by Paul Krugman
May 21, 2010, 4:23 pm
Parties Change
You know, if Rand Paul loses his Senate race, in a way I’ll be sorry. He’s been so much fun in such a short period of time!
Anyway, given the flap over his assertion that he wouldn’t support the Civil Rights Act of 1964, some Republicans are making the argument that they were the party of civil rights, while Democrats were the enemies. And there’s some truth to that: in the 1950s and early 1960s, the opponents of civil right were largely Southern Democrats.
But what happened to those Southern Democrats? They became Republicans. And I’m not just speaking metaphorically: many Republican members of Congress during the era of GOP dominance were, literally, former Democrats who switched parties.
The point is that today’s Democratic party is, effectively, the party of Lyndon Johnson, whose decision to push forward on civil rights cost the party the South, as he knew it would. Meanwhile, today’s Republican party is the party of Richard Nixon, who cynically exploited the backlash against civil rights to build a new majority.
So yes, let’s honor the great Republicans of yore; I’m a Lincoln man, myself. But let me tell you, George W. Bush was no Abraham Lincoln.
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