This past Monday, December 7, 2009, Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader, spoke from the Senate floor and uttered these words concerning the Republican Party’s opposition to socialized health care:
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let's start over.’ If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, let’s wait, things aren't bad enough.’”. . . "When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
According to Harry Reid, on the issues of slavery, segregation and women having the right to vote, the Republicans were supposedly on the wrong side of history. Well, let’s examine history.
Regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964: 80% of those Senators that threatened to filibuster the Civil Rights Act were Democrats.
31% of Democrats in Congress voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or 1/3 of the Democrat Party refused to end segregation nationwide.
82% of the Republicans in Congress voted to end segregation nationwide. In other words, segregation ended when a larger percentage of Republicans voted in favor of civil rights.
In the early 1850’s, President Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, broke his promise to the Congress by refusing to restrict slavery in the newly founded western states of America.
The consequence of Democrat Pierce’s broken promise was the creation of the Republican Party.
In 1854, Abraham Lincoln and some of his friends in the Whig party created the Republican Party for the purposes of ending slavery and upholding a conservative interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was first elected as President of the United States, he swept into office Republican majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives
In that same election of 1860, every major northern state elected a Republican Governor.
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made all slaves in the areas won by the Union Army legal citizens of the United States.
Lincoln started his second term in March of 1865, gave a speech stating that the slaves he helped free should be given the right to vote.
In the audience was John Wilkes Booth. Booth, a southern Democrat, who soon after carried out his assassination of the President.
The Republican Members of Congress responded to Booth’s assassinating President Lincoln by passing a total of three Constitutional Amendments; 1. banning slavery, 2. extending all the rights found in the U.S. Constitution to all citizens of all states, 3. extending equal protection and due process rights to all citizens, as well as the right to vote
Republican Senator, Aaron Sargent, wrote the Women’s Suffrage Amendment of 1878.
The amendment failed due to strong opposition by members of the Democrat party. American women had to wait another 40 years to obtain the right to vote.
In 1870, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the nation’s first ever African-American Congressman. Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the nation’s first ever African-American Senator that same year, both were republicans.
Every single African-American member of the United States Congress was a Republican until 1935.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican President activated the elite Army unit, the 101st Airborne, in order to assist nine African-American children in Arkansas wanting to attend school with white students.
Dr. Martin Luther King was a registered Republican.
Facts are stubborn things- John Adams
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