Old Attitudes Die Hard

Apparently, the Republican party has forgotten its historical connection with the party of Lincoln. A Republican party official in South Carolina made a statement in which he compared an escaped gorilla to the first lady's ancestors. After posting his message on facebook, the official later apologized to any one he might have offended. Then he continued by explaining that First Lady Michelle Obama had spoken earlier about her support of evolutionary theory. The statement is reminiscent of a statement made by George Allen Jr in Virginia in reference to a dark-skinned person in the audience which ultimately contributed to his defeat in the Senatorial campaign. I am also reminded of comments made by Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning in describing his Asian-American opponent. His comments almost lost him the Senatorial election two years ago.

This is just a good example of why the Republican party will continue to flounder in American culture. If you go back in time, you find that the Republican party was founded by dissafected Whigs who supported the emancipation of slaves, governmental support for industrial and commercial advancement and a more ethical political climate in Washington. Their rise to power came when Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, was elected and worked to keep the union together, while bringing an end to the enslavement of African Americans in the United States.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party at the time was strong in the South and worked to keep the institution of slavery alive in states where it was democratically established and to protect the "property rights" of slaveholders in those states where slavery was allowed.

After the Civil War and on into the Twentieth Century, the parties slowly evolved into political parties quite different from their beginnings. While there was an overall continuation of the positions from which they started, the 50's and 60's brought a change in the Democratic party, where the civil rights of African-Americans were ultimately supported. This evolution increased until we now have a democratically elected African-American as President, who is a Democrat from Chicago.

At the same time, the Republican party made great strides in the 60's through recent days in which they convinced formerly solid Democrats to leave the Democratic party for a new, more conservative Republican party. Unfortunately, as the Republican party continued to pick up white Southerners into the new Republican party, they also inherited a lot of racist attitudes within the new membership. Sometimes this attitude was out in the open. Sometimes the attitude was lying just beneath the surface of political discussion. The end result of this evolution was to have someone like the South Carolina Republican official making remarks such as were previously noted here.

The inference when someone makes a comment like this is that it represents what a lot of other white Southerner Republicans are saying in private. The comment is one you wouldn't necessarily expect in the culture of today. However, we all know that we have a long way to go before racial attitudes evolve into something we all can live with. The expectation is that as long as comments like this are made in public, no matter how public facebook may be, the Republican party may suffer for a long time before they can truthfully regain the strength they had found in the 80's and 90's in this country.