“race was . . .an important factor that drove white Southern conservatives to the GOP”

I know what you are trying to say and I don’t mean to pick nits, but I think people tend to conflate Republican and conservative too much. I don’t disagree that many white Southerners flocked to the Republican party for racist reasons in the 60’s. However, I think it is unfair to introduce conservatism to that statement or to anchor your definition of conservatism in the post-Civil Rights era. It suggests that opposition to the civil rights movement is a core tenet of conservatism. I think it is unfair to ignore the role of the Cold War and the fight against communism in the formation of the conservative movement and shift forward several decades to define conservatism.

This is not to say that the Civil Rights movement is irrelevant to conservatism. To the contrary. It reveals a possible flaw in the ideology. If the consensus is that government intervention was in fact necessary and appropriate to undo Jim Crow (as Goldwater and Buckley later suggested), then what does that mean about conservativism’s first principles of limited government? I think there is an answer to this question , but it is a valid one.

Actually, CL, I think we agree on your assessment here (that political terminology isn’t static), and I thought I was trying to say something along those lines. Maybe I didn’t word it very well.

The closest we can probably come to some meaningful analysis of modern-day parties and modern-day notions of “liberal” and “conservative” would be to look at the Civil Rights period onward. And, again, while historians may disagree amongst themselves, I would think it’s pretty much consensus opinion that while race wasn’t the ONLY factor, it was, in many cases, an important factor that drove white Southern conservatives to the GOP…..I think I added enough qualifiers there to make that a pretty safe statement. :).

Depends upon what you mean by conservative. Your question assumes these terms are static; they are not. For instance, the closest historical comparator to modern conservatives are “classical” liberals like Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and John Locke. Yet none of their contemporaries would have called these individuals “conservative” in any sense. They were liberals. However, their political beliefs closely mirror those of the modern conservatives in this country. And what we mean by the American conservative movement is largely a creation of the 20th century.

Along those same lines, I did not claim Jim Crow was progressive (Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t think that term was even widely in use in this country at the time, as the Progressive Party was not founded until 1912) or liberal – I said it was the Democrat’s baby. And if you want to play the game of saying “but if they were alive today they would be Republicans” then you have to give us some of the party’s heroes like Jefferson as well (because of his belief in limited government and individual liberty, not because he owned slaves).

As for the “conservative movement,” sure, guys like William Buckley in the 20th Century helped define such. But that does not mean that there weren’t people who were essentially conservative all along. Good grief. Was everyone liberal before Buckley came along? Of course not. There have always been leaders and thinkers in America who were more progressive on some issues than others, more resistant to change than others, more driven by race-related issues than others, on and on and on.

Jim Crow laws may not have been part of the “conservative movement” you describe — and it may be difficult to casually apply political labels as we understand them today at all — but it would be absurd to suggest that Jim Crow was somehow a liberal or progressive effort.

Reggie may not have meant it, but he said it. The conservative movement in this country did not even exist at the time Jim Crow was implemented. It was developed by men like Buckley in the 20th century to combat the totalitarian threat that communism posed to our founding principles. The movement attracted segregationists in the death rattle of Jim Crow because the limited government principles of the conservative movement gave them their only refuge against escalating federal intervention. There is nothing conservative about racism. The problem conservatives faced is that segregation pitted two conservative values – individual liberty and limited government – against each other.

And I don’t agree with your general assertion that Republicans use racism to gain votes anymore than Democrats do. For every anecdote you could cite, I am sure I could counter. For instance, it has become accepted doctrine that the Willie Horton ads run by Bush I were racist, but people forget that it was Al Gore that first introduced the topic into the race in the Democratic primary.

The point is that Liberals like to cast politics in terms of the virtuous liberals against the evil, racist republicans. Every negative act by a Republican becomes a permanent stain on both the party and conservatism, but there is never reciprocity for liberals. They exhibit historical blindness towards their own skeletons while constantly reminding Republicans of their embarassing predecessors.

Reggie was quite clearly NOT saying that the Republicans were literally the ones who created Jim Crow laws.

Now, historians may legitimately debate the deal on the modern GOP and Dem parties. It wasn’t ONLY race that drove Southern conservatives to the Republican side….but there is pretty general consensus, I think, that race had a good bit to do with it and that conservative politicians have used racism to gain votes. Supporters of George W. Bush even used it on John McCain in SC, right Will?

“will enforce the views that they are fed by Rush and the Boys”

Again, Hillary circulated the madrass story and the picture in Muslim garb. You have not cited a single instance where Rush Limbaugh or any other prominent conservative “fed” these rumors. You can’t because it is a lie.

#19,

“it was really the republicans who came up with the jim crow laws . . .”

Are you kidding? You do understand that Jim Crow was implemented after Reconstruction (i.e. after the Republicans were all thrown out of the South) by Democrats? It was the Democrats baby, and they presided happily over the system for almost a century. Democrats finally wised up in the 60’s on this issue, but quit trying to rewrite history. Jim Crow belongs to Democrats like Ben Tillman.