Educating the Commentariat

After reading some of the leftist commentary on my CSK funeral post, I remembered this great line from Billy Madison:

"Mr. _______, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

I think I'll take a minute and actually deal with some of the poop being shoveled here. Trolloc thinks the GOP is permanently racist and sexist. Never mind that it is the party that both freed the slaves and obtained the vote for women and blacks.

All the goodwill is erased because the GOP (or Richard Nixon, at least) had a southern strategy to capitalize on the disaffection of southern whites over civil rights. What does that look like?

The GOP became the party of law and order in contrast to the leftward tilt of the McGovernite faction. They advertised their toughness on crime relentlessly. Ooooooh. How racist.

The GOP opposed affirmative action. Look out! Never mind that opposing affirmative action fits perfectly with the party's traditional insistence on limited government and freedom of contract. It has to be a racist move. There couldn't be another possibility could there? HMMMMMM.

And on women, the GOP opposes abortion. That must be because of a desperate desire to control women and keep them domesticated. Never mind that the party claims another justification, which is to protect unborn life from physical violence. And oh, by the way, to argue against the notion that the woman owns the fetus as property just as slaves were property. What's this? Another historical connection to the GOP of the past. Why how can it be? I thought this was the new GOP turned bad after the great wonderful GOP of Lincoln in the past.

Suffice it to say that the party and its members can hold certain principled positions with great sincerity, but rather than deal with the actual intellectual and even spiritual content of those positions there will always be persons who will rather cry racist, sexist, etc.

When Rosalyn Carter said of Ronald Reagan, "He makes us comfortable with our prejudices," that was her way of avoiding the deep insufficiencies of her husband's leadership and the emergence of the GOP as a successful populist party cutting into traditional Democrat strongholds.

Yeah, the GOP won the southerners, but guess what? They won the new southerners and often not the old ones. How many have families like mine where all the grandparents (from the patently racist period) support the Democrats TO THIS DAY (FDR, you know) while the younger progeny are Republicans to the core? I've got news for you. The switch is not due to a change in GOP racial policy (which there never has been). The switch is due to a successful combination of economic sanity (i.e. not socialism or socialism lite) and a particular brand of philosophico-religious morality that emphasizes the sanctity of life.

And oh, I forgot, the GOP actually wanted to win the Cold War. That made a wee difference, too.

UPDATE:

After writing all this, I couldn't help but remember the example of one Barry Goldwater, the predecessor of Reagan who got toasted by LBJ largely due to sympathy for the dead President Kennedy and some mighty vicious campaign tactics.

Goldwater's family department stores had always been integrated. He had himself experienced discrimination at prominent golf courses because of his Jewish background. Goldwater had once responded to a golf course attendant, "I'm half Jewish, can I play nine holes?" Nevertheless, LBJ's Democrats never thought twice about labeling him a racist for his principled opposition to federal civil rights legislation.