A History of Liberal White Racism

[fishwax]

197. I get the concept, Joe ... I'm just asking for a single shred of evidence

which you seem either unwilling or unable to produce. Why is that? What is the evidence that the clearly liberal initiatives he enacted/supported and candidates he stumped for were really the opposite of what he believed in? What is the evidence that the guy was an extreme right-winger, other than his deplorable views on race? Bilbo was a horrible and notorious bigot--but in the southern (and especially Mississippi) politics of the 1920s, that didn't really set him apart from the body of politicians associated with the progressive movement.

Out of a strong desire to keep a good public image; Bilbo was a slick operator, and skilled at manipulating and deceiving the public; he knew how to play people, just like Ronald Reagan 60 years later. And in that era, he had to.

So to what end was he doing this? What was his purpose? To pass a bunch of economically conservative legislation that he never got around to?

What I said was, many more moderate voters(hint) probably did not know the extent(that is NOT the same as saying it was totally unknown, mind you!), or simply overlooked it because they didn't care.

Okay ... any evidence to this? Again--his bigotry was way out in the open (and was at the core of campaign issues). If moderates weren't aware of the extent of it, they must have been pretty ill-informed. As to being willing to overlook it--there I'm sure you're right, since the bulk of the electorate in 1920s Mississippi would have had pretty similar views (different in degree, perhaps, but hardly in kind).

Whatever reasons you may have for believing that Bilbo was a genuine liberal, whether it was out of a knee-jerk defense of the authors of the article of the OP, or some rather poor misguided (if perhaps well-meaning) understanding of history, or both

It's pretty clear that Bilbo was, by the standards of his historical context, Bilbo was considered a liberal. His extreme bigotry disqualifies him by our standards today, but for voters in the south in first half of the 20th century, there was nothing incompatible with racism and economic progressivism. (Hell, his bigotry fit right in with the Mississippi progressive movement--see James Vardaman, for example.) Progressives in the north were less likely to be as overtly racist, to be sure, but they were still--for a long time at least--willing to look the other way and/or accommodate the racist proclivities of their political allies in the south. I've offered some evidence of how he fit the bill for his time and place. The authors mentioned in the OP offered evidence. You haven't offered any, but still manage to claim the rest of us are just knee-jerking or don't think critically or don't understand history. Sure, Joe. Whatever.

What you still haven't done is *answered the fairly simple question that I asked in the first place.* At some point, it becomes hard (patient and willing to give the benefit of the doubt though I am) that the real reason you won't is because you can't.

Your analogy to Barack Obama doesn't make any more sense than your comparison to Rand Paul (who, unlike Bilbo, was not considered a liberal by his contemporaries, will not be considered a liberal by historians, has never claimed to be a liberal, has never campaigned as a liberal, has never stumped for liberal candidates or causes, and so on).