abandoning the Democrats over civil rights for blacks is just plain fulla shit.

[BT]

The Myth of ?the Southern Strategy?

   
By CLAY RISEN
Published: December 10, 2006

Everyone knows that race has long played a decisive role in Southern electoral politics. From the end of Reconstruction until the beginning of the civil rights era, the story goes, the national Democratic Party made room for segregationist members ? and as a result dominated the South. But in the 50s and 60s, Democrats embraced the civil rights movement, costing them the white Southern vote. Meanwhile, the Republican Party successfully wooed disaffected white racists with a ?Southern strategy? that championed ?states? rights.?

It?s an easy story to believe, but this year two political scientists called it into question. In their book ?The End of Southern Exceptionalism,? Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however ? and here?s the surprise ? even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.)

The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn?t.

To be sure, Shafer says, many whites in the South aggressively opposed liberal Democrats on race issues. ?But when folks went to the polling booths,? he says, ?they didn?t shoot off their own toes. They voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences.? Shafer says these results should give liberals hope. ?If Southern politics is about class and not race,? he says, ?then they can get it back.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html

[Plane]

The Myth of ?the Southern Strategy?

&nbsp; &nbsp;
If Southern politics is about class and not race,? he says, ?then they can get it back.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html

Do they want it back ?

Would they rather not preserve their cherished myths ?

[BT]

Do they want it back ?

Would they rather not preserve their cherished myths ?

They will have to search their souls and determine whether truth is more important than power.

[Michael Tee]

So all those mobs that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s who tried to prevent school desegregation weren't really racists, they were just kidding.  Just all out for some fresh air at the same time, and the liberal media made them out to be racists.  Or maybe by the end of the Sixties, they just vanished into thin air, maybe in an unknown Rapture.  Leaving behind, unfortunately, the lamentable myth of a white racist south.  Gee, this sure is educational.  One minute you see angry mobs, firehoses, police dogs, Sheriffs and deputies clubbing the shit out of people and the next - - all gone.  No racists here.  Just nouveaux riches voting to protect their new-found wealth.  Of course.

[BT]

Times change. People change.

Look what happened to Russia after the fall of Communism.

Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in.

They have high heeled shoe races, for cryin' out loud.

[Christians4LessGvt]

"If Obama is elected, it will be seen as a major change in not only American politics"

does that mean the welfare pimps and whiners will drop the crutch and finally look in mirror?

[Xavier_Onassis]

It means that you Christians ( at last count, there was one of you, despite the plural)  will never manage to get a smaller government. Of course, if McCain wins, this won't happen either.

[Michael Tee]

<<People change.>>

Not THAT fast, they don't.  Are you trying to tell me that Trent Lott and Thad Cochran and all the rest of their loathesome ilk were dirt-poor hillbillies who were lifelong Democrats but as the affluence of the "New South" fell upon them like a shower of golden rain they suddenly realized which party would better protect their new-found wealth?  Please.  Give me a break.  Try to keep your ridiculous fairy tales within some remote semblance of reality.

<<Look what happened to Russia after the fall of Communism.

<<Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in.

<<They have high heeled shoe races, for cryin' out loud. >>

There is nothing at all surprising there - - what do you think one of the functions of communism was?  It was to keep a lid on these parasites and leeches and force them into some kind of productive labour for the common good of the socialist Motherland.  With Communism gone, there is no braking force on these antisocial elements and just as in the U.S.A. they will drain the lifeblood from hardworking men and women to further their own parasitic existence.

[BT]

There is nothing at all surprising there - - what do you think one of the functions of communism was?  It was to keep a lid on these parasites and leeches and force them into some kind of productive labour for the common good of the socialist Motherland.  With Communism gone, there is no braking force on these antisocial elements and just as in the U.S.A. they will drain the lifeblood from hardworking men and women to further their own parasitic existence.

LOL

And here i thought the function of communism was to replace one elite with another.

[Xavier_Onassis]

No one wants to work in Russia anymore.
It used to be that the work went to the proles ands the farmers, and the benefits went to the party bosses
Now the benefits go to the exploiters.

I fail to see what high heeled shoe races have to do with anything.

[Michael Tee]

<<And here i thought the function of communism was to replace one elite with another.>>

Yeah, that's what George Orwell thought, too.  Can't say there isn't some truth to it, in the result, but it sure as hell wasn't what the original Revolutionaries intended.  The elite was to guide the masses into real communism, when the elites would disappear and the state was supposed to wither away.  The whole idea got fucked up.  Next time, they'll do it right.