Disturbing Lessons of the Rand Paul Fallout

QueEx · May 30, 2010

<center>
Disturbing Lessons of the Rand Paul Fallout

The Republican Party's response to Paul displays
an ongoing nostalgia for pre-civil rights America.</center>

The Root
By: Sherrilyn A. Ifill
May 29, 2010

Every few years, some Republican leader gets caught giving voice to a stubborn and persistent yearning for the racial dynamics of the era preceding the civil rights movement -- a yearning] that remains a foundational, defining ethic for at least some GOP members.

In 2002 it was then-Sen. Trent Lott[/b of Mississippi, who at a birthday party for segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., expressed a longing for the world promised by Thurmond's states' rights presidential candidacy in 1948.

Thurmond had famously intoned in his race for the presidency that even federal troops would not compel Southerners to integrate white swimming pools, theaters and churches. At the Thurmond birthday party, Lott expressed pride that Mississippians had voted for Thurmond in 1948 and contended that if Thurmond had won, many of the "problems" of subsequent years would have been avoided. Lott later apologized repeatedly for his remarks.

This year it's Kentucky libertarian and Republican candidate for the Senate Rand Paul, who, during his performance on The Rachel Maddow Show May 19, insisted that the application of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to private businesses may violate the free speech right of business owners to be overt racists. Even a libertarian like Paul realized in subsequent days that he would have to dial back his comments.

But what has been most illuminating about the fallout from the Paul controversy is the reluctance of some mainstream Republicans to forcefully and clearly support the Civil Rights Act.

In the days immediately after Paul's Maddow appearance, prominent Senators -- including several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- refused to explicitly condemn his assertions or to offer unequivocal support for the Civil Rights Act:

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona: "You're trying to ... re-debate all that. I'm not going to go to it."

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama: "The issue has been settled. The courts have ruled on it."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- the other Senator from Kentucky -- first ignored questions from the media about Paul's comments and then issued his support of the act through his spokesman.

Now Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden has stumbled in answering whether she supports the Civil Rights Act. First she is reported to have hung up on a reporter from Politico during a telephone interview when she was asked whether she supported the act's provisions outlawing private business discrimination. In a subsequent television interview, Lowden refused to answer when asked whether she supported the act. She ended the interview and, after leaving the studio, called back to clarify her support for the act.

It's stunning to see this level of hesitation and incoherence among influential Republican leaders in expressing support for the Civil Rights Act, which, along with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, is one of the crown jewels of the civil rights movement. Passage of the act was won through the blood and guts of civil rights protesters and activists. The images of apartheid in America -- the "white" and "colored" drinking fountains, the refusal of whites to serve blacks at lunch counters in Woolworth's and other stores, future Governor of Georgia Lester Maddox and his son wielding a pistol and an ax handle to keep blacks from entering his Pickrick Cafeteria -- are among the most enduring exemplars of the ugly, corrosive reality of racism in mid-20th-century America. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, these shameful images became a relic of our past.

Like Paul, the owners of Southern drugstores and department stores thought that they had the private right to admit and serve only those people they wished. Both Congress and the Supreme Court disagreed. In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the commerce clause of the Constitution gives Congress authority to enact the provisions in Title II of the Civil Rights Act that deny private motels the right to refuse to admit black guests.

In other words, the same power that authorizes Congress to appropriate money to build an interstate highway system gives it the right to ensure that businesses engaged in public activities benefiting from that system don't discriminate on the basis of race. (In a controversial decision in 1972, the Supreme Court later ruled that private clubs engaged in purely private functions can still discriminate.)

Still Only Tepid Support for CRA

And yet some of the most powerful Republicans in Congress can muster only tepid and carefully opaque support for legislation that changed the very racial terrain of our country. Why? It's sobering to say this, but it certainly must be true: Some Republicans have made the political calculation that openly and heartily embracing the provisions of the Civil Rights Act will alienate key segments of their voting constituency.

The good news is that some Republicans were not afflicted with the stammering hesitation of Kyl, Sessions and Lowden:

Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina offered an impressive mini law lecture on the constitutional basis of the act's extension to private businesses, showing once again why he remains the most respected Republican member of the Judiciary Committee.

Even the normally incoherent Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele offered a cogent and impressive performance on the Sunday news shows. Abandoning hip-hop rhetoric and cute catch phrases, Steele deemed Rand Paul "out of touch" with contemporary reality. It was among his best performances (although to be fair, if Steele had gotten this one wrong, there wouldn't be much hope left for him).

Two Senate Campaigns; Both Stumbling on Race

It's a moment worth examining when two candidates running for Senate seats in Kentucky and Nevada find themselves unable to unreservedly support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 until pressed by media backlash. It's an even more profound moment when elected Republican leaders hesitate to articulate a full-throated embrace of the act's provisions. The apparent presence of a significant constituency of Republican voters who continue to resent the complete dismantling of racial segregation in American life, and the need demonstrated by some members of the Republican Party to mollify that constituency, is a disturbing reminder of the enduring power of the far right in the Republican electorate.

Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor of law at the University of Maryland and a regular contributor to The Root.

thoughtone · Jun 1, 2010

Republicans Defend Rand Paul By Taking Credit For Civil Rights...Again

source: Political Correction

The hullaballoo over Rand Paul's (R-KY) criticism of the Civil Rights Act has put the GOP in a tough spot. The party can't afford to throw its newly minted Senate candidate under the bus, especially given that Paul has quickly become the darling of the far-right base. However, the GOP also can't rally behind Paul's stated belief that private businesses should be allowed to practice discrimination.
That's why the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is going with a tried-and-true third option -- changing the subject and spinning Paul's indefensible position into an attack on Democrats. Talking Points Memo reports:

In an email sent to reporters in the height of the Rand Paul firestorm yesterday, the NRSC defended its Senate nominee in Kentucky by pointing out that it wasn't Republicans who were the most vocal opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act when it was in Congress.
"As a side note, I would point out the irony -- which seems to have been lost in some of the news coverage -- that the same party seeking to manufacture this issue today, is in fact the same political party which led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in 1964," NRSC spokesperson Brian Walsh wrote.

As Steve Benen notes, this tends to be the GOP's default argument "whenever Republicans are feeling particularly defensive about civil rights issues." For example, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) declared on the floor last fall that Republicans "passed civil rights bills back in the sixties without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle." It is, nevertheless, a serious misrepresentation of history:

The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to competing constituencies -- southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.
As the party shifted, the Democratic mainstream embraced its new role. Republicans, meanwhile, also changed. In the wake of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party welcomed the white supremacists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform. It was right around this time when figures like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond made the transition -- leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP.
In the ensuing years, Democrats embraced their role as the party of diversity, inclusion, and civil rights. Republicans became the party of the "Southern Strategy," opposition to affirmative action, campaigns based on race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, and politicians like Helms and Thurmond.

Moreover, while a majority of both parties voted for the Civil Rights Act (46 Democrats and 27 Republicans in the Senate), the real split was along geographic lines. It was conservatives from the South who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, which is something that Rand Paul of Kentucky and NRSC Chairman John Cornyn of Texas should probably know.

Dmain_Event · Jun 2, 2010

Re: Republicans Defend Rand Paul By Taking Credit For Civil Rights...Again

The original Anti-slavery party, Supported Civil rights in th 50's The repubs seem like the party for me. Alot of people forget that both parties have racists in them. Isn't the longest active senate member a Democrat who was also the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan? I applaud the Dems to moving towards more oppen policies, however, they have moved towards inclusion and have learched hard left. The party is almost indistinguishable from the CPUSA (communist party usa). Don't bring that Communism is better for black people bull shit, A white man came up with communism too. For those of you who disagree just say some shit and prepare to get smacked down.

Upgrade Dave · Jun 2, 2010