we are all the democrats who built the White House

[2aguy]

And more on the myth of the dixiecrats.....who became republicans.....and myth it is....

Freedom and Liberty The Myth of the Dixiecrat Switch of the Republican and Democratic parties


I contacted Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton for advice. Larry and I worked on a documentary based on a chapter on Ronald Reagan from his best-selling book, A Patriot’s History of the United States.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.

So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

Larry also suggested I contact Mike Allen, Professor of History at the University of Washington, Tacoma (who also appeared in the Reagan documentary) for input.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the souther GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.

This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.

Switch to 1968.

Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads.

He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.

Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.

Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new ”Solid South” was solid GOP.

Bullshit. That was debunked a long time ago.

Oh...excuse me if I don't accept "debunking" by the very political types trying to hide their historical racism....by blaming the other party for being racists.......the modern democrat party is even more racist than the past democrat party because it is now the home of all racists in the United States....,the white racists, the black racists and the latino racists...its greates modern achievement, the "Great Society" was created to keep blacks voting for their former slave owners for the next 200 years....and their current leader sat in a racist church for 20 years, and had the racist pastor marry him and his wife, and baptized their children....is visited and advised by one of the countries premier racists, al sharpton.....and yet you want us to believe that the Republicans are the racists....

Sell it to your fellow racists.......they might actually believe your crap.....

 

[2aguy]

And more on the myth of the dixiecrats.....who became republicans.....and myth it is....

Freedom and Liberty The Myth of the Dixiecrat Switch of the Republican and Democratic parties


I contacted Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton for advice. Larry and I worked on a documentary based on a chapter on Ronald Reagan from his best-selling book, A Patriot’s History of the United States.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.

So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

Larry also suggested I contact Mike Allen, Professor of History at the University of Washington, Tacoma (who also appeared in the Reagan documentary) for input.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the souther GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.

This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.

Switch to 1968.

Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads.

He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.

Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.

Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new ”Solid South” was solid GOP.

And thank you immensely. That absolutely nailed the issue down.

The democrats are the party of the totalitarians, the party of the slave master, the party of those who want to control all the people, not just one color or economic class.....they have changed and adapted their tactics and have gained control of education, their unions control the public schools, entertainment, their minions make the movies that cast them as heroes, and journalism, their minions in hide their scandals and attack their enemies.....

 

[2aguy]

Sorry....the left loves the state....a big powerful, all controlling state with no limits on its power....

I am a modern American conservative sympathetic to the Tea Party/libertarians who believes in a limited central government constrained by checks and balances, and separation of powers and whose actions are defined by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and whose guiding principal is the Declaration of Independence.......

So...not a lefty at all......

In those checks and balances is there anything to keep the Congress from becoming completely corrupt?

The Founders anticipated this corruption and tried their best to counter it. Two houses of Congress are supposed to be checks on each other, the Executive Branch is supposed to keep them in check as well as the Judicial Branch......that was the intent.......sadly, it is breaking down........

 

[2aguy]

Hey...you apologists for democrat racism...you can check these names and tell us if they are accurate....

Egnorance Where did all of the Dixiecrats go

Where did all of the Dixiecrats go?

Democrats argue that Southern Dixiecrat racists fled from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That would of course be an odd thing to do, given that Republicans, who had a 100-year history of support for civil rights, voted for Civil Rights with much larger majorities than Democrats, who have a 150-year history of support for slavery, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan.

The 150-year civil rights struggle can be summed quite accurately: it was a struggle of Republicans supporting civil rights against Democrats opposing it. By the mid-20th century, some Democrats had come around to the Republican view that blacks had civil rights.

The opponents of civil rights have always been Democrats.

But let's take a look at how many Dixiecrat segregationalists remained Democrats, and how many switched parties:

Dixiecrats who remained Democrats after 1964:

Orval Fabus
Benjamin Travis Laney
John Stennis
James Eastland
Allen Ellender
Russell Long
John Sparkman
John McClellan
Richard Russell
Herman Talmadge
George Wallace
Lester Maddox
John Rarick
Robert Byrd
Al Gore, Sr.
Bull Connor

Dixiecrats who became Republicans after 1964:
Strom Thurmond
Miles Godwin

 

[Porker]

And more on the myth of the dixiecrats.....who became republicans.....and myth it is....

Freedom and Liberty The Myth of the Dixiecrat Switch of the Republican and Democratic parties


I contacted Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton for advice. Larry and I worked on a documentary based on a chapter on Ronald Reagan from his best-selling book, A Patriot’s History of the United States.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.

So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

Larry also suggested I contact Mike Allen, Professor of History at the University of Washington, Tacoma (who also appeared in the Reagan documentary) for input.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the souther GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.

This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.

Switch to 1968.

Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads.

He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.

Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.

Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new ”Solid South” was solid GOP.

Bullshit. That was debunked a long time ago.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BWAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ah HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA . Ohhhhhh SHIT!

 

[2aguy]

And this is a nice long look at the situation....the democrats changed methods and goals....not their hearts........they are racist as they ever were.....

The Southern Strategy Myth and the Lost Majority RedState

 

[Lakhota]

Hey...you apologists for democrat racism...you can check these names and tell us if they are accurate....

Egnorance Where did all of the Dixiecrats go

Where did all of the Dixiecrats go?

Democrats argue that Southern Dixiecrat racists fled from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That would of course be an odd thing to do, given that Republicans, who had a 100-year history of support for civil rights, voted for Civil Rights with much larger majorities than Democrats, who have a 150-year history of support for slavery, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan.

The 150-year civil rights struggle can be summed quite accurately: it was a struggle of Republicans supporting civil rights against Democrats opposing it. By the mid-20th century, some Democrats had come around to the Republican view that blacks had civil rights.

The opponents of civil rights have always been Democrats.

But let's take a look at how many Dixiecrat segregationalists remained Democrats, and how many switched parties:

Dixiecrats who remained Democrats after 1964:

Orval Fabus
Benjamin Travis Laney
John Stennis
James Eastland
Allen Ellender
Russell Long
John Sparkman
John McClellan
Richard Russell
Herman Talmadge
George Wallace
Lester Maddox
John Rarick
Robert Byrd
Al Gore, Sr.
Bull Connor

Dixiecrats who became Republicans after 1964:
Strom Thurmond
Miles Godwin

Are they the only ones who voted? You are such a dumbass.

 

[Pogo]

Desperation strikes deep. Your numbers didn't pan out so you're turning to Steve McRacist's bogus quote machine.

My #s were THE ONLY numbers that mattered, you little prick. The passing votes in both the House and the Senate....by MUCH LARGER margins from the Republicans than the dimowittedcrats.

Aw, someone having a widdle meltdown?

Once again for the slow readers:

The original House version:

• Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
• >>> ALL SOUTHERNERS: 7-97 (6.7%--93.3%)

• Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94 – 6%)
• Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85 – 15%)
• >>> ALL NORTHERNERS: 283-33 (89.6%--11.4%)

The Senate version:

• Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
• Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
• Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
• ALL SOUTHERNERS: 1--21 (4.5%--95.5%)
• ALL NORTHERNERS: 72--6 (92.3%--7.7%)

The numbers don't lie; your pattern is clearly there but it's regional, not political. And regional, once again for the slow readers, means cultural.

You take the numbers from the North -- both Dems and Repubs are for it.
You take the numbers from the South -- both Dems and Repubs are agin' it.
It's truly bipartisan in both directions. (!)

The only mitigating factor is you have more "D" numbers from the South because it was a one-party (Democratic) country, for 99 years after the Civil War, the idea of affiliating with the party of Lincoln being unthinkable until Thurmond opened the gates.

Lott was another btw who made the migration. So was Jesse Helms. So was David Duke. Which makes a kind of sense since they, like the South, had always been conservative.

Actually it was LBJ who pushed hard for and signed the CRA into law. You just painted yourself into a corner.

IN fact it was LBJ who said...
“I’ll have those nig-gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” —Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One -

“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”—LBJ

"Fact" huh?

Link then?


Didn't think so.


But the verifiable fact is that LBJ pushed for it. Unlike bogus quotes floating around the chasms of the internets, that's on the record.

You lose.

I don't even have a political party; I've made that clear. But I do dig history and cultural study.
That's why I won't let you fuck with it. The numbers, as well as the rhetoric of the time (I lived through that era, so did you) clearly tell us this CRA was a had bipartisan support and hyper-regional resistance. Not the other way around.

In fact you can't find your ass with either hand RETARD.

 

[Porker]

And more on the myth of the dixiecrats.....who became republicans.....and myth it is....

Freedom and Liberty The Myth of the Dixiecrat Switch of the Republican and Democratic parties


I contacted Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton for advice. Larry and I worked on a documentary based on a chapter on Ronald Reagan from his best-selling book, A Patriot’s History of the United States.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.

So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

Larry also suggested I contact Mike Allen, Professor of History at the University of Washington, Tacoma (who also appeared in the Reagan documentary) for input.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the souther GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.

This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.

Switch to 1968.

Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads.

He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.

Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.

Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new ”Solid South” was solid GOP.

And thank you immensely. That absolutely nailed the issue down.

The democrats are the party of the totalitarians, the party of the slave master, the party of those who want to control all the people, not just one color or economic class.....they have changed and adapted their tactics and have gained control of education, their unions control the public schools, entertainment, their minions make the movies that cast them as heroes, and journalism, their minions in hide their scandals and attack their enemies.....

Simply put...they are goddamn Communists with a capital C.

 

[2aguy]

For Pete's sake....the two leaders of the democrat party still pay women less than men...obama at the White House and hilary both pay their women staffers less than their male staffers.........and again....obama is the biggest racist in the party...he attended a racist church...a vile, racist church for 20 years.........

 

[2aguy]

And it isn't just the party leaders paying women less.....the democrats in general pay women less....

Senate Dems Remain on Front Lines of War on Women Washington Free Beacon


Democrats have a lot of work to do in their own offices, according to an analysis of salary figures compiled from secretary of the Senate reports covering the fiscal year 2013.

Senators who were not in office for the entirety of the fiscal year were not included in the analysis. Staffers that were not employed for the entire year were also excluded from calculations.

The analysis shows female staffers in Democratic Senate offices were paid just 91 cents for each dollar paid to male staffers. The average salary for a woman was more than $5,500 below the average salary for a man.

Men received higher average salaries in more than two-thirds of the 43 Senate offices analyzed.

Many of the senators with the largest pay disparity between men and women are facing reelection battles in 2014.

Among those with the greatest disparity is Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), who paid his female staffers only 72 cents on the dollar compared to male staffers. The average female salary was $20,861 below the average male salary.

Alaska’s Sen. Mark Begich (D.) was even tougher on his female staffers. He paid his female employees just 71 cents on the dollar, for a gender pay gap of $23,504.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.), who just last week held a press conference on the issue of equal pay, was also found to pay her female staffers far less compared to males. The average male salary was $13,037 higher than the average female salary. Women made just 82 cents for each dollar made by men.

Numerous senators up for reelection have an especially large gap between male and female salaries:

• Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.): $15,343 higher average male salary;
• Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.): $9,783 higher average male salary;
• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.): $6,267 higher average male salary;
• Sen. Mark Pryor (D., Ark.): $5,799 higher average male salary;
• Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.): $3,189 higher average male salary.

This is not a new problem for Democrats. A previous Washington Free Beacon analysis of the fiscal year 2011 found that Democratic Senate offices were paying female staffers far less than their male coworkers during that year as well.

Women were also paid less than men at the Democratic National Committee, in Obama’s White House, and on his 2012 presidential campaign.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who caucuses with the Democrats, was the worst of the gender pay gap offenders in the previous analysis. He remains near the bottom of the list, with the average female salary $21,730 lower than the average salary received by men in his office.

 

[2aguy]

The democrats are racists and sexists.......but they control education, entertainment and journalism....so their magic trick worked........

 

[2aguy]

To all of you who apologize for the racism and sexism of the democrat party, both the historical racism and sexism and the modern racism and sexism...first, you should be ashamed of yourselves...and second...good night.....

 

[RandomVariable]

Sorry....the left loves the state....a big powerful, all controlling state with no limits on its power....

I am a modern American conservative sympathetic to the Tea Party/libertarians who believes in a limited central government constrained by checks and balances, and separation of powers and whose actions are defined by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and whose guiding principal is the Declaration of Independence.......

So...not a lefty at all......

In those checks and balances is there anything to keep the Congress from becoming completely corrupt?

The Founders anticipated this corruption and tried their best to counter it. Two houses of Congress are supposed to be checks on each other, the Executive Branch is supposed to keep them in check as well as the Judicial Branch......that was the intent.......sadly, it is breaking down........

"breaking down"? I am not sure if there is one brick standing upon another.