Monday, March 22, 2010

The Dumbest Contention Of Them All?

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin ...Image via Wikipedia
The Take - Washington Post
....former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrichsaid Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Well, let's take a look at where the similarities lie.
  • A. Both are monumental and contentious pieces of legislation that change the social contract between the government and the people. Check
  • The Democratic Party is a big tent coalition with diverse major factions. Check
  • Two of the largest of the Democratic factions are pro-labor New Dealers and conservative Dixiecrats. Oh, wait just a minute on that. 
The latter started moving to the Republican party after the aforementioned Civil Rights and the GOP finished the job by appealing directly to them in what we all recall as the Southern Strategy. And the modern Democratic equivalent of those people would be? Who among the Democratic Party gathers at night in hoods  to burn a caduceus on the lawn of the wrong sort of health care consumer? I'm thinking that's not really such a faction in the party these days.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

2 comments:

  1. So Gingrich is comparing the Health Care reform he opposes so vociferously to the Civil Rights movement? I think his white sheet might be showing...

    And I just love the Republican warnings...straight out of the Bre'er Rabbit playbook...

    ReplyDelete
  2. He is a real piece of work. The Newtster backtracked on that, which is a typical right-wing ploy: Say something outrageous to get attention and rile the base, then attack the media by saying that you were taken out of context and didn't mean it like that.

    ReplyDelete