CDZ Which political party is the party of the KKK?

[Pogo]

Nope...the white racists are in the democrat party too......racists need control of the government to enact their laws, that is why all the racists have flocked to the democrat party, the party that wants government to have unlimited power......

Those that support the party of slavery are stupid, precisely because they cannot admit that they were wrong.

The 'party of slavery' is now the party of African Americans.

While the party of the Lincoln is now the party opposed to Civil Rights.

Could you explain the reasoning that you used to come to that conclusion?

Sure.

90-95% of African American voters vote Democrat.
The Republican Party nominated for President men who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
Goldwater
Reagan
Bush

Let's get this straight so for over 100 years republicans have been freeing blacks and in only a few years they switched back to the party that kept them slaves?

Illogical


Why?

Correct --- that conclusion would be illogical. The fault lies in the bogus premise that sets it up. That being, Slavery wasn't a product or policy of a political party. It's thousands of years old, world wide and the transAtlantic version was brought here by the 16th century, long before either any country or political party existed. Who then kept it as an institution were Southern --- and Northern --- colonists, then Americans once the country was established. They were Federalists, they were Democratic-Republicans, they were Whigs, they were Democrats, they were Know Nothings and they were like our first President --- no party at all. Matter of fact our 18th President, and second Republican one, had also been a slaveholder.

The dissolution of Slavery followed regional economics; the North, where it wasn't vital to the economy, found it easier to jettison while the South's agrarian economy was dependent on it. By the time that came to a head in the Civil War the Democratic Party was one of the only ones left standing due to the collapse of the Whigs and Know Nothings, the most recent rivals, and the new Republican Party had deliberately not established itself in the South. while the older DP was well established everywhere. The last gasp of the Whigs, the Constitutional Union Party, won a few states in the 1860 Presidential election and didn't last much longer, leaving the Democrats standing alone in that region, until after the War when the Republican Party finally came in. So what you're pointing at is simply the only party still surviving after the War.

Again four of our first five Presidents were slaveholders from the South, and none of them were Democrats (which didn't exist yet). And again, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1860 got completely shut out in the South with zero electoral votes, so even then it was 'surviving' only tenuously. But Slavery, and specifically African-transported slavery, had been taking place in North America since the 1530s.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Those that support the party of slavery are stupid, precisely because they cannot admit that they were wrong.

The 'party of slavery' is now the party of African Americans.

While the party of the Lincoln is now the party opposed to Civil Rights.

Could you explain the reasoning that you used to come to that conclusion?

Sure.

90-95% of African American voters vote Democrat.
The Republican Party nominated for President men who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
Goldwater
Reagan
Bush

Let's get this straight so for over 100 years republicans have been freeing blacks and in only a few years they switched back to the party that kept them slaves?

Illogical


Why?

Correct --- that conclusion would be illogical. The fault lies in the bogus premise that sets it up. That being, Slavery wasn't a product or policy of a political party. It's thousands of years old, world wide and the transAtlantic version was brought here by the 16th century, long before either any country or political party existed. Who then kept it as an institution were Southern --- and Northern --- colonists, then Americans once the country was established. They were Federalists, they were Democratic-Republicans, they were Whigs, they were Democrats, they were Know Nothings and they were like our first President --- no party at all. Matter of fact our 18th President, and second Republican one, had also been a slaveholder.

The dissolution of Slavery followed regional economics; the North, where it wasn't vital to the economy, found it easier to jettison while the South's agrarian economy was dependent on it. By the time that came to a head in the Civil War the Democratic Party was one of the only ones left standing due to the collapse of the Whigs and Know Nothings, the most recent rivals, and the new Republican Party had deliberately not established itself in the South. while the older DP was well established everywhere. The last gasp of the Whigs, the Constitutional Union Party, won a few states in the 1860 Presidential election and didn't last much longer, leaving the Democrats standing alone in that region, until after the War when the Republican Party finally came in. So what you're pointing at is simply the only party still surviving after the War.

Again four of our first five Presidents were slaveholders from the South, and none of them were Democrats (which didn't exist yet). And again, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1860 got completely shut out in the South with zero electoral votes, so even then it was 'surviving' only tenuously. But Slavery, and specifically African-transported slavery, had been taking place in North America since the 1530s.

All that just to justify the democrats?

 

[Pogo]

We're all democrats then pro-slavery...no.....but the the people who owned slaves were democrats...........the Republican Party was created as the anti slavery party.

Part A addressed above; some were Democrats (which is a proper name and gets a capital letter) and many had no party. Some had been Whigs or Federalists. The Constitutional Union candidate who won Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky in 1860 was a slaveholder too, and had never been a Democrat.

Part B, correct. It was founded as an Abolition party. There had been others before them too. At the risk of stating the obvious early political parties ideologically fell into one of three groups, in favor of Slavery, against Slavery, or taking no particular position on it. Obviously the Republicans were the second but the third included a lot of parties with influence including the Whigs, Know Nothings, Constitutional Unionists -- and Democrats, who tried for decades before and after the War to be all things to all people, representing conservative interests in the South and Liberal ones in the North. This bipolar attitude of course caused deep splits and schisms, which happened several times, notably in 1860 when the South deserted the Democratic Party machine and ran its own candidate, much the same as it did in 1948. And of course less dramatic skirmishes in between involving the exact same factions, such as 1924.

An illustrative example of this what-looks-from-these-times-to-be-bipolar approach was the transitional figure Martin van Buren. From Wiki:

>> Early in his life Van Buren owned a slave, a man named Tom who served as his personal valet. Tom ran away in 1814 and eventually settled in Canada, with Van Buren making no effort to locate him. In 1824 Tom was found to be living in Worcester, Massachusetts. Since he still legally owned Tom (under New York's gradual emancipation law, slavery was scheduled to be completely abolished in the state in 1827), Van Buren privately agreed to sell Tom to the finder for $50, provided the finder, a resident of Rensselaer County, could guarantee that Tom would be captured without violence. He could not make such a guarantee, and his willingness to pay was lessened by the knowledge that Tom would be emancipated in fewer than three years even if he was re-enslaved, so Tom remained free, as Van Buren probably intended. (Allowing Tom to remain in Massachusetts unmolested without notice enabled Van Buren to avoid offending southern slave owners, as he would do if he publicly allowed a former slave to remain free. At the same time, he avoided offending northern abolitionists, which he would do if he captured and re-enslaved a former slave.)[56][57] <<
​

Van Buren, credited with doing the organizing that shaped Jackson's faction into the modern Democratic Party, was an abolitiionist trying not to offend the slave states and working under the early-19th century belief that the contention between Slave and Free states could be managed by a hands-off decentralized government, the Madisonian antecedent to the 'states rights' philosophy. He was also a Presidential candidate for the abolitionist Free Soil Party in 1848.


Van Buren dealt with the Slavery question in the context of his own time, believing personlly that it was immoral but also that it was Constitutional and therefore had to be lawfully protected where it existed, and he struggled -- in vain it would turn out with the Civil War -- to keep a delicate balance, as did most of the administrations of the first four score and seven-odd years.

It might be that that malleability, or if you like lack of focused principle, is the result of being around way too long (it's the oldest political party in the world, which is not an asset) and is what happens when lust for power overrides principles. It's perhaps also a reflection of the deeply conservative nature of the South that it not only hung onto Slavery when it was being abolished elsewhere, that some of it such as the KKK element tried to not let it go when it had been released, and that it hung on to a political party, for lack of an alternative, that was increasingly at odds with its own philosophy.

It took several strokes to undo that bipolar relationship, the first of which was FDR's successfully getting the party nomination rules changed in 1936 so that the South could not effectively veto the direction the rest of the Party wanted to go (as in for example 1924). Roosevelt's popularity allowed him to do that and still keep Southern support. Once that war was over FDR's successor Truman and then-Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey took advantage of it to get the party loudly behind civil rights, leading to the aforementioned walkout of 1948. When that Southern attempt also failed, Strom Thurmond endorsed Eisenhower and then found himself running for Senate without a political party (and won anyway as a write-in). Three years later Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson cajoled the 1957 civil rights bill through and seven years after that pushed the CRA as President, finally formalizing the long-overdue divorce.

 

[Pogo]

The 'party of slavery' is now the party of African Americans.

While the party of the Lincoln is now the party opposed to Civil Rights.

Could you explain the reasoning that you used to come to that conclusion?

Sure.

90-95% of African American voters vote Democrat.
The Republican Party nominated for President men who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
Goldwater
Reagan
Bush

Let's get this straight so for over 100 years republicans have been freeing blacks and in only a few years they switched back to the party that kept them slaves?

Illogical


Why?

Correct --- that conclusion would be illogical. The fault lies in the bogus premise that sets it up. That being, Slavery wasn't a product or policy of a political party. It's thousands of years old, world wide and the transAtlantic version was brought here by the 16th century, long before either any country or political party existed. Who then kept it as an institution were Southern --- and Northern --- colonists, then Americans once the country was established. They were Federalists, they were Democratic-Republicans, they were Whigs, they were Democrats, they were Know Nothings and they were like our first President --- no party at all. Matter of fact our 18th President, and second Republican one, had also been a slaveholder.

The dissolution of Slavery followed regional economics; the North, where it wasn't vital to the economy, found it easier to jettison while the South's agrarian economy was dependent on it. By the time that came to a head in the Civil War the Democratic Party was one of the only ones left standing due to the collapse of the Whigs and Know Nothings, the most recent rivals, and the new Republican Party had deliberately not established itself in the South. while the older DP was well established everywhere. The last gasp of the Whigs, the Constitutional Union Party, won a few states in the 1860 Presidential election and didn't last much longer, leaving the Democrats standing alone in that region, until after the War when the Republican Party finally came in. So what you're pointing at is simply the only party still surviving after the War.

Again four of our first five Presidents were slaveholders from the South, and none of them were Democrats (which didn't exist yet). And again, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1860 got completely shut out in the South with zero electoral votes, so even then it was 'surviving' only tenuously. But Slavery, and specifically African-transported slavery, had been taking place in North America since the 1530s.

All that just to justify the democrats?

All that to provide context and destroy Binaryism. Obviously you don't understand the history of Slavery. Or the South.

 

[JQPublic1]

After reading through any of the posts here I have seen no conclusive evidence to support the premise that the KKK was ever affiliated with a political party . One thing we cannot deny is that the KKK has always been a RW White Conservative American terrorist group., Even though the nefarious organization originated in a defeated disenfranchised Confederate state, America was still the KKK's home.



I have always held that racism transcends party lines. The glue that binds it to the American way of life is racial hegemony and the social conditioning that affects us all.. KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for blatant racism, bigotry and police brutality to take hold anywhere in the USA. We've seen racism manifested in every corner of this nation.



When Black soldiers returning home from WW1 were hung, still in uniform, from lamp posts in New York City, was that the Klan or just White family fun? A sign of the times? If the postcards made of those "family gatherings" is any indication the Republican constituency were just as deadly for Blacks as the Democrat constituency were in the south. NOTE; I purposely avoided making a direct partisan connection and substituted the word constituency in both cases. That is the essential difference. Neither party is responsible for what average constituents do on their own time.



Interestingly 2aguy holds up Barry Goldwater as a paragon of white altruism towards his Black brothers in Arizona. My own research validates that claim.

Yet, the refusal of Arizona state legislators to recognize the Martini Luther King Holiday suggests that most Arizonans are nothing like Goldwater.

Goldwater was not a social conservative but his Arizona peers and constituents were and remain so.



LBJ's name has been thrown into the mix in a pathetic attempt to associate the KKK with some of his pre civil rights era racist antics. He wasn't a known member of the KKK. He was just a reflection of the environment in which he was raised.



So there you have it. Again the KKK is a RW White conservative terrorist organization regardless of any party affiliation some of its members may have.

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Keep on lying to yourself and see where it gets you.

What makes you the oracle of truth? What have you said or done that I might take heed of your frivolous declaration?

 

[2aguy]

Those that support the party of slavery are stupid, precisely because they cannot admit that they were wrong.

The 'party of slavery' is now the party of African Americans.

While the party of the Lincoln is now the party opposed to Civil Rights.

Could you explain the reasoning that you used to come to that conclusion?

Sure.

90-95% of African American voters vote Democrat.
The Republican Party nominated for President men who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
Goldwater
Reagan
Bush

Let's get this straight so for over 100 years republicans have been freeing blacks and in only a few years they switched back to the party that kept them slaves?

Illogical


Why?

Correct --- that conclusion would be illogical. The fault lies in the bogus premise that sets it up. That being, Slavery wasn't a product or policy of a political party. It's thousands of years old, world wide and the transAtlantic version was brought here by the 16th century, long before either any country or political party existed. Who then kept it as an institution were Southern --- and Northern --- colonists, then Americans once the country was established. They were Federalists, they were Democratic-Republicans, they were Whigs, they were Democrats, they were Know Nothings and they were like our first President --- no party at all. Matter of fact our 18th President, and second Republican one, had also been a slaveholder.

The dissolution of Slavery followed regional economics; the North, where it wasn't vital to the economy, found it easier to jettison while the South's agrarian economy was dependent on it. By the time that came to a head in the Civil War the Democratic Party was one of the only ones left standing due to the collapse of the Whigs and Know Nothings, the most recent rivals, and the new Republican Party had deliberately not established itself in the South. while the older DP was well established everywhere. The last gasp of the Whigs, the Constitutional Union Party, won a few states in the 1860 Presidential election and didn't last much longer, leaving the Democrats standing alone in that region, until after the War when the Republican Party finally came in. So what you're pointing at is simply the only party still surviving after the War.

Again four of our first five Presidents were slaveholders from the South, and none of them were Democrats (which didn't exist yet). And again, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1860 got completely shut out in the South with zero electoral votes, so even then it was 'surviving' only tenuously. But Slavery, and specifically African-transported slavery, had been taking place in North America since the 1530s.

The democrat party was the party of slave holders......that is a fact. It doesn't matter when slavery started, it matters that the democrat party embraced slavery as an institution, fought to spread it to new states, wanted to restart the slave trade with Afrrica and went to war when the Republican President was elected, because they feared he would end slavery.

No matter how you contort and do your yoga, the democrat party is the party of slavery. And today, now that the Republicans freed the slaves, it is still the party of racism......

 

[JQPublic1]

After reading through any of the posts here I have seen no conclusive evidence to support the premise that the KKK was ever affiliated with a political party . One thing we cannot deny is that the KKK has always been a RW White Conservative American terrorist group., Even though the nefarious organization originated in a defeated disenfranchised Confederate state, America was still the KKK's home.



I have always held that racism transcends party lines. The glue that binds it to the American way of life is racial hegemony and the social conditioning that affects us all.. KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for blatant racism, bigotry and police brutality to take hold anywhere in the USA. We've seen racism manifested in every corner of this nation.



When Black soldiers returning home from WW1 were hung, still in uniform, from lamp posts in New York City, was that the Klan or just White family fun? A sign of the times? If the postcards made of those "family gatherings" is any indication the Republican constituency were just as deadly for Blacks as the Democrat constituency were in the south. NOTE; I purposely avoided making a direct partisan connection and substituted the word constituency in both cases. That is the essential difference. Neither party is responsible for what average constituents do on their own time.



Interestingly 2aguy holds up Barry Goldwater as a paragon of white altruism towards his Black brothers in Arizona. My own research validates that claim.

Yet, the refusal of Arizona state legislators to recognize the Martini Luther King Holiday suggests that most Arizonans are nothing like Goldwater.

Goldwater was not a social conservative but his Arizona peers and constituents were and remain so.



LBJ's name has been thrown into the mix in a pathetic attempt to associate the KKK with some of his pre civil rights era racist antics. He wasn't a known member of the KKK. He was just a reflection of the environment in which he was raised.



So there you have it. Again the KKK is a RW White conservative terrorist organization regardless of any party affiliation some of its members may have.

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Wow, you do know the Republican party was started to get rid of slavery right?

And not one democrat voted to get rid of slavery right?


.

You do know that there were anti-slavery Democrats before the inception of the Republican party don't you? They formed an alliance with Whigs and merged with them into a third party called the Free Soil Party. In turn, the Republican Party emerged from Northern Democrat roots... Republicans didn't just appear out of thin air. Heh heh heh!:

"The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. It opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio. It nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency in 1848 and John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852.

The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854 and 1856, by way of the Anti-Nebraska movement."

 

[2aguy]

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Wow, you do know the Republican party was started to get rid of slavery right?

And not one democrat voted to get rid of slavery right?


.

You do know that there were anti-slavery Democrats before the inception of the Republican party don't you? They formed an alliance with Whigs and merged with them into a third party called the Free Soil Party. In turn, the Republican Party emerged from Northern Democrat roots... Republicans didn't just appear out of thin air. Heh heh heh!:

"The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. It opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio. It nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency in 1848 and John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852.

The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854 and 1856, by way of the Anti-Nebraska movement."

And all of the slave holders were democrats. The slave holding democrats went to war to keep their slaves.

 

[JQPublic1]

After reading through any of the posts here I have seen no conclusive evidence to support the premise that the KKK was ever affiliated with a political party . One thing we cannot deny is that the KKK has always been a RW White Conservative American terrorist group., Even though the nefarious organization originated in a defeated disenfranchised Confederate state, America was still the KKK's home.



I have always held that racism transcends party lines. The glue that binds it to the American way of life is racial hegemony and the social conditioning that affects us all.. KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for blatant racism, bigotry and police brutality to take hold anywhere in the USA. We've seen racism manifested in every corner of this nation.



When Black soldiers returning home from WW1 were hung, still in uniform, from lamp posts in New York City, was that the Klan or just White family fun? A sign of the times? If the postcards made of those "family gatherings" is any indication the Republican constituency were just as deadly for Blacks as the Democrat constituency were in the south. NOTE; I purposely avoided making a direct partisan connection and substituted the word constituency in both cases. That is the essential difference. Neither party is responsible for what average constituents do on their own time.



Interestingly 2aguy holds up Barry Goldwater as a paragon of white altruism towards his Black brothers in Arizona. My own research validates that claim.

Yet, the refusal of Arizona state legislators to recognize the Martini Luther King Holiday suggests that most Arizonans are nothing like Goldwater.

Goldwater was not a social conservative but his Arizona peers and constituents were and remain so.



LBJ's name has been thrown into the mix in a pathetic attempt to associate the KKK with some of his pre civil rights era racist antics. He wasn't a known member of the KKK. He was just a reflection of the environment in which he was raised.



So there you have it. Again the KKK is a RW White conservative terrorist organization regardless of any party affiliation some of its members may have.

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Lincoln freed the slaves where he had direct control.....the states that were in armed surrection.......He did not have the Constitutional ability to free them on his own in pro-north southern states...and after the war....the Republicans freed the slaves.....and passed all the real civil rights acts....while the democrats fought them.

You're wandering onto that slippery slope whereas a national emergency blurs the lines between Constitutional limits and presidential power. Again, the Emancipation Proclamation was an order from the chief executive directed at those slave states moving towards secession. All states joining the Confederacy fell under that Proclamation. So naturally the victors in the North, War Democrats, Republicans or whatever were all involved in effecting manumission after the war.

The actions of Republican liberals in 1865 are not mirrored in the agendas of Konservative Republicans today. If we were able to somehow place the prominent characters of the present day republican hierarchy into a mid 19th Century setting,complete with their KKK constituency,
the outcome of the Civil War would have been vastly different, if it occurred at all.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

My opinion: Neither party is the party of the KKK- this is just partisan bullshit. Both parties reject the KKK- no party endorses any KKK members for anything.

There is at least a few threads a week by right wing nut jobs trying to label the Democratic Party the party of the KKK- based upon some rather dubious claims from 150 years ago.

Countering that is the claim by Martin Luther King Jr. that the GOP in 1964 pivoted to appeal to racists and the radical right wing becoming the party of the KKK. That of course was over 50 years ago.

The fact is that members of the KKK historically have belonged to both the Democratic and Republican Parties- and the fact is that it is easy to find examples to scream 'racist-racist' for both parties.

But neither party is the party of the KKK. African Americans have by a large degree moved from the GOP Party to the Democratic Party in the last 70 years. Meanwhile, there are conservative African Americans who have chosen the GOP.

I presume that all of those voters make as intelligent decisions as I make- and therefore none of those millions of African Americans have decided that their party is the party of the KKK.

And old white dudes telling them that their party is the party of the KKK is essentially racist in nature- that they know better than African Americans do.

In other threads, I have made a point of posting MLK Jr's remarks declaring the GOP of 1964 becoming the party of the KKK- to counter the BS claims that the Democrats are the party of the KKK.

I do not actually believe either party is the party of the KKK- but if anyone insists that the Democrats are, because of what happened 150 years ago- I will point out that Martin Luther King Jr. considered the GOP to have moved to becoming the party of the KKK.

It is not really a surprise that those who claim the Democrats are the party of the KKK, also tend to consider President Obama to be a racist, and generally despise Martin Luther King Jr.

Why is this frame in CDZ?

 

[JQPublic1]

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Wow, you do know the Republican party was started to get rid of slavery right?

And not one democrat voted to get rid of slavery right?


.

You do know that there were anti-slavery Democrats before the inception of the Republican party don't you? They formed an alliance with Whigs and merged with them into a third party called the Free Soil Party. In turn, the Republican Party emerged from Northern Democrat roots... Republicans didn't just appear out of thin air. Heh heh heh!:

"The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. It opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio. It nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency in 1848 and John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852.

The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854 and 1856, by way of the Anti-Nebraska movement."

And all of the slave holders were democrats. The slave holding democrats went to war to keep their slaves.

Well, you just said the Southerner states that weren't involved in insurrection could have kept their slaves. So Why continue the insurrection if that were the case? Seems to me the expansion of slavery into the territories was the focus of the North/South disagreement.
The Southern slave owners knew the stakes for new congressional seats were high, as potentially represented by new territories coming into statehood, and essential for the survival of slavery. That is why they went to war.

 

[Pogo]

After reading through any of the posts here I have seen no conclusive evidence to support the premise that the KKK was ever affiliated with a political party . One thing we cannot deny is that the KKK has always been a RW White Conservative American terrorist group., Even though the nefarious organization originated in a defeated disenfranchised Confederate state, America was still the KKK's home.



I have always held that racism transcends party lines. The glue that binds it to the American way of life is racial hegemony and the social conditioning that affects us all.. KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for blatant racism, bigotry and police brutality to take hold anywhere in the USA. We've seen racism manifested in every corner of this nation.



When Black soldiers returning home from WW1 were hung, still in uniform, from lamp posts in New York City, was that the Klan or just White family fun? A sign of the times? If the postcards made of those "family gatherings" is any indication the Republican constituency were just as deadly for Blacks as the Democrat constituency were in the south. NOTE; I purposely avoided making a direct partisan connection and substituted the word constituency in both cases. That is the essential difference. Neither party is responsible for what average constituents do on their own time.



Interestingly 2aguy holds up Barry Goldwater as a paragon of white altruism towards his Black brothers in Arizona. My own research validates that claim.

Yet, the refusal of Arizona state legislators to recognize the Martini Luther King Holiday suggests that most Arizonans are nothing like Goldwater.

Goldwater was not a social conservative but his Arizona peers and constituents were and remain so.



LBJ's name has been thrown into the mix in a pathetic attempt to associate the KKK with some of his pre civil rights era racist antics. He wasn't a known member of the KKK. He was just a reflection of the environment in which he was raised.



So there you have it. Again the KKK is a RW White conservative terrorist organization irregardless of any party affiliation some of its members may have.

Excellently put in many ways, above all your staunch rejection of Composition Fallacy as a door to partisan argument.

Lynchings coming out of World War One (and before and after it) were rampant and widespread. I've posted examples of hideous such events in Illinois, Indiana, Omaha Nebraska and Duluth Minnesota -- about as far away from the South as you can go and not be in Canada. They were in no way limited to the Klan and went on before, during and after the KKK existed. And as I keep pointing out to the partisans no lynching ever took place with a gatekeeper checking party registrations, because it simply isn't a political event. It seems the nuances of social dynamics are way too complex for those who prefer to think in Binary.

Agree that Goldwater was not a 'social conservative', and he himself worried about that element.aloud to John Dean: "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them." --- quoted in John Dean's "Conservatives Without Conscience", 1994

He also said to Dean, quoted in another book, "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the nuts". So he did have a lucid perception of political dynamics.

LBJ had his own history concerning the Klan when as a child he hunkered in the family basement while his father and uncles stood vigil with shotguns anticipating a threatened Klan attack after Sam Johnson had denounced them in the Texas State Legislature.

 

[JQPublic1]

After reading through any of the posts here I have seen no conclusive evidence to support the premise that the KKK was ever affiliated with a political party . One thing we cannot deny is that the KKK has always been a RW White Conservative American terrorist group., Even though the nefarious organization originated in a defeated disenfranchised Confederate state, America was still the KKK's home.



I have always held that racism transcends party lines. The glue that binds it to the American way of life is racial hegemony and the social conditioning that affects us all.. KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for blatant racism, bigotry and police brutality to take hold anywhere in the USA. We've seen racism manifested in every corner of this nation.



When Black soldiers returning home from WW1 were hung, still in uniform, from lamp posts in New York City, was that the Klan or just White family fun? A sign of the times? If the postcards made of those "family gatherings" is any indication the Republican constituency were just as deadly for Blacks as the Democrat constituency were in the south. NOTE; I purposely avoided making a direct partisan connection and substituted the word constituency in both cases. That is the essential difference. Neither party is responsible for what average constituents do on their own time.



Interestingly 2aguy holds up Barry Goldwater as a paragon of white altruism towards his Black brothers in Arizona. My own research validates that claim.

Yet, the refusal of Arizona state legislators to recognize the Martini Luther King Holiday suggests that most Arizonans are nothing like Goldwater.

Goldwater was not a social conservative but his Arizona peers and constituents were and remain so.



LBJ's name has been thrown into the mix in a pathetic attempt to associate the KKK with some of his pre civil rights era racist antics. He wasn't a known member of the KKK. He was just a reflection of the environment in which he was raised.



So there you have it. Again the KKK is a RW White conservative terrorist organization regardless of any party affiliation some of its members may have.

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

We're all democrats then pro-slavery...no.....but the the people who owned slaves were democrats...........the Republican Party was created as the anti slavery party.

Why don't we frame it this way: Some Northern democrat liberals helped create the anti-slavery movement and joined the whigs to become republicans in the fight against southern pro-slavery democrat conservatives?

 

[Pogo]

The 'party of slavery' is now the party of African Americans.

While the party of the Lincoln is now the party opposed to Civil Rights.

Could you explain the reasoning that you used to come to that conclusion?

Sure.

90-95% of African American voters vote Democrat.
The Republican Party nominated for President men who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
Goldwater
Reagan
Bush

Let's get this straight so for over 100 years republicans have been freeing blacks and in only a few years they switched back to the party that kept them slaves?

Illogical


Why?

Correct --- that conclusion would be illogical. The fault lies in the bogus premise that sets it up. That being, Slavery wasn't a product or policy of a political party. It's thousands of years old, world wide and the transAtlantic version was brought here by the 16th century, long before either any country or political party existed. Who then kept it as an institution were Southern --- and Northern --- colonists, then Americans once the country was established. They were Federalists, they were Democratic-Republicans, they were Whigs, they were Democrats, they were Know Nothings and they were like our first President --- no party at all. Matter of fact our 18th President, and second Republican one, had also been a slaveholder.

The dissolution of Slavery followed regional economics; the North, where it wasn't vital to the economy, found it easier to jettison while the South's agrarian economy was dependent on it. By the time that came to a head in the Civil War the Democratic Party was one of the only ones left standing due to the collapse of the Whigs and Know Nothings, the most recent rivals, and the new Republican Party had deliberately not established itself in the South. while the older DP was well established everywhere. The last gasp of the Whigs, the Constitutional Union Party, won a few states in the 1860 Presidential election and didn't last much longer, leaving the Democrats standing alone in that region, until after the War when the Republican Party finally came in. So what you're pointing at is simply the only party still surviving after the War.

Again four of our first five Presidents were slaveholders from the South, and none of them were Democrats (which didn't exist yet). And again, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1860 got completely shut out in the South with zero electoral votes, so even then it was 'surviving' only tenuously. But Slavery, and specifically African-transported slavery, had been taking place in North America since the 1530s.

The democrat party was the party of slave holders......that is a fact. It doesn't matter when slavery started, it matters that the democrat party embraced slavery as an institution, fought to spread it to new states, wanted to restart the slave trade with Afrrica and went to war when the Republican President was elected, because they feared he would end slavery.

Completely wrong. For one example see the description concerning Martin van Buren above -- an abolitionist who thought Slavery morally wrong but Constitutional (which it was) and therefore legally sanctioned, who as did other Presidents and legislators of the first half of the nineteenth century, tried to strike a delicate balance between the confronting factions --- opposing, for example, the admission of Missouri as a slave state for that reason, and supporting, for another example, the policies of Lincoln once he was President.

In other words van Buren, when he in any way defended the Constitutional rights of slave states to be slave states, was following exactly the same logic you keep citing for Barry Goldwater in voting against the 1964 CRA. So you want to have it both ways here. And it's also worth pointing out that once CRA passed, Goldwater to his credit declared (paraphrasing) "it's the law of the land, now let's give it a chance to work".

Further, the Democratic Party did not at all go to war when the Republican was elected. In that election, as noted repeatedly here, the South completely rejected the Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas and ran their own candidate who won most of the South, the aforementioned John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party taking the rest. Douglas got exactly the same number of Southern electoral votes as Lincoln did --- Zero --- and after being defeated (coming in fourth) Douglas publicly called for and worked for the entire Union to unite behind Lincoln. The South, of course, didn't do that, but as I just said they had already rejected the Democratic Party for the moment, even driving its convention out of the South altogether.

No matter how you contort and do your yoga, the democrat party is the party of slavery. And today, now that the Republicans freed the slaves, it is still the party of racism......

Once again, I don't have a party, nor do I have a lazy-ass binary mind that thinks the entire slab of humanity is somehow made up of either "Democrat" or "Republican" atoms and nothing else exists. That's absurd. What I do have is history books, and I shall not allow you to insult them with façile intellectual sloth.

 

[2aguy]

Blacks hung in New York.......hmmmm....seems to me that would have been white democrats doing that.

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

We're all democrats then pro-slavery...no.....but the the people who owned slaves were democrats...........the Republican Party was created as the anti slavery party.

Why don't we frame it this way: Some Northern democrat liberals helped create the anti-slavery movement and joined the whigs to become republicans in the fight against southern pro-slavery democrat conservatives?

You have to explain the word "Conservative" when you apply it to democrat slave owners, otherwise you mix them up with modern American Conservatives.....democrat slave owners wanted to conserve the institution of slavery.....where as modern Conservative Americans would have been the same as the anti slavery side of the argument......Modern conservatives want to preserve the ideas in our founding documents.....Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, and that all men are created equal.....individual liberty....

The left likes to call the democrat slave owners "Conservatives" in order to lie to people who don't understand the difference between conservatives then and now....

 

[Pogo]

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

Wow, you do know the Republican party was started to get rid of slavery right?

And not one democrat voted to get rid of slavery right?


.

You do know that there were anti-slavery Democrats before the inception of the Republican party don't you? They formed an alliance with Whigs and merged with them into a third party called the Free Soil Party. In turn, the Republican Party emerged from Northern Democrat roots... Republicans didn't just appear out of thin air. Heh heh heh!:

"The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. It opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio. It nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency in 1848 and John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852.

The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854 and 1856, by way of the Anti-Nebraska movement."

And all of the slave holders were democrats. The slave holding democrats went to war to keep their slaves.

Once again ---- it's kind of problematic for the quicksand you're standing in that Ulysses Simpson Grant -- who famously led Union troops in that war and then went on to two terms as President --- had also been a slaveholder. No wonder you keep ignoring that and going "la la la" so you can continue yammering in Absolute Binary.

And again, per the second sentence --- just as there has never been a lynching open only to a political party, it also wasn't necessary to register with one in order to go to war. You're still mired in the same Absolute Binary. Not everybody belongs to a fucking political party. It isn't required. Not in this country.

 

[Pogo]

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

We're all democrats then pro-slavery...no.....but the the people who owned slaves were democrats...........the Republican Party was created as the anti slavery party.

Why don't we frame it this way: Some Northern democrat liberals helped create the anti-slavery movement and joined the whigs to become republicans in the fight against southern pro-slavery democrat conservatives?

You have to explain the word "Conservative" when you apply it to democrat slave owners, otherwise you mix them up with modern American Conservatives.....democrat slave owners wanted to conserve the institution of slavery.....where as modern Conservative Americans would have been the same as the anti slavery side of the argument......Modern conservatives want to preserve the ideas in our founding documents.....Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, and that all men are created equal.....individual liberty....

The left likes to call the democrat slave owners "Conservatives" in order to lie to people who don't understand the difference between conservatives then and now....

Anti-Slavery (or in its time Abolition) is a Liberal philosophy -- certainly not a 'conservative' one.

In 1860 the Republicans Party was where Liberalism --- which is summed up in the phrase "all men are created equal" --- lived. You can certainly be a Conservative and not believe in Slavery. But you can't be a Liberal and believe in it. They're mutually antagonistic.

 

[Pogo]

Wow, you do know the Republican party was started to get rid of slavery right?

And not one democrat voted to get rid of slavery right?


.

Did any southern Republicans vote to end slavery?

It wasn't Democrats vs Republicans on matters of civil rights, it was North vs South. Not one Southern Republican voted for the Civil Rights Act, and only a handful of Southern Democrats voted for it. The Civil Rights Act was passed by legislators from the north, both Republican and Democrat, and opposed by legislators from the south, both Republican and Democrat.

Exactly right. It was entirely and dramatically along regional lines. I think they try to rewrite that inconvenient part out and try to spin it as a political issue instead, out of embarrassment that the region that went so staunchly against it now belongs to their own party.

I've made this point, with the numbers, many a time on this site but here's an article that breaks it down well:

>> When we look at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill:

​

80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.

Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn't have passed without the support of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.

Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?

You don't need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not.

You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren't from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference between parties.

But what happens when we control for both party affiliation and region? As Sean Trende noted earlier this year, "sometimes relationships become apparent only after you control for other factors".

In this case, it becomes clear that Democrats in the north and the south were more likely to vote for the bill than Republicans in the north and south respectively. This difference in both houses is statistically significant with over 95% confidence. It just so happened southerners made up a larger percentage of the Democratic than Republican caucus, which created the initial impression than Republicans were more in favor of the act.

Nearly 100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did.

The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at Voteview.com, who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators, found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one controlled for a factor closely linked to geography. <<

​

​

 

[JQPublic1]

New York was republican territory at the turn of the 20th Century. But in either case KKK affiliation is not a prerequisite for racism. The average people that make up lynch mobs may not even be registered as republicans nor democrats. And I doubt if senators,judges or high ranking officials of either party were present.

The Republican party was the party that freed the slaves and fought for their civil rights......the democrats...owned the slaves, fought a war to keep their slaves and enacted jim crow after the Republicans freed the slaves...but keep thinking Republicans would be as racist as the members of the former slave owning party....

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves unilaterally with his Emancipation Proclamation. The republicans had nothing to do with it. And Lincoln certainly dd not manumit Blacks in the interest of humanity or altruism.

And what makes you think all people registered as democrats of the day were pro slavery? Conversely, why would you think all people registered as republicans opposed it?

We're all democrats then pro-slavery...no.....but the the people who owned slaves were democrats...........the Republican Party was created as the anti slavery party.

Why don't we frame it this way: Some Northern democrat liberals helped create the anti-slavery movement and joined the whigs to become republicans in the fight against southern pro-slavery democrat conservatives?

You have to explain the word "Conservative" when you apply it to democrat slave owners, otherwise you mix them up with modern American Conservatives.....democrat slave owners wanted to conserve the institution of slavery.....where as modern Conservative Americans would have been the same as the anti slavery side of the argument......Modern conservatives want to preserve the ideas in our founding documents.....Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, and that all men are created equal.....individual liberty....

The left likes to call the democrat slave owners "Conservatives" in order to lie to people who don't understand the difference between conservatives then and now....

My duty here is to remove the gilded mask of morality you attempt to place over the ugly face of American Konservatism. I replaced the C" with a "K" for many reasons but especially to note the new populist components within your party of whom are led by Trump to favor Putin over America.



The KKK became an "arm" of conservatism upon inception and remains so till this very day;. Further, the KKK is joined by every other American White hate group in existence under the friendly auspices of the Republicans and their so-called Conservative agenda.
I have looked, but, as of yet, spotted little or no difference between old tyme American Conservatism as exhibited by southerners and the present day varieties exhibited by modern Konservatives, or Conservatives.

Recent court cases unveiling Republican voter suppression and the GOP sponsored corruption of our electoral process are a matter of record.