Biden: Romney will "put ya'll back in chains"

[Rhodie]

Ah the gaffe machine strikes again....

But to people saying this is a racist comment, it just isn't. Just insensitive and inept. Again classic Biden.

[Rhodie]

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Last I checked it was Republicans who voted in the Civil Rights act.

What exactly have Democrats ever done for African Americans?

Wait, Lyndon Johnson was a Republican?

Todays Dem and GOP parties are not the parties they were 45 years ago. The Dixie-crats who opposed the CRA moved to the GOP, that was the whole point of the "Southern Strategy." As for the Rockefeller Republicans who supported it, well they are what is called RINOs today.

No.  The vast majority of segregationist Democrats did not become Republicans.  The only one who did was Strom Thurmond.  Former Klansman Robert Byrd of WV was serving in the Senate as a Democrat as recently as 2010.  Fomer segregationist Fritz Hollings of SC was serving in the Senate as a Democrat as recently as 2004.  As for the Southern strategy wa actually an attempt to convince Southern moderates who supported civil rights to vote Republican as a protest againat the segregationist Democrats.  Check it our for yourself:

 http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-neocons-and-nixons-southern-strategy-512
 http://m.youtube.com/?reload=7&rdm=m8pwv04xb#/watch?v=ZT7pASof8Lc

Yeah, but for over 100 years after the Civil War, Democrats oppressed blacks by fighting against bans on lynching, racial segregation, and protecting blacks against the KKK.  Republicans consistently fought for freedom for blacks and continue to do so by encouraging work to make them independent of government assistance.

That's not the same Republican Party as the one now. Stop twisting history.

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Last I checked it was Republicans who voted in the Civil Rights act.

What exactly have Democrats ever done for African Americans?

Wait, Lyndon Johnson was a Republican?

I believe he's referring to the many Republicans in Congress who voted for the Civil Rights Act. You know, those dreaded "RINO" moderates.

Barry Goldwater and other conservatives like the Southern Democrats didn't vote for it, of course.

LBJ was only able to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the overwhelming Republican support it received, including from Senate Minorty Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois).  And even then, Johnson was a racist who had opppsed civil rights prior to becoming president, including the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts.  He only supported he 1964 CRA because the public supported it.  When Goldwater opposed it, he did it because he felt it was a states' issue, not because he was a racist.  In fact, Goldwater was a founding member of the NAACP in Arizona and had been instrumental in making his family's department stores in Phoenix some of the first businesses in the state to desegregate.  Meanwhile, shortly after s/gning the 1964 CRA,  Johnson told a group of Southern governors, "I'll have those nig**rs voting Democratic for the next 200 years."  To claim that "conservatives like he Southern Democrats" opposed it is misleading too, because not all Southern Democrats were segregationists, and since the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" change over time, so what may have been deemed as politically conservative or liberal uen may be different from what it would be now.

But the point with Byrd and Hollings is that they changed. The Southern Strategy was also, at its core, playing on the racial fears of many Southern Democrats over Democratic positions on race. Also, I don't think Johnson was a racist, but in the 50's he had to be pragmatic to avoid losing the southern wing of the party. But other bits of your answer are very good, IMO.

[Rhodie]

Me? (Mock offended)