We Can Talk About That

Coming to Rand Paul's defense Thursday 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, it was the Democrats.

Perhaps. But to build the party they have today, Republicans engaged in a decades long effort to use the fact the CRA was a Democratic bill, passed by a Democratic president, to lure all the racists out of the Democratic party and turn them into their base. They called it "The Southern Strategy." And it worked. The political phenomenon by which the confederate south became the philosophical and geographical power base of the Republican party is called "realignment," and it's in effect more than ever today.