ReSegregation

It has taken forty-eight years for the Republican Party of Lincoln to contort itself into the Segregationist Party of Strom Thurmond. In 1964 U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina joined the GOP. Since that time there has been an unmistakable trajectory of the Republican Party away from the values and principles of President Lincoln as the party morphed into and came to embody the views and politics of the hateful, racist, segregationist Thurmond.

“Metamorphosis”  a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation by magic or witchcraft

 

Segregationist Strom Thurmond



Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott

Lest we forget, Thurmond, ever the race war activist, drafted the Southern Manifesto in 1956 in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated public schools. In the “Manifesto” Thurmond called on all supporters of racial segregation to work to “bring about a reversal of this decision…” Thurmond was also a supporter of the Southern strategy which refers in part to Richard Nixon’s and the Republican Party’s 1968 plan for winning elections in southern states by exploiting racism against Black Americans. Were he alive today Strom Thurmond and the 99 co-signers of the “Manifesto” would be proud of the Republican Party 2012. The GOP has completed their nearly half a century long transfiguration from supporters of Civil and Voting Rights to that of ReSegregationist. From Wisconsin to Florida Republican state legislators and governors have set about on a course to deny the fundamental right of voting to African Americans by way of Voter ID (read Voter Suppression) laws. _{See: An Absence of Honor}    

As we noted in July, voter ID laws place a financial burden (a poll tax) on low income voters, minorities, senior citizens and college students - groups that typically vote Democratic. The Toledo Blade described it this way, “During the last century, when black voter suppression was enforced with poll taxes and literacy tests, black churches rallied their members to protest such blatant injustice... Although poll taxes have been eliminated, voter suppression has taken a more insidious form… If Americans have learned anything over the years, it is that efforts to discourage people from voting never stop. They become more creative and cynical.”

 

Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted

 

Former KKK Klansman David Duke

Republican Party’s war on Christians
The Republican Party’s efforts to disenfranchise African Americans of the right to vote is so saturated in the divisive, racial politics of Strom Thurmond that Ohio’s chief election official, Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, is waging a war on Christian voters. For years churches in African American communities have brought entire congregations to register to vote and more recently, to vote early on the Sunday before election day. Last week Mr. Husted unilaterally decided to restrict early voting to weekdays only. The move has been universally called out for the blatantly hostile act that it is, an effort to suppress turnout among African American Christian voters.  

Segregationist Bull Connor

Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Mike Turzai



In 1994, when the GOP won both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years, the new majority immediately began a campaign to “defund the left.” The defunding took the form of withholding federal funds from PBS and NPR and other ridicules antics. None of it worked.  PBS and NPR are as strong today as they ever were. But, Strom Thurmond’s GOP hasn't given up on defunding, or dividing America. On the campaign trail this year Republican presidential candidate Willard Romney said that he wanted to ‘get rid’ of planned parenthood. With voter suppression laws, euphemistically called “voter ID laws” Strom Thurmond’s Republican Party has graduated from trying to defund programs that they don’t like to disenfranchising, 'getting rid,' of African American voters.

The New America

When their party won big in the 2010 mid-term elections, the GOP began in earnest its descent from being the Party of Lincoln. Considering the new demographics of America, that America is no longer a majority caucasian nation and with bi-racial populations ever increasing, it is at once peculiar and confounding that the Republican Party would revert backwards and embrace the failed hateful, divisive politics of Strom Thurmond. Peculiar and confounding though it may be that is exactly what Republicans have done with their ever strident attempts to suppress the votes of African Americans. They (Republicans) have picked up the mantle and legacy of Strom Thurmond and the segregationist. They have completely destroyed their once proud brand. Neither American demographics nor right is on the side of the Republican Party and their updated for the 21^st century voter suppression tactics. It is important to remember that during the civil and voting rights battles of the 1950s and 60s the segregationist lost.

For more see:

Ed Show on NBCNews.com

The Rachel Maddow Show on NBCNews.com

The Rachel Maddow Show on NBCNews.com

by Brent Scott,
Executive Director of Vote by Mail America