rssGingrich Walks Back Civil Rights Comments
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm
- 59 Comments
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz yesterday quoted Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker from Georgia, warning that Obama’s support for sweeping health care reform would plague Democrats for decades, much as Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 jostled the party and led to the entrenchment of Southern Republicans that we still have today.
“‘They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years’ with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s,” Balz wrote, quoting Gingrich.
That statement led to my short post yesterday, questioning why Gingrich would suggest that political expediency should trump reforms as vital as those ensuring basic human rights. More recently, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman also latched onto Gingrich’s comments, asking today: “Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality?”
Turns out Gingrich didn’t like the way his words were framed, and he let Balz know it in a series of emails yesterday. That exchange led Balz today to issue this separate addendum, in which Gingrich says the Civil Rights Act was a moral necessity.
Gingrich responded with several emails saying that the context misrepresented his views by implying that he believed Johnson was wrong to sign the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s. To the contrary, he said, the civil rights revolution of 1956-1965 was “morally absolutely necessary” for the country and Johnson was correct in pushing for the legislation. Other Johnson actions, he said, inflicted more damage to the Democratic coalition.
Johnson shattered his party, Gingrich went on to say, because he had “grotesquely overreached” in four areas: mismanagement of the economy, the failure in Vietnam, the cultural divisions that emerged in part over Vietnam and later civil rights initiatives. Johnson’s mistake on civil rights, he said, was not in signing major legislation but in later getting ahead of the country by supporting school busing and failing to take a firmer stance against racial violence in the cities.
“If LBJ had done nothing on civil rights,” Gingrich said, “he would still have been in trouble on the economy, Great Society big government, the counter culture and the war.”
For the sake of argument, let’s say he’s right about that. It still doesn’t clear up the issue. For one thing, Gingrich’s comments weren’t intended to be friendly advice for Democrats. (What does he care if they flail in chaos for the next 40 years?) They were lobbed as a Hail Mary attempt to kill the health reform by causing House Democrats to fear the political repercussions of their support. And what single vote under the Johnson White House would make that point most clearly but the one enacting the Civil Rights Act?
Joe DeSantis, a Gingrich spokesman, wrote in our comment thread this morning that “Gingrich was not drawing an analogy between the health care bill and civil rights legislation.”
Maybe not. But Balz is standing by it. Indeed, despite the separate addendum, the original story remains unchanged.
59 Comments
Pingback posted March 22, 2010 @ 2:09 pm
[...] Gingrich Walks Back Civil Rights Comments « The Washington Independent [...]
Pingback posted March 22, 2010 @ 4:24 pm
[...] It’s amazing, really. Whenever Republicans puts their foot in their mouth (and crams it down their throat), they were “taken out of context.” The latest “victim” is Newt Gingrich. [...]
Trackback posted March 22, 2010 @ 6:31 pm
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Pingback posted March 22, 2010 @ 7:15 pm
[...] It’s amazing, really. Whenever Republicans puts their foot in their mouth (and crams it down their throat), they were “taken out of context.” The latest “victim” is Newt Gingrich. [...]
Comment posted March 22, 2010 @ 7:20 pm
Well, his attempt at a defense doesn't address the other implication of his remark, which he cannot possibly wiggle out of: that the Republican Party benefited by picking up the racist vote in the south. It happens to be true, and it also happens to be his essential point.
Comment posted March 22, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
His original statement was accurate on its face. The signing of the Civil Rights Act ended the once Solid South that democrats could count on since the Civil War. It was Abe Lincoln's republican party 100 years before that made the south a democratic stronghold, but after holding a grudge for a century, the democratic party's embrace of civil rights for African-Americans was just too much to bear despite their hatred of Lincoln. It appears the common thread through all this is that southern republicans are motivated by hatred and bigotry more than anything else. Even when it's in their own self interest, they'll pick hatred instead.
Comment posted March 22, 2010 @ 8:12 pm
The GOP had wandered in well-deserved obscurity from 1933 until they saw their chance in Democratic support of civil rights. That was the beginning of their politics of resentment, anger, and self-pity. It took a few years to pick off the entrenched southern Dems (the quite explicit Nixonian “Southern strategy” of 1969 was the immediately successful presidential version of this), then swelled with the Reagan victory, burst through to full Congressional control in 1994, and reached is apotheosis in the GWB era and it's foul Rush/Tea Party/Beck/Palin aftermath .
I think there is a good chance that the HCR victory is the nail in the coffin. Republicans will have to eschew their niche as bascially a regional southern white male circle jerk and start appealing to some of the people who used to be in the Republican party, or risk going the way of the Whigs. There will be a conservative party, but there is no guarantee it will be this band of crackpots.
Comment posted March 22, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
If only the Democrats would take advice from Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, and John Boehner, they would have 100 Senate Seats and all Representatives in Congress. Thanks for the advice, Newt, but when I Democrats want political advice you're not the go-to guy. Perhaps you could recommend a good divorce lawyer?
Pingback posted March 22, 2010 @ 11:51 pm
[...] Gingrich Walks Back Civil Rights Comments « The Washington Independent [...]
Comment posted March 23, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
They should call themselves the Male Caucasian Christocans, since the only people they seem to want these days are white male evangelicals and Dominionists.
Comment posted March 23, 2010 @ 5:39 pm
Newt Gingrich is a contemptible excuse for a human being. That he's still arrogant enough to think that he can make a credible run for office speaks volumes about his ego and stupidity.
Pingback posted March 23, 2010 @ 8:46 pm
[...] Gingrich Walks Back Civil Rights Comments « The Washington Independent [...]
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 12:40 am
The Repbulican Party has always been a party of Bigots. Now they will truly represents only the Bigots. There is no room in this party for intellectual thought. Racists unite, you have a true leader in Newt.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 4:44 am
Wow what a lame excuse for an article! Gingrich didnt say what you claimed he did and you still cant face it…
BTW it was LBJ's fellow democrats that opposed the civil rights act, the Republicans backed it…
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Comment posted April 6, 2010 @ 8:21 pm
I am so weary of the way Republicans want to claim the credit for passing Civil Rights. The previous post from JDL51 was exactly right. The Solid Democratic South was composed of Southern racists who resented Lincoln's Party, and could never get over losing the Civil War. Since the passage of Civil Rights, those racist Southern Democrats became Republican, and the South became the Solid Republican South. Civil rights was pbacked and passed by Liberals, and opposed by Conservatives. Period. Now in the South, the Liberals and the Conservatives have simply switched parties.
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