Secular Café: Decades of Teabaggers

Secular Café For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world

Decades of Teabaggers May 20th 2012, 06:58 joelgp: Daily Kos: 70 Years of Tea Party Obstructionism Back in the 1960's, activist Tom Hayden wrote The Dixiecrats and Changing Southern Power (CCC4b) Quote: "When Franklin Roosevelt attempted to strengthen the liberalism of the party and its policies, he met the organized opposition of conservative Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans in Congress. They stymied much of his program, and strengthened their power during the Second World War. Conflict broke out in the Democratic Party after the war over the issue of civil rights. The Southern delegations even walked out of the 1948 convention to create a States Rights Party in protest against the strong civil rights platform of the national party." The Dixiecrats eventually became Republicans, making the party of Abraham Lincoln the party of Jefferson Davis. Quote: "1. Speaking broadly, the Dixiecrats represent economic-political-social conservatism—although it is dominated by expediency whenever their power is threatened. 2. Since 1960, voting records indicate their general opposition to civil rights, foreign aid, extensions of unemployment compensation, aid for depressed areas, medical care for the aged, tax cuts favoring the underprivileged classes, a minimum wage, federal aid to education and public housing. 3. In addition to these formal differences with the liberal wing of the Democratic and Republican parties, the Dixiecrats often are vociferously belligerent in their attacks on integrationists and other liberals." Tom Hayden was a Sixties radical, but he was right on the dot about the Dixiecrats. Quote: "Even though yielding to Southerners on the issue of civil rights, the President has not received much support from them in return—with the ambiguous exception of trade and taxation bills. In addition, the President has deliberately worked against liberal efforts to change Senate and House rules, although he has supported minimal reform of the House Rules Committee. In the first three years the conservative coalition has effectively thwarted the programs of civil rights advocates and other liberals." Just like the teabaggers now. What they did to FDR and JFK they did to Bill Clinton and they are now doing to Barack Obama: viciously attacking when they don't get their way. rbird commented Quote: In my most evil moments... ...I think about what I would have done if I had been Abe Lincoln. First, triple my personal security (Boothe gets nailed as he starts up the stairs to my box). Second, remove voting rights from every traitorous white Southerner for five generations. Third, encourage the emigration out of the USA by Southern whites. Fourth, break up all the large estates that I confiscated from rich Southern supporters and give them mostly to recently freed slaves. In other words, go all Roman on their asses. The world hasn't been bothered by Carthage for the last two thousand years, has it? I'm a Union man, I've been a Union man all my life. The Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, betrayal, and naked aggression. Remember, I'm the kossack who proposed a Burn the Confederate Flag Day. But those are only in my most evil moments. Never fear, I'm only evil for two or three minutes a day. Gary J: Quote: Radical Reconstruction I have wondered if Reconstruction failed because it was not radical enough. It may be that the economic and social power of the Confederate ruling class should have been broken, by expropriating their land and giving it to the freedmen. There cannot have been many plantation owners in the southern states, in 1865, who were not guilty of treason or other serious crimes against the United States. They could have been treated far more harshly than they were. The risk of such a policy would be of creating an even more violent and racially divided south, but the less extreme policy actually followed scarcely promoted real peace and harmony. There is no man alive who is sufficiently good to rule the life of the man next door to him. Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris, M.P. Instead, the Northerners tried to be conciliatory, but look what that got them. The Southern reactionaries reasserting themselves and turning Southern blacks into second-class citizens again. DMB once asked if Americans must continue re-fighting the US Civil War. Apparently so, at least in the near future. The Tea Party in Trouble? - Secular Café discusses Colin Woodard's book American Nations, about US regional cultures and politics. Yankeedom and the Deep South have been fighting each other since at least the early 19th cy., with the help of whatever allies that they have been able to recruit.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions