Why Republican legislators are so unrelenting...

[Karl]

Many people wonder why Republican legislators are so unrelenting on President Obama. Frederick Douglass may have given us the answer many years ago.

“Though the colored man is no longer subject to barter and sale, he is surrounded by an adverse settlement which fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress. If he comes in ignorance, rags and wretchedness he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome; but if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence. In one case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an affront to pride and provokes malice.”
Frederick Douglass
September 25, 1883

Source: One of those circular e-mails

[Willi]

Nah man, new feudalists like the Koch brothers pay good money to ensure obstructionist policies.

[Paul Marin]

Nah man, new feudalists like the Koch brothers pay good money to ensure obstructionist policies.

Willi - while the Koch brothers and others are obstructionist, Karl is not far off either. You can't forget that the modern day republican party found support in the south after exploiting the democratic party's civil rights stance in the late forties forward but the flight from the democratic party was particularly acute under JFK and LBJ, and was cemented under 8 years of Reagan.

The democratic party and southern democrats had a historical lock on the south, they supported jim crow policies that kept blacks as a segregated underclass going all the way back to the post civil war period. It wasn't until Truman (D) got elected in 1948 and established equality in the military that southern democrats saw their foundations shaken; many broke away to form the Dixiecrat Party, but the segregationist opposition of southern dems were eventually broken under LBJ.

The result was an opportunistic move by the republicans to exploit racial disharmony and pander to southern democrats and their long held view of racial superiority to lure them away. God, guns and an under current of white power has been used to keep this constituency loyal to the republicans ever since. So there is no question in my mind that these airs of superiority remain and are continually exploited by the republicans today.

Obama definitely is a victim of that revolting viewpoint and people like the Kochs are undoubtedly leveraging it. So you are both right.

[Willi]

Yeah, I know and understand that. However,I was trying to highlight that there is a definitive nefarious strategy in play here (sure it will ride on the back of whatever horse in the race like racism) but dem oligarchs have something cooking up. A long con, if you will and it naah guh nice if dem get thru...