Party of Lincoln continued

Party of Lincoln continued

Looks like Black History Month is also Republican Shamelessness Month:

Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) is introducing a bill essentially condemning the Senate for filibustering anti-lynching laws earlier in the 20th century. It's a laudable bill – but its author has anything but a laudable record on civil rights and racial issues. According to the Associated Press in 2000, Allen was discovered to have been displaying a hangman's noose and the confederate flag in his law office. As governor, Allen "signed a Confederate Heritage Month proclamation without denouncing slavery." Allen also "opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King" and referred to the NAACP as an "extremist group."

Thanks to David Sirota for the catch.

For all Robert Byrd's statesmanship in recent years, I hope he retires next year so the right-wingers can quit lauding his brief and ugly Klan membership. At least he reformed which is more than can be said for some. Here's a good article illustrating the history of the migration of the segregationists:

Ultimately, the Dixiecrat movement paved the way for the rise of the modern Republican Party in the South. Many former Dixiecrat supporters eventually became Republicans, as was highlighted by Strom Thurmond's conversion in the 1960s...

Which, of course, was good riddance. Maybe the GOP was the Party of Lincoln. But we're the party of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, not the party of Trent Lott and George Allen. They were the party of Frederick Douglass, but we're the party of Shirley Chisholm and Barack Obama. The modern GOP is living in the 19th century on race in more ways than one.

Politics