Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Brown v. Board (1954). President Eisenhower.
|
I understand the desire to pretend like the Republicans never had a Southern Strategy, never tried to avoid racism to attract white voters in the South, and never tried to use the Civil Rights Act against the Dems.
But when your own party chair apologizes to the NAACP for the party having done just that, it's a little hard to make that denial work.
Quote:
"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," Mehlman said at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
Mehlman's apology to the NAACP at the group's convention in Milwaukee marked the first time a top Republican Party leader has denounced the so-called Southern Strategy employed by Richard Nixon and other Republicans to peel away white voters in what was then the heavily Democratic South. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Republicans encouraged disaffected Southern white voters to vote Republican by blaming pro-civil rights Democrats for racial unrest and other racial problems.
|
eta: Let me say, as I've said before: I applaud Mehlman for doing this. It's his fellow Repubs, who deny that the thing he's apologizing for ever happened, that are the problem.
Threaded Mode