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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican"
Just heard on the radio that new billboards are being put up in "Predominately black communities in the Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas areas to stress the important fact that MLK Jr was a Republican so YOU should vote Republican too."
My gosh, they are REALLY reaching and it is laughable. Luckily, there has already been a huge back lash and people are demanding that these billboards be taken down.
Some of these Repukes are really disgusting.
S_E_Fudd
(1,295 posts)Until Richard Nixon turned his back on him as a part of the Republican Southern strategy and the Kennedy's began supporting his efforts...
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,080 posts)....there would be no end to the attacks against him by Republicans and conservatives. You think they are rough on Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton? It would be nothing compared to what they would say about MLK.
cherish44
(2,566 posts)I'm pretty sure he would not be a Republican if he were alive today
MLK Jr was a very smart man who would have never stood by these types of Repukes today.
patricia92243
(12,590 posts)that are being targeted by the Republicans of today.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)bluestate10
(10,942 posts)Goldwater ran after the civil rights legislation of Kennedy and Johnson. Goldwater ran after southern democrats turned lockstep into republicans and the south went heavily republican to spite the fact that democrats pushed for civil rights for negroes. Goldwater was the first manifestation of the modern republican party.
lpbk2713
(42,696 posts)But he would have nothing but contempt for today's republican party.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)and in NYC there were 4 parties
liberal
conservative
dem
repub
and the liberal/conserv. was actually just as or more important
that's why one has to be careful with labels
libinnyandia
(1,374 posts)graham4anything
(11,464 posts)libinnyandia
(1,374 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)anyone who would buy the suggestion that MLK Jr. might support today's GOP in any way, they know nothing about MLK Jr. or about today's GOP.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)I'm afraid a lot of people don't know the story behind how the South became the base of today's Republican Party. It's a pretty ugly story.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)MrScorpio
(73,626 posts)Zen Democrat
(5,901 posts)That's because the Democrats were the Old South Jefferson Davis KKK Democrats. Kennedy and LBJ turned that around and the racist Dems became Republicans en masse. Remember, Goldwater won a big chunk of the South in 1964, George Wallace won it in 1968, and Nixon and Republicans have had it since.
Old labels do not apply.
sadbear
(4,340 posts)Republicans don't believe in change.
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)For example, when anyone brings up racism, they counter that Southern Democrats supported slavery in the civil war era and it was the repubs that wanted to end it. They refuse to acknowledge that their party and the Democratic party have virtually switched places when it comes to social politics. Bill Maher is certainly right about the republican bubble.
And black voters are not going to see these billboards and be like, "Oh, so I gotta vote for the man that lies all the time." From my interactions with my african-american co-workers, Mitt is not going to get away with this. They DO NOT like him. It probably has a lot more to do with his religion than anything else.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)LeftinOH
(5,342 posts)is an in-name-only entity which conveniently -and disingenuously- claims the long history of the Republican party as their own. Deceitful bastards.
txdemsftw
(461 posts)apparently, these signs were sponsored by RagingElephants- a black conservative group... and many have already been taken down 20 days ahead of schedule (they were supposed to be up for a solid month).
GOOD!
EC
(12,287 posts)Strom Thurmond was a Democrat.
Risen Demon
(199 posts)Not today. Instead, it would be a religious right fanatic out in the open who was told by a powerful religious right pundit that "God has given you the task to kill this man". The reason? The same: for quoting truth and wisdom against power and corruption.
denverbill
(11,489 posts)AspenRose
(14,916 posts)Yeah, all (black) Democrats are communist somehow
So they can't have it both ways!
AspenRose
(14,916 posts)I'd point out that Romney was protesting FOR the Vietnam War.
hiphopnation
(3,100 posts)Besides it being irrelevant, it's simply not true.
However, he said he wouldn't call King a Democrat, either, because he had "very positive feelings" about Republican Richard Nixon in the late 1950s and "extremely positive feelings" about Republican Nelson Rockefeller, the New York governor who later served as vice president. Also, Garrow said, King became "a very harsh critic" of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson over his escalation of the Vietnam War and "wouldn't necessarily have backed (Democratic presidential nominee) Hubert Humphrey in '68 had he (King) lived."
I can't believe we're still debating this. This is clown shoes, man!
edited to add link:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/jan/17/raging-elephants/houston-group-says-martin-luther-king-jr-was-repub/
We People
(619 posts)By and large, they won't be fooled - and the rethugs are wasting their $ on such advertising. This advertising isn't false per se, but it has an untrustworthy purpose.
If rethugs played it straight and honest, they would lose and be buried in a colossal landslide.
Risen Demon
(199 posts)Part of the Southern Strategy and the adoption of Christianity into the right enabled the rethug party to make justifications for such horrible actions. The duped christian voters will always accept evil, as long as it's wrapped in an American flag, holding a bible.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)fuck the women haters in their party, fuck the anti-hispanic people in their party. If republicans were straight and honest, they would say today that they were going to embrace a brand of fiscal conservatism where corporations didn't get welfare, struggling people that need help get welfare. Of course, republicans would lose the election horribly, the House would go almost 100% democrat and the Senate would have nearly 100 democrats over a couple of election cycles. But by throwing out the worst elements of the republican party, the party would save itself and one day return to prominence as a serious party.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)JFK helped him change his mind. Just prior to the 1960, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy risked alienating the conservative Southern Democrats by talking to Coretta Scott King while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rotted in a "backwoods Georgia jail." The photo below was taken when Dr. King visited President Kennedy at the White House.
Robert Kennedy-His Life by Evan Thomas
EXCERPT
(Robert) Kennedy seemed to fret about what to do as John Seigenthaler drove him to the airport early that afternoon. He was flying to New York for a campaign event. Maybe, he told Seigenthaler, he should take the heat off his brother and act as a "lightning rod" by calling the judge himself. Seigenthaler, whose phone had been ringing all morning with calls of angry southern politicians protesting JFK's call to Mrs. King, urged Bobby to stay out of it. Bobby wearily agreed.
The next day, a press aide told Seigenthaler that the wires were reporting that the judge had released King -- at the intervention of Robert Kennedy.
Can't be true, Seigenthaler said; Kennedy had assured him he wouldn't call the judge. But it was true. Seigenthaler called Kennedy, who sheepishly disclosed the call. He said that, on the plane to New York, he had got to thinking about the whole matter. It was "disgraceful...It just burned me up," Kennedy said. "It grilled me. The more I thought about the injustice of it, the more I thought what a son of a bitch the judge was." So Kennedy called the judge and gave him a lecture on the constitutional right to make bail, and the judge agreed to release King. Later, speaking with Wofford, Kennedy said he told the judge, "If he was a decent American, he would let King out by sundown. I called him because it made me so damn angry to think of that bastard sentencing a citizen to four months hard labor for a minor traffic offense."
The impact of JFK's call to Mrs. King and RFK's intervention with the judge was immense. Daddy King, Martin Luther King's father, an extremely influential Baptist preacher, openly shifted his endorsement from Nixon to Kennedy. The Kennedy campaign brilliantly exploited the symbolism of phone calls with a samizdat campaign in the black community. Careful not to tout the Kennedy-King connection in the popular mainstream press, lest southern voters take umbrage, the Kennedy campaign published hundreds of thousands of leaflets and handbills that were distributed at black churches and bars. On one side, a flyer read: "Jack Kennedy called Mrs. King" On the other side it said: "Richard Nixon did not." Many political analysts believe that this PR offensive decided the election. In a half-dozen states in the East and Midwest carried by Kennedy by very narrow margins on election day, black turnout made the difference. Richard Nixon's chauffeur understood. "Mr. Vice-President," he told his boss after the election, "you know I had been talking to my friends. They had been all for you. But when Mr. Robert Kennedy called the judge to get Dr. King out of jail -- well, they just all turned to him."
CONTINUED
Excerpted from "Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas, pages 101-102.
Maeve
(42,224 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)you know the Dixiecrats?
Technically they are not lying.
History, I know
CheapShotArtist
(333 posts)but I'll give today's RWers credit for one thing: they are at least making a teeny-weeny bit of progress in regards to their racism, compared to the RWers of the MLK era. Back in the day, RWers were proud and open about it. Today, most of them don't seem to be as flamboyant, and are actually using prominent black figures to attract minorities to their side--something that conservatives of yesteryear would've never thought of doing.
Iggo
(47,487 posts)Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts). . . then I am a retired Kamikaze pilot.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)The southern democratic party of King's early manhood was an extreme racist party. All of the powerful southern leaders were democrats. Northern democrats embracing integration is what turned the southerners into republicans. You realize that George Wallace was running as a democrat when he was shot in Maryland don't you?
GeorgeGist
(25,294 posts)madokie
(51,076 posts)1956 republicon party platform: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25838
I used to wonder why my father was a registered republicon until recently when I ran across the 1956 republiCON platform. After reading it I realized that the puke party of today and of the late '50s and early '60s are completely different.
I believe it was tricky dick who foisted the present mind set of the puke party upon us.
standingtall
(2,785 posts)Pretty stupid considering Doctor Kings own children are still alive, and Coretta wrote many books to debunk that garbage.
And yes if he were still alive today conservatives would be calling him every name in the book.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)The majority of Black people voted for Richard Nixon in 1960. Black people voted nearly 100% republican up until FDR. Power politicians of King's younger days were racist democrats, so it makes sense that any thinking person that hated what the south was then would register as a republican, because they were going nowhere as a democrat then.
The republican party of today is what the southern democratic party of King's youth was, a racist party out of step with reality.
JI7
(89,173 posts)vaberella
(24,634 posts)Every group has it's far reaching clowns.
However...the Republicans back in the day were far far far far far more left-leaning than they are today. Even more left-leaning than left-leaning today. Especially if Lincoln means anything.
Marr
(20,317 posts)Anyone with a marginal awareness of recent history knows that the racist Democrats of the south all turned Republican en masse just a few decades ago, in response to Civil Rights legislation.
-LOKI -BAD FOR YA
(308 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)loyalsister
(13,390 posts)Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were republicans, but they sure as hell would not be today. It seems that they were opposed to abortion. But, I think their values regarding women's rights would definitely overcome those leanings.