Could someone please enlighten me and tell me why OldiesFreak has such a bad rep here? Looking at his posts, it seems like he definitely doesn't like Democrats, but I don't see anything awful that he says or does. He seems reasonable and objective enough to me.
I agree with these thoughts. Regardless of his rigid party loyalty, his actual views and statements are not that extreme at all. Oldiesfreak is very proud of his party's origins, as he should be. The Republicans were far better on civil rights than the Democrats were in the past, and maybe he just wants to keep that tradition alive forever. Other posters are hard on him, but he should also get credit for sticking to his own interpretations of history.
Except his "interpretations" are wrong.
IMO, Oldies is definitely right that the Dem Party has a very racist past and the Republican Party did not. For example, Goldwater voted for every civil rights act up to the 1964 one and LBJ voted against them up to the 1964 one. How things have changed since is the more contentious question. But it is worth pointing out that almost all the Democrat Senators that voted against the Civil Rights Act, with the lone exception of Strom Thurmond, remained Democrats for the rest of their lives (Bob Byrd, Sam Ervin, James Eastland, Orval Faubus, Al Gore Sr). Clinton's mentor, J. William Fulbright, was also a segregationist.
That being said, I think it's reasonable to say that most racists lean Republican now, but there are also far fewer racists now than there were then, and most of them have died off. Also, while you can call the segregationist Democrats "conservative", many of them had very liberal views. Sam Ervin was a progressive hero and Bob Byrd had a 100% NARAL rating, even protecting partial birth abortions.
Poll
