Thread by @VoteDarlene

Just saw the Club for Growth ad against McMullin. I was told awhile ago that negative and dirty politics doesn’t play well in Utah. Was that a lie? #utpol

Watching the Club for Growth ad admonish “liberals” reminded me of the Jimmy Smit-Alan Alda debate from the West Wing series (last tweet). Republicans love to ‘remind’ folks that the Republican Party freed the slaves. MAGA Republicans love to do this, too. I remember hearing the

former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s RNC speech from 2000. She said the fIrst Republican she knew was her father, and that he was a Republican because the Democratic Party in the Jim Crow South would not register him the vote. That would be a true statement backed by

historical facts. It was also disingenuous because she, more than most, also knows WHY African Americans left the Republican Party. Secy Rice knows history, even if others do not. Yet, like most people she purposely failed to mention the facts by which African Americans began to

shift their loyalty from the Party of Lincoln and embraced the Democratic Party. And, why Southern whites who’d once hated the Republican Party for the exact opposite reason as African Americans, began to embrace it. The shift began subtly and can be traced to Hiram Revels, a

Republican who was the first African American to serve as a US Senator in 1870. He shocked many Blacks when during the 1876 elections, he backed some Democrats after race riots broke out during the elections. He became disillusioned with the Republican Party after witnessing

corruption during the election. Southern whites who were not happy about the political power gained by Blacks during Reconstruction, pushed to realign the social and racial order. This led to the electoral dispute that ended in Republican Rutherford B Hayes promising the four

disputed states to award him their electoral college votes. The deal he made included ending Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops from the South and for the federal government to not interfere in how the southern states treated its Black citizens. Hayes made that

deal and became President without Democratic opposition. The South immediately began to implement Jim Crow laws. Later years, Democratic Presidents FDR and Truman made gains by desegregating the military and federal workforce. These actions angered segregationists and

invigorated states’ rights arguments once again. Slowly, Blacks began to support Democrats while Southern whites turned to Dixiecrats. Then came the ultimate betrayal. Southern Democrat Lyndon B Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. There was no turning back

from this. When he signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Johnson is quoted as saying, “We have lost the South for a generation.” It’s been almost two.

After 1964, the parties flipped into what we now know as the Democratic and Republican Parties. #History