Virginia Democrats Are Still The Party of Condescension and Racism
The party of Massive Resistance and Planned Parenthood doesn't get to stand on a pile of dead babies and scold the rest of us on social justice.
You may have heard this narrative before.
While the Dixiecrats watched in horror as Republicans dismantled “separate but equal” in the 1950s and Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to enforce desegregation, somehow the Democrats who were championing the ideas of Massive Resistance and preaching “segregation to the gates of hell” performed an instantaneous volte face and by the 1960s were peaceable hippies…
Meanwhile, those degenerate Republicans under the very same President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to revoke our own charter and randomly decide to hate black people en masse. By Nixon in 1968, the Southern Strategy had locked up the South, and Democrats were now the party of light, justice, and all that is decent in the world.
Oh, and let’s not talk about coddling the Soviet Union.
Of course, there’s a slight problem with this Democratic narrative about them sloughing off their paternalistic DNA that tells people what to think, what to believe, which bathrooms they can use and so forth.
It just ain’t true.
Clinton-Dole 1996? When two “sons of the South” were running on the Democratic ticket?
Oh come on… they didn’t really call themselves “Sons of the South” — did they?
But wait a second… they weren’t actually running as Dixiecrats were they? I mean, they were running as noble enlightened pre-progressives who admired social justice and racial harmo—
But Virginia Democrats weren’t all about that Dixiecrat life for sure? I mean, they’d never run a candidate that embraced the Confederate flag as heritage as recently as 2002!
OK fine, Mr. Kenney.
You get Cooter Jones running against Eric Cantor in 2002… but surely Democrats learned their lesson and would never run a candidate for US Senate where Politico would comment on their affinity for the Confederacy in 2006!
Surely he wouldn’t write a book about it… right?
Ah, but we digress. Jim Webb learned his lesson and reformed after 2012!! Surely Virginia Democrats would not tolerate a guy who would continue to defend the Confederacy in 2015…
But that’s just Jim Webb! No one else in the Democratic Party actually believes in this paternalistic do-as-we-say-or-else claptrap?! That’s not in the Democratic Party’s DNA!!
OK fine, so mistakes are being made.
But Democrats are constantly learning and evolving, right? I mean surely, Virginia Democrats wouldn’t run a gubernatorial candidate who enjoyed wearing blackface or KKK regalia! Surely they wouldn’t double down on this by running an attorney general who did the same thing?!
Surely the Democratic Party has cut ties to every institution of racial injustice in America — especially Planned Parenthood!
Let’s be honest about this one. Democrats have always been into telling people which bathrooms they can or cannot use.
They have certainly been invested in marriage.
…and they certainly don’t mind getting rid of “growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Of course, that quote isn’t from Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist-leader Margaret Sanger (pictured above). That quote is from a modern day progressive “civil rights” secular saint Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Like slavemasters of old, Virginia Democrats are choosing to become the worst and most condescending of all tyrants — those who simply mean well.
That Virginia Democrats writ large see the institution of the state as a means of enforcing the secular religion of progressive ideologues is repulsive enough. Yet when you look upon the tortured history of the Democratic Party writ large? When you draw the fine thread from slavery to segregation to Jim Crow and Massive Resistance?
This is who and what the Democrats have allowed themselves to be.
Meanwhile, Republicans should do everything in our power to remind ourselves that we are still the party of freedom. Republicans are the party of free minds, free speech, and a free society. Republicans fought the Civil War. Republicans kicked off the Industrial Revolution and lifted millions of Americans out of poverty. Republicans led the free world against Soviet Communism. It is Republicans who championed the free market that has lifted one billion people out of poverty since the end of the Cold War and is set to lift the last billion out of poverty by 2030.
Republicans gave Virginia her “best in the nation” business ranking. Republicans funded education, fully funded our police and first responders, gave small businesses the oxygen they needed, ended parole and gave Virginia parental notification.
It is Republicans defending a free and unfettered public square against all enemies — including our 1A and 2A rights.
The long history of Democrats in power has been a tale of tragedy, tyranny and condescension. That they seem to be immune to criticism on this front should shock and appall Republicans — but have the courage to remind them of their own history, even if they don’t read it in their history books anymore.
The better question is when did the Democrats stop being the Dixiecrats? Because between blackface and Klan hoods, they sure do seem to hold their own electorate in utter contempt, n'est-ce pas?
Shaun Kenney is the editor of The Republican Standard, former chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fluvanna County, and a former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.