wow! or is it whoa! or maybe even woe!

while researching my piece mentioning mlk and the gop two days ago, i stumbled on a lot of sites apparently dedicated to persuading african-americans that they ought to join the republican party.

their logic is pretty much always based on half-truths and incomplete history. one example was the claim that the gop passed the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of '65, because a higher percentage of gops voted for them. never mind the fact that the dems had such huge majorities in both houses that the number of dems voting for each bill was significantly greater than the number of gops, and both bills would've been dead if a lot of dems opposed them.

another conveniently-overlooked fact: those votes made the dems the party of civil rights, while gop presidential candidate barry goldwater voted against the 1964 act, so most of the segregationist dixiecrats left the dems and joined the gop, which welcomed them with open arms, and when the gop attained the senate majority in 1981 and again in 1995, they made dixiecrat leader strom thurmond president pro tempore!

i can't resist adding one more. one site gave republicans credit for brown v board because eisenhower appointed chief justice earl warren. in fact, it was a unanimous decision, and the other 8 justices were all appointed by either fdr or truman.

i don't think it very likely that many black americans will join the gop for a long, long time, because most of them know the truth.