Why the GOP is holding on to its racial resentment
By Francis Wilkinson / Bloomberg opinion
Last week, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas reminded us that George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, was a Democrat. It wasn’t Cruz’s first foray into what might be called “The Democrats Are the Real Racists” discourse.
The notion that contemporary Democrats are the same party that enjoyed night rides in white hoods is immensely popular on the right. Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse has established a tenure track on Twitter correcting distortions of the history of political parties and racial politics.
Like many Republicans, Cruz enjoys parsing the morality of racial politics before the parties sorted along racial lines in the second half of the 20th century. Also like his colleagues, he is silent about the sorting and its consequences, which resulted in the GOP attracting virulent racists, north and south, who felt betrayed by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil and political rights for Black people.
GOP efforts to move beyond racial resentment have been neither plentiful nor especially energetic. There was an extended moment during the administration of President George W. Bush when Republicans looked as if they might evolve beyond racial aggression as a political bonding agent. But the nation then elected a Black man president in 2008, and again in 2012. If a Black president was no fluke, what perils did the future hold as the white share of the population declined? The rage and anxiety generated by that question form the core of MAGA, and the content of Fox News.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-why-the-gop-is-holding-on-to-its-racial-resentment/
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I have posted that in comments many times when someone points out the racist history of the Democratic Party. I remember asking one moron: do you think that the KKK members in 2016 voted for Hillary?? No response.
Another fun thing to do is to remind them that most if not all of those people memorialized in Confederate statues were Democrats. I ask them "Why are you defending statues of Democrats??" 
