[lspencer534]

After the recent Presidential election I saw several posts here that contained statements about the Republican Party: "It was the Republicans who freed the slaves, enacted Civil Rights legislation, etc." The reference to slaves of course comes from the fact that Abe Lincoln was in fact a Republican.

Republicans in Lincoln's time, though, were the Democrats of today...and vice versa. Lincoln would be appalled by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Newt Gingrich. And the Republicans remained liberal for more than a century after Lincoln. In June, 1964. Republicans aligned with northern Democrats to break the segregationist filibuster. Then, 82 percent of Republican senators backed the final passage of the measure, as opposed to two-thirds of Senate Democrats.

But change came quickly: A few months later, a key Democratic foe of civil rights, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, switched his party affiliation and began working to remake the Republican Party so that it could appeal to Southern white voters. At the same time, civil rights advocates within the Republican Party either left or were defeated.

The philosophy was replaced by a more rigid and divisive politics. The Republican Party that had been ceased to be sometime in the 1980s, and the modern party—the radical conservative party--emerged.  The Party of Lincoln became the party of White backlash, especially in the South.

I know this sounds like a condemnation of the Republican Party. It isn't. Hell, I'm a Republican! If you think about it, you can see just how the Democratic Party caused its self-destruction.