[Desk] It Ain’t Exactly the Party of Lincoln, Y’all
The Desk always gets tickled to see the current GOP talk about their party as if it is the same one that, oh, ended slavery and elected black statewide officials during Reconstruction. Over on Redstate.com (what it sounds like, they’re talking about Walley’s defection, as if it’s a turn to the halcyon days of the diverse Republican Party:
This is the first time since Reconstruction that Republicans have controlled the MS State Senate. Democrats still have a solid majority in the State House.
The part they inevitably leave out is that the parties flip-flopped in the 1960s when the GOP defected from its non-racist roots and started playing the “southern strategy” to take over the Dixiecrats, who were p.o.-ed that the national Democratic Party was becoming too integrationist. So what has actually happened in recent years is that more and more Democrats (defined the old way) have switched over to the Republican Party, with policies closer to the old days. The big change, of course, is that a new Democratic Party has emerged over all this years.
Posted by ladd at 02:17 PM in Legislature, JFP, Elections, MS Newspapers, Analysis | Email this entry
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