The Segregation Wing of the Republican Party

Joshua Micah Marshall hits the nail on the head:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: November 12, 2006 - November 18, 2006 Archives: Nice to see that the segregation wing of the Republican Party can still muster a majority of votes in the Senate GOP caucus.

Duncan Black provides background:

Eschaton: Those who have been around for a long time remember what fun we had with Trent Lott back in the day. Hard to believe that was 4 years ago. I'm not sure whether the most amusing moment was hearing John Podhoretz say nice things about some blogger named 'Atrios' on NPR or Trent Lott going on BET and expressing his lifelong support for affirmative action. But, anyway, to remind us what that whole thing was about. At Strom Thurmond's birthday party, Lott said:

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

...oops, corrected, that's actually what he said in 2002. What I had up earlier:

You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.

Was what he said in 1980.

As does Obsidian Wings:

Obsidian Wings: Keep On Making Those Outreach Efforts, Republicans: Platform of [Strom Thurmond's] States' Rights Democratic Party, 1948:

4: We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.

5: We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiatt, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.

6: We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national orgin in appreciable numbers."

Strom Thurmond, 1948:

"There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

Strom Thurmond, 1948:

"There are forces at work in this country today which would lead our people down the same pathway to the total state that was traveled by the people of Germany, of Italy, of Russia. Harry Truman, Tom Dewey and Henry Wallace are birds of one feather. All three are kowtowing to minority blocs by advocating the so-called civil-rights program. This time they can not fool the people and especially the Democrats of the South. The Jeffersonian Democrats have spewed out of their mouths that mongrel outfit which captured our party at Philadelphia."

Strom Thurmond, 1948:

Nor was Thurmond any longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who had invited audiences to ponder working for a company or belonging to a union forbidden by law to discriminate against blacks. "Think about the situation which would exist," he said back then, "when the annual office party is held or the union sponsors a dance."

Nor was Thurmond any longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who, when it was revealed that he had invited the governor of the Virgin Islands to visit him without knowing that he was black, hastily explained, "I would not have written him if I knew he was a Negro. Of course, it would have been ridiculous to invite him."