After the DNC Chairman Howard Dean characterized the Republican Party as a “white Christian party” a few weeks ago, Peter Kirsanow commented in the National Review. Kirsanow objected to Dean’s characterization and argued that Democrats were guilty of more “historical hostility toward minorities” than the GOP. To emphasize his point, Kirsanow credited Democrats with a variety of racially discriminatory policies such as the Japanese Internment, the Chinese Exclusion acts, and the institutionalization of Jim Crow policies in the South. At the same time, Kirsanow reminded his readers that the GOP was not the party that “opposed” the Emancipation Proclamation or the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments.

On June 17, Michael DuHaime, the Republican National Committee's Political Director, championed Peter Kirsanow's opinion piece in an email sent nationwide to subscribers of Republican email newsletters (included below). In his email, DuHaime disseminated excerpted portions of the National Review piece and encouraged RNC email recipients to read and forward it. This is disturbing. While Kirsanow may have all his historical facts right, his piece encourages a misleading, decontextualized understanding of American political history, and the GOP's embrace of such a selective reading of America history is disheartening.

It is true that in 1863, the Republican president of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, did in fact issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And, yes, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, issued Executive Order 9066 which provided for the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II. Yes, too, Bull Connor and George Wallace were Democrats. Yet these isolated historical facts provide little insight into the development of the parties and fail to inform Americans about the racial policies espoused and practiced by contemporary politicians.

Kirsanow writes that Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher percentage than Democrats and he is right. Indeed, 128 of 172 Republican representatives (or 80 percent) voted in favor of the Act while only 152 of 248 Democratic representatives (62 percent) voted in favor. In the Senate, Republicans overwhelmingly voted in support of the civil rights legislation on the final vote: just six Republicans voted against the act compared with twenty-one Democrats. It is also true, as Kirsanow asserts, that this had been a historical trend. In votes on twenty-six civil rights acts from 1933 to 1964, Democrats voted against civil rights legislation 80 percent of the time, while Republicans voted in favor of the the same legislation 96 percent of the time.

Yet this voting record may reflect less on the contemporary Democratic Party than it does on the contemporary Republican Party. For decades, the Democrats had been split between northern pro-civil rights supporters and southern Dixiecrats who vehemently opposed civil rights. Many of the same congressman who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, left the Democratic Party and joined the ranks of the Republicans in the late 60s. One of the most prominent of these Democratic defectors was Strom Thurmond, who served as the Democratic Governor of South Carolina in 1947, ran as the presidential candidate of the pro-segregation States' Rights Democratic Party in 1948, and served as a Democratic senator from 1954 until 1964, when he joined Republicans in protest of the Democrats’ support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It is most accurate to say that both the GOP and the Democratic Party have undergone a series of fundamental shifts in both their policies and make-up. Political scientists describe these alterations in the composition of political parties and in the dominant economic and social policy espoused by them as political realignments. In the last century and a half, the Republican and Democratic parties have not been well-defined and unified parties. Since the Civil War, the two American political parties have been composed of coalitions of individuals who have come together despite sometimes differing views

Typically party realignments occur in America when these coalitions break down. In the last century, America has experienced at least two major party realignments. The first occurred when Franklin Delano Roosevelt successfully brought together Southern populists and Northern progressives in the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. The second took place when Southern anti-integration conservatives moved into the Republican Party after 1968.1 In fact, the realignment of the two parties has been so fundamental over the last one hundred years that statistical research performed by Gary Miller and Norman Schofield indicates that “the more strongly Democratic a state was in 1896, the more strongly Republican it was in 2000.”2

Kirsanow, ignores the divisions and realignments that have radically altered the Democratic and Republican parties from the 40s through the 60s while he simultaneously glosses over the Republican Party's civil rights record since the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. For instance, during Richard Nixon’s first term in office, the chairmen of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights resigned their positions in protest because Nixon worked to thwart the implementation of important civil rights policies.3

The internal shifts of the two parties are important in helping to explain why the Republican Party has struggled to find favor with African American voters in the last four decades. The Democratic candidate Harry Truman, won 70 percent of the black vote in 1948, while Lyndon B. Johnson received 94 percent of the African American vote in 1964.4 On the other hand Republican candidate Gerald Ford received 16 percent of the African American vote in 1976, the highest percentage for a Republican since 1964.5 By comparison, President Bush received only 9 percent of the African American vote in 2000 and 11 percent in 2004.

The true history of America's political parties leads inescapably to the disturbing conclusion that neither can claim to be free from a “historical hostility” toward racial minorities. Until well after the Civil War both the Republican and Democratic parties supported unfavorable policies toward racial minorities rooted in the belief in white superiority.6 No matter how hard Kirsanow tries to obscure this truth, his grand historical narrative detailing the feats of a glorious race conscious Republican Party and the misdeeds of the hateful and racist Democratic Party simply crumbles. His approach is anachronistic, misguided and unhelpful.

Kirsanow’s ahistorical construction of the past is just another attempt to sidestep a serious evaluation of the legacy. It is the equivalent of a political get-out-of-jail-free-card by which contemporary Republicans claim the racial infallibility of the party of Lincoln to avoid coming to terms with the toxic legacy of slavery and racism that continues to pollute contemporary American culture and politics.

It is not only Republican politicians who currently serve in office however, like Trent Lott, who are implicated in perpetuating these ugly legacies. Lott, a Republican, maintained ties to the Conservative Citizens’ Council—the modern off-shoot of the racist White Citizens’ Council that opposed desegregation during the 50s and 60s—while, Robert Byrd, a Democrat, opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and once organized a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (which he long ago repudiated) . These individuals are not historical apparitions, but real living indicators of how powerful racism’s legacy is in American culture. They are representatives of modern American politics and modern American voters.

TEXT OF RNC NEWSLETTER:

Dear,

This National Review article isn't to be missed! Take action today by calling talk radio and writing letters to the editor describing Dean's hypocrisy.

In Case You Missed It- Dean on Defense: The "White Christian" party.
National Review
By Peter Kirsanow
June 10, 2005

During a discussion with minority leaders and journalists on Monday, Howard Dean declared that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all believe the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party." He further stated that "the Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people" and Democrats are "more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are." Dean continued to defend his remarks as recently as Thursday. ...

In terms of sheer historical hostility toward minorities, the Republican party fares a bit better than the competition. For example, it wasn't the GOP that opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor was it the GOP that opposed the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection, or the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing voting rights. (In fact, Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act in greater percentages than did Democrats.)...

Moreover, it wasn't the Republican party that opposed Teddy Roosevelt's anti-lynching legislation or that filibustered or otherwise opposed more than a dozen other anti-lynching provisions during the 20th century.

Republicans didn't institutionalize Jim Crow, implement school segregation, or establish poll taxes and literacy tests to keep non-whites from voting. Bull Connor, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Orval Faubus weren't Republicans.

It wasn't a Republican who ordered the internment of Japanese-American citizens (or Italians or Germans) during World War II. Nor were Republicans behind the Chinese exclusion acts or licensing requirements that discriminated against non-white businesses and tradesmen.

While Dean maintains that Democrats are more welcoming to non-whites, several major media organizations have noted that the aggressive GOP outreach to minorities is far more vigorous than that of the Democrats. USA Today recently noted that whereas Dean has been spending the bulk of his time preaching to the converted, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman has maintained an exhausting schedule appearing before predominantly black, Hispanic, and Asian audiences. ...

The GOP may have been missing in action in minority communities in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties but Howard Dean must not have paid much attention to what's been going on recently. Republicans still have lots of work to do, but now they're playing offense while Dean's on defense.

Please view the entire article and forward this to your friends and family.

Sincerely,

Michael DuHaime
RNC Political Director

Notes

1 Miller, Gary, and Norman Schofield. “Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States.” American Political Science Review 97 (2): 254-258.

2 Ibid., 246.

3 Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle For Black Equality, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 213.

4 Greenberg, David. “The Party of Lincoln.” Slate. 10 Aug 2000.

5 Faucheux, Ron. “2004: A Voter Portrait.” The Angle. 23 Nov 2004.

6 Mendelberg, Tali. The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 33.