Democrats Started the KKK

[Mephisto]

GOP group's campaign ad says Democrats started KKK

POSTED: 6:52 p.m. EDT, September 21, 2006

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (AP) -- A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers.

Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the black Republican nominee for Maryland's open Senate seat, disavowed the ad Thursday as "insulting to Marylanders." He said his campaign asked the Washington-based National Black Republican Association to stop running it.

At an event in Baltimore, Steele said, "I don't know exactly what the intent of the ad was" but that "it's not helpful to the public discourse."

The ad does not mention Steele or his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin.

The association's president, Frances Rice, did not return calls for comment. The group, founded a year ago, promotes the Republicans to black voters.

The spot begins with one woman telling another, "Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican."

Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said Thursday that King never endorsed candidates from either party.

"I think it's highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there's really no evidence," Klein said.

A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.

In the ad, the woman goes on to say, "Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan." Her companion replies, "The Klan? White hoods and sheets?"

The KKK, never a political party, was a racist group of white men that started in the South after the Civil War, when Republicans were almost unheard of in former Confederate states. The mainstream Democratic Party never endorsed the Klan nor claimed to have founded it.

The first woman also says, "Democrats fought all civil rights legislation from the 1860s to the 1960s. Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks."

The ad asserts that "Democrats want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat" and "Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent's consent and suing the Boy Scouts for saying 'God' in their pledge."

About the Republicans, the ad says: "Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/21/black.republicans.ap/index.html
______________

Does Dave Chapelle and his Black, blind KKK member come to mind?

 

[RandFan]

Does Dave Chapelle and his Black, blind KKK member come to mind?

Historically it is true that the positions of the parties in regards to minority rights have switched to some degree. Many Southern Democrats who stood against the civil rights of the '60s have moved to the Republican party. The south for a long time was a Democrat strong hold. It is not a Republican one.

I'm not quite certain how Dave's skit applies. Are you suggesting that black republicans are racist or just dishonest about the current perception that Democrats do more and care more for minorities. I say perception because I think it is arguable as to the best solutions for minorities.

 

[Mephisto]

I'm not quite certain how Dave's skit applies. Are you suggesting that black republicans are racist or just dishonest about the current perception that Democrats do more and care more for minorities. I say perception because I think it is arguable as to the best solutions for minorities.

Hey RF, good to see your old avatar back.

I'm saying that someone in Maryland is blind in more ways than one. As for the current south, they are predominately red states now, aren't they?

 

[RandFan]

Hey RF, good to see your old avatar back.

I'm here to please.

I'm saying that someone in Maryland is blind in more ways than one. As for the current south, they are predominately red states now, aren't they?

Yes, I conceded that in my post. What is the significance of that fact? Is it as simple as concluding that Republicans are now racists and Democrats aren't? Or is it that the Republican party has become more conservative (in the classic sense) and resistant to any change of the status quo and that they have seized on family values as a platform and appeal to people in rural communities who feel that the big cities no longer care about those values.

Please note, I'm not arguing for or against any of these issues at the moment.

 

[Darth Rotor]

GOP group's campaign ad says Democrats started KKK

POSTED: 6:52 p.m. EDT, September 21, 2006

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (AP) -- A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers.

Does Dave Chapelle and his Black, blind KKK member come to mind?

I think this "Clan Democrat" word game uses the following progression of "logic."

Klan began in the South post Civil War. South predominantly Democrat pre and post Civil War. South massively Anti Republican, the party of Reconstruction, post Civil War and well into the 1960's and 1970's. Plenty of Southern Democrats expressed anti Segregationist sentiments over the decades.

Klan is "southern." Klan must therefore be Democrat in origin.

Swiss cheese.

I'd suggest that people stop using the Klan for political purposes: it just gives them free publicity. They need that . . . why?

Oh, I get it, if one can't use Hitler imagery to smear an opponent, or Willie Horton, one uses the Klan. True or not, it evokes a negative symbolic image.

Don't these people have any imagination? Aren't there any real issues for them to discuss, or is this all a charade?

DR

 

[Mephisto]

I'm here to please.

Yes, I conceded that in my post. What is the significance of that fact? Is it as simple as concluding that Republicans are now racists and Democrats aren't? Or is it that the Republican party has become more conservative (in the classic sense) and resistant to any change of the status quo and that they have seized on family values as a platform and appeal to people in rural communities who feel that the big cities no longer care about those values.

Please note, I'm not arguing for or against any of these issues at the moment.

I was thinking more of the voting irregularities aimed at African-Americans in a southern state in 2000. I was also thinking of the disenchantment of African-American regarding the Katrina debacle. It must be difficult being an African-American GOP candidate anywhere in America.

I'm surmising that these things may have already been tossed in this group's lap by people they've spoken to as they are relatively fresh in memory, hence the "historical" assertions (made perhaps in the hope that no one remembers that far back) casting the Democrats in a laughingly bad light.

 

[Mephisto]

Don't these people have any imagination? Aren't there any real issues for them to discuss, or is this all a charade?

It's always a charade, DR. In spite of the urgency of all the real issues, it's always a charade.

 

[Ohmer]

Historically it is true that the positions of the parties in regards to minority rights have switched to some degree. Many Southern Democrats who stood against the civil rights of the '60s have moved to the Republican party.

Strom Thurmond. Democrat until 1964.

 

[BPSCG]

Many Southern Democrats who stood against the civil rights of the '60s have moved to the Republican party.

The most prominent among them being Strom Thurmond, who is, when last accounted for, dead, but who had pretty much given up on his racist past by then. George Wallace, probably the most famous Democratic racist of the period, never switched parties, also gave up on his racist past, and is also dead.

The Maryland senate race is turning particularly nasty. Dems somehow got hold of Steele's tax returns a few months ago. A couple of Democratic campaign operatives have recently had to quit or were fired over racist comments. Now this. FWIW, the two candidates have apparently tried to keep it clean; it seems to be mostly the work of lower-level people or people not directly affiliated with, or unaffiliated with the campaigns.

I figure in another 75-100 years or so, we'll have elections where the race card doesn't get played. If so, I would have been 130 years old...

 

[TragicMonkey]

I figure in another 75-100 years or so, we'll have elections where the race card doesn't get played.

By that time, we'll be nasty about other people's genetic enhancements or cybernetic implants. "Nancy Zybertron is FIFTY PERCENT aluminum. Aluminum bends easily. Do YOU want Virginia represented by an Overlord who will bend before the terrible threat of the Space Crocodiles? Vote Xortrax!"

 

[Huntster]

.......The Maryland senate race is turning particularly nasty. Dems somehow got hold of Steele's tax returns a few months ago. A couple of Democratic campaign operatives have recently had to quit or were fired over racist comments. Now this. FWIW, the two candidates have apparently tried to keep it clean; it seems to be mostly the work of lower-level people or people not directly affiliated with, or unaffiliated with the campaigns.

Damn. Why is that? I see it all the time. It's like they had a personal stake in it.

I hate to boast, but I can confidently attest that the black/white race thing isn't an issue in Alaska. There is a bit of nativism among Alaska Natives, but if you don't go out in the Bush, you'll never see it.

Politically? It's not an issue (unless you're talking Alaska Natives, Senator Ted Stevens, and Washington DC).

I figure in another 75-100 years or so, we'll have elections where the race card doesn't get played. If so, I would have been 130 years old...

I figured you were wiser than that, BPSCG.

The race card is in the deck, and all cards get dealt eventually (even if that "special" card isn't regularly dealt from the bottom of the deck).

 

[ponderingturtle]

The Maryland senate race is turning particularly nasty. Dems somehow got hold of Steele's tax returns a few months ago. A couple of Democratic campaign operatives have recently had to quit or were fired over racist comments. Now this. FWIW, the two candidates have apparently tried to keep it clean; it seems to be mostly the work of lower-level people or people not directly affiliated with, or unaffiliated with the campaigns.

Um I thought politicians had to disclose their tax returns to the public. Or is that a state thing?

 

[Mephisto]

Vote Xortrax!"

SCREW XORTRAX! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

 

[ponderingturtle]

SCREW XORTRAX! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

All Hail Xenu!

 

[DaChew]

Robert "Sheets" Byrd. Democrat. Former Grand Whatever of the Ku Klux Klan. Still serving member of Congress.

Just thought I'd toss that in to the mix.

 

[Beerina]

By that time, we'll be nasty about other people's genetic enhancements or cybernetic implants. "Nancy Zybertron is FIFTY PERCENT aluminum. Aluminum bends easily. Do YOU want Virginia represented by an Overlord who will bend before the terrible threat of the Space Crocodiles? Vote Xortrax!"

F*** NO!!!! I want someone who'll stand up to the Space Crocodiles! We're not gonna give up 1 of 3 born babies to placate them. We're gonna finish our space cruisers and giant orbital laser satellite, and build them before the bastards get here in 2.3 years!

And to do this, we need genetically enhanced soldiers with superbrains.

 

[BPSCG]

Um I thought politicians had to disclose their tax returns to the public. Or is that a state thing?

Sorry, I remembered wrong. They got Steele's credit reports, not tax returns.

 

[Darth Rotor]

The most prominent among them being Strom Thurmond, who is, when last accounted for, dead, but who had pretty much given up on his racist past by then. George Wallace, probably the most famous Democratic racist of the period, never switched parties, also gave up on his racist past, and is also dead.

So giving up on your racist past is bad for your health? Is this some subtle way to recruit me into the Klan by promising me extended, perhaps eternal, life?

Sorry, not interested.

DR

 

[RandFan]

Historically it is true that the positions of the parties in regards to minority rights have switched to some degree. Many Southern Democrats who stood against the civil rights of the '60s have moved to the Republican party. The south for a long time was a Democrat strong hold. It is not a Republican one.

Damn, that should be "it is NOW a Republican one".

Can you believe my title for 7 years was editor? It's true. I was actually a production manager.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Damn, that should be "it is NOW a Republican one".

Can you believe my title for 7 years was editor? It's true. I was actually a production manager.

There appears to be some discontent in the South with the Republocrats. Whether or not that will give a third party some Mo in 2008 remains to be seen.

Vote Kinky Friedman for Texas Gov, 2006
Why the hell not?

DR