No. of Recommendations: 1
Then the GOP seized the banner of hate, and here we are.
The Southern Democrats felt betrayed. I remind you that LBJ was a Democrat, and he pushed the CRA through. At the time he said the Dems had lost the South for a generation. Turns out it has been three generations and counting. Racism and segregation was more important to the Southern Dems than any other issue, and they became Southern Repubs within just a few years.
Dems have since seized the banner(s) of equal rights regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender...I assume it's a similar mindset for Reps to oppose those things that drove the Southern Dems to become Southern Reps.
Kinda pathetic, really. They didn't get their segregation back, they didn't get their overturning of Love (miscegenation), but they did get made more irrelevant as they were RIF'ed into unemployment while CEOs reap ever-larger salaries and bonuses. And an ever-larger national debt to pay for all those tax cuts for rich people. Basically, they got nothing. And yet they keep voting "R".
And I'm speaking as a former "R" myself, though I was too young to remember the CRA passage.
