Didn't I say yesterday the government would give me some new lows to report on? Well, the week got off to a bang.
Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Senate Majority Leader, today said Republicans have always been "on the wrong side of history," and accused them of being in favor of slavery, just as they oppose socialized medicine. In this comment, he not only displays a rather vicious desperation, but he's factually completely wrong.
The Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery people. They weren't all abolitionists -- that is, in favor of abolishing slavery all together -- but they opposed the expansion of slavery. Abe Lincoln believed if slavery could not be expanded into the western territories, it would wither and die.
Abraham Lincoln was the Republican candidate in only the second presidential election that party had participated in. Lincoln was a moderate, too. Seward, an early Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, made a speech where he claimed the slave and non-slave states were so divided on the issue that it was an "irrepressible conflict" that would end in civil war.
No one wanted a civil war.
Lincoln was nominated because he was milder, not so fiery. In addition, the Republican platform promised to leave slavery alone where it was in the southern states; they just refused to support its expansion into the new states being carved out of the Louisiana Purchase territories.
Lincoln was elected Nov. 7, 1860. He was not on the ballot at all in any of the southern states. In the slave South, you could vote for a Southern Democrat -- this vehemently pro-slavery faction having separated itself from the party as a whole -- or the Whig, though that party was on the skids and calling itself another name.
So the Southern Democrat state of South Carolina seceded from the union on Dec. 10, 1860, claiming the election of a Republican -- and not necessarily Abe Lincoln, but any anti-slavery Republican -- meant the death of slavery. That couldn't and wouldn't be tolerated. The Confederate States of America was founded in February, 1861. Lincoln was inaugurated in March, 1861. The civil war began in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861.
And for 100+ years afterward, the former slave states of the south were a solid Democrat voting bloc. They never forgave the Republicans for freeing the slaves. They passed and brutally enforced Jim Crow laws, denied blacks the vote and even a decent education.
Those are your Democrats, Harry. Heroic, no?
With the Civil Rights Act of 1964 proposed, debate in the Senate was fillibustered -- the fillibuster supported 80% by DEMOCRATS, 20% by Republicans.
So, Harry, you're not only stupid, but also monumentally ignorant. Sounds like you flunked your 8th grade American history class. Busy campaigning for class president?
What's that line from Republican Mark Twain? "Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
In another but related incident, Bill O'Reilly showed a clip of he being interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. I like Robin Roberts. But the conversation turned to socialized medicine, and O'Reilly said he was, more or less, agin' it. Robin Roberts said:
"But don't you think passing this bill would be a historic moment?"
Yeah. A historic moment like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Or the still-dark and rather stormy morning that the CSA opened up on Fort Sumter. All historic moments.
Just because it's historic, Robin, doesn't mean it's good for the nation. But apparently ol' Robin's a Democrat, so, as my dad would say, "She don't know what's good."
So Robin Roberts and Harry Reid get to share today's "Damn! I'm Stupid" award for this week. So far. Have a feeling that with the tree-huggers assembled pompously and in a non-environmentally friendly way in Copenhagen this week, and the Comrade getting his silly Norwegian award and slated to speak at Copenhagen, we'll be seeing whopping stupid comments tossed around like confetti in the days to come.
Stay tuned.
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