Republican Party (United States)

"I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore."

"I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans."

"I was a little bit skeptical based on some things I've heard and I've seen from other Republicans. I wanted someone to pick up on that Jack Kemp model and I wanted him to understand that it's the justice issues, or the injustice, that keep black people from voting Republican. He has listened and learned and has been able to take on things that most Republicans would be afraid of."

"On March 20, 1854, the Republican Party was established in Ripon, Wisconsin. Referred to as the 'GOP' or 'Grand Old Party', it established for one reason, to break the chains of slavery and ensure the unalienable rights endowed by the Creator of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be for all Americans. The Republican Party was created to achieve individual freedom. Then, as now, the antagonist to the Republican Party has been the Democrats, the party of collective subjugation and individual enslavement, then physical, now economic."

"The antagonist to the Republican Party has been the Democrats, the party of collective subjugation and individual enslavement. Then physical, now economic. The first black members of the U.S. House and Senate were Republicans. The first civil rights legislation came from Republicans. Democrats gave us the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and failed policies like the 'Great Society'. Republican President Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce school desegregation. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen enabled the 1964 civil rights legislation to pass, in opposition to Democrat Senators Robert Byrd, a KKK Grand Wizard, and Al Gore, Sr."

"Who are the real racists? So far, thanks to a Republican Party that is ignorant of its own history and gave up on the black community, Democrats have fifty of those two hundred years under their belt. The problem with today's Republican Party is that it has forgotten its own history and raison d'etre. Individual liberty. The party must come to realize that GOP also stands for 'Growth, Opportunity, Prosperity' and articulate how it stands, as its history and founding clearly demonstrate, for the individual pursuit of happiness as opposed to the progressive socialist Democrat lie of a collective guarantee of happiness. So, happy 160th birthday to my party, the Republican Party. I am a strong conservative and I hope Republicans recommit to those fundamental principles which established this party, the historical antithesis of the Democrats."

"The truth is that it is a culture of dependency as promulgated by the race-baiters and new plantation overseers of the inner city that has created what we’re seeing play out in Baltimore. There is where the blame lies, but there are very few who are willing to admit just that. Remember what ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith said? He wished that for one voting cycle, the black community would vote Republican. Heck, they could do no worse — and look, even the people of the State of Maryland decided to try something different and elected a Republican governor. Who, when finally asked, immediately activated the National Guard to quell the violence and chaos which the Democrat Mayor of Baltimore failed to comprehend, and control. Perhaps what we’re witnessing in Baltimore is the pure definition of insanity — continuing to do the same thing and expect different results."

"Lincoln and the Republican Party of the 1850s were able to mobilize a national majority against the expansion of slavery only because of the commitment the founders had made to the proposition that all men are created equal. The Republican opposition to slavery led to secession and civil war. After the border slave states had become committed to the war effort Lincoln took his earliest practical opportunity to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. From then on, the war for the Union became a war to abolish slavery... The founders believed that their compromises with slavery would be corrected in the course of American history after the union was formed. Their belief turned out to be true, although the new birth of freedom proved to be less inevitable and more costly than they had anticipated. The civil war fulfilled the antislavery promise of the American founding. Lincoln was right, and today's consensus is wrong. America really was 'conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal'. Under the principles of the declaration and the law of the constitution, blacks won their liberty, became equal citizens, gained the right to vote, and eventually had their life, liberty, and property equally protected by the law. But today the founding, which made all this possible is denounced as unjust and anti-black. Surely that uncharitable verdict deserves to be reversed."

"As the 2024 election draws near, voters are dissatisfied with both Joe Biden and Donald Trump: 59 percent do not want Biden to run again; 56 percent feel the same way about Trump... The real threat to the two-party system comes from the Republican Party. Donald Trump destroyed the Republican establishment and transformed the party into his own personal organization. Stunningly, the thrice-indicted Trump is the leading GOP candidate who could be seeking the presidency next year from a jail cell. Trump’s hold on the GOP stems from the grievances of his mostly white, blue-collar supporters. Reporting to the federal courthouse for his third arrest, Trump posted on Truth Social: “IT IS A GREAT HONOR, BECAUSE I AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU.” Historically, the Republican establishment played a major role in presenting honorable candidates with experience in government who adhered to conservative principles. The Grand Old Party prided itself in nominating Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, John McCain and Mitt Romney. When another establishment-endorsed candidate, Richard Nixon, sullied the presidency a group of GOP leaders put party loyalty aside and told Nixon that it was time to depart."

"Donald Trump’s 2015 descent down the escalator to announce his candidacy was symbolic. It marked the fall of the party establishment and the beginning of a hostile takeover by a talented showman who excelled in the performance aspect of politics. A now-exiled member of the establishment, Liz Cheney, states, “What we’ve done in our politics is to create a situation where we’re electing idiots.” Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd recently told a gathering of Iowa Republicans: “Donald Trump is running for president in order for him to stay out of jail.” Hurd is right. A conviction on any of the charges levied against the former president could send him to prison for the rest of his life. Only the comforts of the White House, and a president armed with a pen who is willing to pardon Trump, can salvage what remains of his life. Meanwhile, any reports of the Democratic party’s demise are highly overrated. During the past two years, the centrist and progressive wings of the party have united behind President Biden. What opposition there is to a second Biden term centers on one issue: his age. Unlike the third-party candidacy of Strom Thurmond in 1948, who objected to Harry Truman’s civil rights policy, or the challenges by Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam War 20 years later, the policies pursued by the Biden-Harris administration are popular both within the party and without."

"If things don’t change, the Republican Party is finished. Republicans are fighting against a political demography that is younger, more racially and culturally diverse and more highly educated. Between 2016 and 2024, there will be 32 million new voters while in the same period, there will be 20 million fewer older voters. Since 2008, young voters have awarded more than 60 percent of their ballots to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and 55 percent to Hillary Clinton. Older voters have given majorities to GOP presidential candidates since 2004, including Donald Trump in 2020. Unless Republicans bid Donald Trump adieu, the Republican Party will find itself at odds with a younger generation of voters who will shape the politics of the 21st century. Without the ability to adapt, the Republican Party is in danger of fracturing like a shattered piece of glass. What will come after it is something we can hardly imagine. But it won’t be the two-party system as we know it."

"My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that's despicable."

"It has come to this. The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government's size and coercive powers."

"Worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow 'switched places' vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century. Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century. Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless."

"Southerners who defected from the Democratic Party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican Party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century. There is no radical break in the Republicans' civil rights history. From abolition to Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, there exists a line that is by no means perfectly straight or unwavering but that nonetheless connects the politics of Lincoln with those of Dwight D. Eisenhower. And from slavery and secession to remorseless opposition to everything from Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, there exists a similarly identifiable line connecting John Calhoun and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Supporting civil-rights reform was not a radical turnaround for congressional Republicans in 1964, but it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the Democrats."

"The Republican platform in 1964 was hardly catnip for Klansmen. It spoke of the Johnson administration's failure to help further the 'just aspirations of the minority groups' and blasted the president for his refusal 'to apply Republican-initiated retraining programs where most needed, particularly where they could afford new economic opportunities to Negro citizens'. Other planks in the platform included, 'improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times; such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote; continued opposition to discrimination based on race, creed, national origin or sex'. And Goldwater's fellow Republicans ran on a 1964 platform demanding 'full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen'. Some dog whistle."

"The legislative record, the evolution of the electorate, the party platforms, the keynote speeches, none of them suggests a party-wide Republican about-face on civil rights. Neither does the history of the black vote. While Republican affiliation was beginning to grow in the south in the late 1930s, the GOP also lost its lock on black voters in the north, among whom the New Deal was extraordinarily popular. By 1940, Democrats for the first time won a majority of black votes in the north. This development was not lost on Lyndon Johnson, who crafted his Great Society with the goal of exploiting widespread dependency for the benefit of the Democratic Party."

"In many cases segregationist Democrats were thrown out by southern voters in favor of civil-rights Republicans. One of the loudest Democratic segregationists in the House was Texas' John Dowdy... It was in fact not until 1995 that Republicans represented a majority of the southern congressional delegation, and they had hardly spent the Reagan years campaigning on the resurrection of Jim Crow. It was not the Civil War but the Cold War that shaped mid-century partisan politics. Eisenhower warned the country against the 'military-industrial complex', but in truth Ike's ascent had represented the decisive victory of the interventionist, hawkish wing of the Republican Party."

"The Republican party had long been staunchly anti-Communist, but the post-war era saw that anti-Communism energized and looking for monsters to slay, both abroad — in the form of the Soviet Union and its satellites, and at home, in the form of the growing welfare state, the 'creeping socialism' conservatives dreaded. By the middle 1960s, the semi-revolutionary left was the liveliest current in U.S. politics, and Republicans' unapologetic anti-Communism, especially conservatives' rhetoric connecting international socialism abroad with the welfare state at home — left the Left with nowhere to go but the Democratic party. Vietnam was Johnson’s war, but by 1968 the Democratic party was not his alone."

"Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counter-culture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical left into the Democratic Party. Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives' affiliation with the Republican party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns, especially welfare and crime, are 'dog whistles' or 'code' for race and racism, but this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades. Indeed, Democrats who argue that the best policies for black Americans are those that are soft on crime and generous with welfare are engaged in much the same sort of cynical racial calculation President Johnson was practicing when he informed skeptical southern governors that his plan for the Great Society was 'to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years'. Johnson's crude racism is, happily, largely a relic of the past, but his strategy endures."

"I would not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with great respect of the past."

"The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn."

"How did the party of Lincoln allow itself to be taken over by the claque of crazies who now define it? How is it that a black person who in many respects is attracted to Republican ideology finds himself revulsed by the party, which seems to have fallen under the control of people who just can't for the life of them make peace with the outcome of the Civil War?"

"Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons."

"With our republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our federal government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction... As our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing slavery in the territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein... We deny the authority of congress, of a territorial Legislation, of any individual, or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States, while the present constitution shall be maintained."

"[T]he normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom. That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that 'no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law', it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States."

"[W]e brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic... The Republican Party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired."

"[T]he Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad."

"It is the highest duty of every American citizen to maintain against all their enemies the integrity of the Union and the paramount authority of the constitution and laws of the United States; and that, laying aside all differences of political opinion, we pledge ourselves, as Union men, animated by a common sentiment and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms the Rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to their crimes the rebels and traitors arrayed against it... We approve the determination of the government of the United States not to compromise with rebels, or to offer them any terms of peace, except such as may be based upon an unconditional surrender of their hostility and a return to their just allegiance to the constitution and laws of the United States, and that we call upon the government to maintain this position and to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor to the complete suppression of the Rebellion, in full reliance upon the self-sacrificing patriotism, the heroic valor and the undying devotion of the American people to the country and its free institutions."

"As slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States."

"[W]e approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism and the unswerving fidelity to the constitution and the principles of American liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the presidential office; that we approve and endorse, as demanded by the emergency and essential to the preservation of the nation and as within the provisions of the constitution, the measures and acts which he has adopted to defend the nation against its open and secret foes; that we approve, especially, the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the employment as Union soldiers of men heretofore held in slavery; and that we have full confidence in his determination to carry these and all other constitutional measures essential to the salvation of the country into full and complete effect."

"The government owes to all men employed in its armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full protection of the laws of war, and that any violation of these laws, or of the usages of civilized nations in time of war, by the rebels now in arms, should be made the subject of prompt and full redress... Immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy... The people of the United States can never regard with indifference the attempt of any European power to overthrow by force or to supplant by fraud the institutions of any republican government on the western continent and that they will view with extreme jealousy, as menacing to the peace and independence of their own country, the efforts of any such power to obtain new footholds for monarchical government, sustained by foreign military force, in near proximity to the United States."

"We maintain that man was not born to be ruled, but that he consented to be governed, and that the reasons that moved him thereto are few and simple. He has voluntarily submitted to government because, only by the establishment of just laws, and the power to enforce those laws, can an orderly life be maintained, full and equal opportunity for all be established, and the blessings of liberty be perpetuated. We hold that government, and those entrusted with government, should set a high example of honesty, of justice, and unselfish devotion to the public good; that they should labor to maintain tranquility at home and peace and friendship with all the nations of the earth... We condemn bigots who inject class, racial and religious prejudice into public and political matters. Bigotry is un-American and a danger to the republic. We deplore the duplicity and insincerity of the party in power in racial and religious matters. Although they have been in office as a 'Majority Party' for many years, they have not kept nor do they intend to keep their promises. The Republican Party will not mislead, exploit or attempt to confuse minority groups for political purposes. All American citizens are entitled to full, impartial enforcement of Federal laws relating to their civil rights."

"We believe that the federal government should take supplemental action within its constitutional jurisdiction to oppose discrimination against race, religion or national origin... We will prove our good faith by appointing qualified persons, without distinction of race, religion or national origin, to responsible positions in the government... We will prove our good faith by federal action toward the elimination of lynching. Federal action toward the elimination of poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting... We will prove our good faith by appropriate action to end segregation in the District of Columbia... We will prove our good faith by enacting Federal legislation to further just and equitable treatment in the area of discriminatory employment practices... We recommend to Congress the submission of a Constitutional Amendment providing equal rights for men and women; we favor legislation assuring equal pay for equal work regardless of sex... We favor eventual statehood for Puerto Rico... Upon this statement of truths and this pledge of performance, the Republican Party stands confident that it expresses the hopes of the citizens of America and certain that it points out with integrity a road upon which free men may march into a new day—a new and better day, in which shall be fulfilled the decent aspirations of our people for peace, for solvency and for the fulfillment of our best welfare, under the guidance of divine providence."

"We shall ever build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land... Fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex... We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for men and women... The Republican Party points to an impressive record of accomplishment in the field of civil rights and commits itself anew to advancing the rights of all our people regardless of race, creed, color or national origin... The many Negroes who have been appointed to high public positions have played a significant part in the progress... The Republican Party has unequivocally recognized that the supreme law of the land is embodied in the Constitution, which guarantees to all people the blessings of liberty, due process and equal protection of the laws. It confers upon all native-born and naturalized citizens not only citizenship in the State where the individual resides but citizenship of the United States as well. This is an unqualified right, regardless of race, creed or color... We believe that true progress can be attained through intelligent study, understanding, education and good will. Use of force or violence by any group or agency will tend only to worsen the many problems inherent in the situation. This progress must be encouraged and the work of the courts supported in every legal manner by all branches of the federal government to the end that the constitutional ideal of the law, regardless of race, creed or color, be steadily achieved."

"In 1854, the Whig Party collapsed and the Republican Party was born. The Republicans were the anti-slavery party. Neither party could at the time claim the mantle of truly supporting equality and civil rights, but of the two, the Republicans were clearly the party that sought to abolish slavery. The Democrats have no claim at all to supporting civil rights at that time. The election of Republican abolition supporter Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was met by the southern Democrats with secession. The Democrats started a war to divide the country in order to preserve slavery."

"If the Republican Party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule – it is a question of political and social existence."

"The GOP finally became the region's dominant party in the least racist phase of the south's entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region's growing and confident communities, not its declining and fearful ones... Most Republicans genuinely believe that a color-blind society lies down the road of individual choice and dynamic change, not down the road of state regulation and unequal treatment before the law."

"The overwhelming majority of Republicans think that poor people, who maybe are getting food stamps or some kind of public assistance, are lazy and life is easy for them. It’s like they’re just living in a hammock. Now, anyone who’s actually been poor knows that it’s in fact a lot of work to be poor, just getting the daily subsistence, and often they’re keeping down three part-time jobs. They can’t get full-time hours anywhere, and it’s enormously difficult just to pay for basic necessities."

"What a pleasant lot of fellows they are. What a pity they have so little sense about politics. If they lived north the last one of them would be Republicans."

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger'—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"

"In an under-remarked historic irony, the political party that long defended slavery and racial segregation has become the first to nominate an African-American for president. And the GOP, the Party of Lincoln, which fought for union and advanced civil rights from Reconstruction to Little Rock, has been left with a troubling lack of diversity on its political bench. The Republican Party was right on civil rights for the first one-hundred years of its existence. It was right when the Democratic Party was wrong. Its future strength and survival will depend on rediscovering that legacy of individual freedom amid America's essential diversity. To win in the 21st century, the 'Party of Lincoln' needs to start looking like the 'Party of Lincoln' again."

"The decision came from what seemed to many white Virginians the unavoidable logic of the situation. Virginia was a slave state; the Republicans had announced their intention of limiting slavery. Slavery was protected by the sovereignty of the state."

"What would happen to the Democratic Party if they were to lose the election this year? The same thing that happened to it the last time it lost. It would sit in the wings until the Republican Party wiped itself out again."

"The right doesn’t dislike @AOC because she's ineffective. They despise her precisely because she communicates boldly, passionately and in a Twitter-native manner. When AOC talks, Republicans know they are losing."

"Stop the handwringing about @aoc and concentration camps. First of all, she's right. Second of all, she has single-handedly forced a debate about the barbaric and inhumane treatment of migrants at our Southern Border. She is smart, moral and correct."

"I was always raised to think that Republicans were about limited government, about individual liberty, about fiscal responsibility, about balanced budgets, about a wariness of military adventures abroad, about responsible encouragement to business. There's a whole list of things I thought the Republican Party was all about, and these guys that presently occupy the White House, are categorically against every single one of those things. So if they're Republicans, I'm not. But I'm really not a very comfortable Democrat. I mean the Democrats in the last elections proved themselves to be a bunch of dithering pussies... and it was pathetic. So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone."

"Like all Republicans, I knew that my party was founded in opposition to slavery. But I hadn't understood why this was so necessary until I came to realize how deeply entranced racism was in Congress and just how critical the power of the south was in presidential politics... McCarthy was a Republican. The Democrats, however, have skeletons in their own closet and it's worth remembering them, too. For example, Democrat Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, who was just as rabid an anti-Communist as McCarthy, did far more to repress free speech and political freedom than McCarthy ever attempted. It wasn't a Republican president who locked up thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese descent in concentration camps for years. It was Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. And it wasn't a Republican who wiretapped and snooped on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but Democrats John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, who signed the order as Attorney General."

"They may not be the quasi-racists that they are often made out to be in the mainstream media, but neither have they made any real effort to reach out African Americans, politically, for a long time. This bad for the Republican Party, bad for black people, and bad for the country. It would be much better for everyone if the black vote was 'in play' and both major parities had to compete for it. As virtual captives of the Democrats since 1936, blacks have ended up being taken for granted by them and mostly ignored by Republicans... I think Republicans should fight for the black vote and blacks should fight for a place in the Republican Party, just as they fought for their civil rights in the last century. It's a necessary thing and each may find more in common with the other than they imagine. Blacks will be in a far stronger position if both parties must compete for their votes... I would urge Republicans to do as I have done and study this nation's racial history. They need to know, I mean really know, things about slavery and racism that they think they know, but really don't. It will make it easier for them to empathize with African Americans, who have really suffered very badly during most of their history in this country in ways that the nation has barely started to acknowledge, let alone compensate for. For too long, white America has taken the view that it is sufficient simply to stop being racist to make things right for blacks. But the long, long legacy of past racism has never been redressed by either party."

"Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that."