Democratic World vs. Republican World

[PornoDoggy]

Slow down just a bit here, Dig ... I'm not in the least campaigning to be the good liberal on Oprano - I have no interest in being a Clarence Thomas - and I certainly wasn't attacking the truth of anything you were saying. I wasn't defending it, either. That wasn't the point of my comments at all.

All I was trying to point out is that the attempts to depict you as some wild-eyed radical are pretty pathetic, even if it's a time-honored Oprano tradition. IMHO you are far less an extreme leftist than several regular posters around here are to the far, far fringes of the right.

Paranoia will destroy ya ...

And Colin re the Jesse Helms and Strom Thurman (silly) question - at one point in this country the political divides were far more regional than party. Aside from the fact that the Republican Party actively recruited them into the fold, part of the reason that Helms and Thurman picked up and left is that they found the Republican Party far more appreciative of their, um, "States Rights" idealology.

Torone is quite fond of the using the fact that LBJ needed the aid of honorable men like Everet Dirksen and others from the Republican center and left as some kind of evidence that the Democrats are no better on Civil Rights than the Republicans. Unfortunately that line of reasoning requires you have absolutely no knowledge of either history or the state of the Republican Party today. A true conservative such as Dirksen would likely be considered as "soft" on too many of the buzz issues by contemporary standards, and would be pushed to the side like McCain; the likes of Charles Percy, the other Illinois Senator voting for the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights legislation wouldn't stand a chance in hell of being a contemporary Republican, and there are many others like him.

So - my answer to your question would be yes, the Southern Wing of the Democratic Party used to be evil. However, like Helms, Thurmon, and the other relics from that era, most of them haven't been Democrats since John Mictchell went all-out to steal the bubba vote from George Wallace, if not before.