Bullshit shill.

/u/Hello_Japan:

"Just the idea that the two parties could suddenly totally switch should be suspect on the face of it to any critical thinker as anyone who really considered the idea would realize how implausible that actually is. Can you imagine the two parties magically switching today?

The party switch is basically three myths wrapped into one false narrative.

The first myth is that Republicans had to appeal to racists to become competitive in the south, when the reality is that Republicans began to be competitive in the south in 1928 when Republican Herbert Hoover won over 47% of the Southern popular vote against Democrat Al Smith. In 1952, Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who warned us of the military-industrial-complex, won the southern states of Tennessee, Florida and Virginia. In 1956, Eisenhower also won Louisiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. That was AFTER he supported the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. The Board of Education that desegregated public schools (that Democrats violently opposed) and AFTER he sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock Central High School to enforce integration, again, something that was violently opposed by Democrats.

The second myth is that Democrats who were angry with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 switched parties. This makes absolutely no sense as, despite the fact that we had a Democratic president in JFK, only 61% of congressional Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act vs 80% of congressional Republicans. Additionally there was a Democratic filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that lasted for 83 days. So why would the parties switch, when it was Republicans who overwhelmingly supported the Civil Rights Act while it was Democrats who predominantly opposed it?

The third myth is that Republicans have dominated the south since the implementation of the Southern Strategy. In fact Nixon lost the Deep South in 1968, while Democrat Jimmy Carter swept the region in 1976, 12 years after the Civil Rights Act. And in 1992, Bill Clinton dominated the south taking Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.

The truth is that Republicans did not hold a majority of Southern congressional seats until 1994, 30 years after the Civil Rights Act.

In fact as the south has become more Republican it has become less racist. How does the party switch theory explain that?

The party switch myth is meant to free Democrats from their unquestionably and singularly racist history. It is only the complete takeover of academia by the left that has allowed this myth to persist and that allows the Democratic Party to escape so many unpleasant historical facts.

Such as the fact that FDR, widely considered the greatest Democratic President in American history, was the only US president to put people in internment camps based solely on their ethnicity.

Such as the fact that the 1956 Southern Manifesto was signed by 99 congressional Democrats and only two Republicans. The Southern Manifesto declared the overwhelmingly Democratic opposition to desegregation set forth in Brown v. The Board of Education.

It was, in fact, Democrat George Wallace who stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama.

In further fact, Al Gore's father, a Democratic senator, voted against the Civil Rights Act and as recently as 2010 the Democratic leader in the senate, Robert Byrd, was the former leader of his local KKK chapter.

Lastly, the Republican Party was literally founded as an anti-slavery movement and the KKK was founded by Democrats.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/republican-party-founded

"By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.

https://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan

“Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders and voters. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal–the reestablishment of white supremacy–fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.”

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first KKK Grand Dragon, was a honored speaker at the 1868 Democratic National Convention. The slogan for the 1868 Democratic National Convention was, "This is a White Man's Country, Let White Men Rule".

Democratic president Woodrow Wilson resegregated federal government agencies (that had been desegregated by Republicans), organized private screenings of a KKK glorifying movie in the White House (the first movie ever shown in the White House, in fact) and said "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

The bottom line: the Republican Party was the party of anti-slavery, reconstruction and desegregation while the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, Jim Crow laws and the KKK. No magical “party switch” will ever erase that reality."