>>> the revolt against president truman reaches its climax at birmingham under the safe rights banner. murray comes out of retirement to join the protest against the presidents civil rights program. more than 6,000 flock to the convention to select a presidential ticket. >> 65 years ago, southerners left the democratic party in droves over the embrace of the civil rights plank to hold their own convention where they nominated a rival presidential ticket for the 1948 election. nominee was none other than strom thurmond, who is not always remembered as a former democrat, as a dixiecrat, but he should be. we think of the democrats and republicans as ageless eternal entities, and they have been the two major parties in this country for 150 years now. about the only thing either party kept for all that time is its name. once upon a time, no region more in love with the democratic party than the south. the white house segregationist south. this through a series of dramatic events in the middle of the 20th century when harry truman integrated the military, northern democrats pushed through that civil rights plank in 1948, when lbj signed the civil rights act in 1964, through those events that the white house south split off from the party. that series of events also marked the birth of the modern republican party. for generations after the civil war, there was basically no such thing as the republican party in the south. because the gop had been the party of northern liberals. anti-segregation pro civil rights liberals. when the white southerners came up for grabs, the conservative movement of the republican party made common cause with them and they shaped and defined the modern republican party. sometimes parties dont get to keep their names though. sometimes they disappear. mentioning the wig party might get you a laugh these days but it was the real deal for the generation leading up to the civil war. an alliance between business interests and moorists in the north and slave owners in the south. they wanted the federal government to create conditions that were favorable to commerce. jackson in his party the democrats preferred the idea of an egruyerian nation. some of the biggest names wering when is whigs. there were three whig presidents in the 1840s and 1850s. the coalition wasnt stable. became impossible to avoid the issue of slavery and that issue there was no common ground. party fractured and the whigs of the north folded into the new anti-slavery party called the republicans. the whigs of the south became the democrats. the whig party was tossed on the scrap heap of history. given everything that happened in washington recently, everything that is still happening in washington, im not about to predict todays republicans will go the way of the whigs. if one thing is clear, what defines the republican party isnt that stable. at least at this moment. one way of looking at what is happening now is it is a phase. the tea party uprising is temporarily paralyzed the gop helped to elect dozens of true believers who pride themselves on standing up not just for the obama white house, but also to their own partys leadership in washington. movement that is also scared the daylights out of republican office holders who arent true believers, but they bite their tongues and play along with the tea party anyway because they dont want to be the next victims. the story of john boehners speakership. but maybe, maybe it is all a phase that will just pass. poisonous poll numbers take a real toll and scare the true believers straight. the business community, the financial backbone, will assert itself, the passions of the base will cool, the true believers will realize they cant get everything they want if their party isnt big enough to win national elections. thats the happy ending that the republican party establishment is hoping for. wont happen next week, wont happen next month, but eventually the gop will evolve back into a relatively healthy and relatively functional political party. we watch the extraordinary lengths, the increasingly extraordinary lengths that john boehner has to go to just to do things like averting a default. it raises another possibility. what if this isnt just a passing phase in the history of republican party. what if were living through a bigger more fundamental turning point? republicans have bp t s havs have been the party of business for a long time. it is one of their favorite things to talk about. how many times have they invoked job creators past few years? were watching right now the interest of the tea party and the interest of the business community diverge. businesses terrified of a default, hates of idea of flirting with a default, which is what it did. in the tea party, well, it just didnt seem to care all that much. that leaves establishment figures stomach pd abofigure s stumped about what to do. i cant see how it can last. it feels like something is going to give, something is going to have to give and soon. and here to discuss this, we have msnbc contributor victoria difrancesco soto, fellow at ut, back at the table and shawn valencia at princeton university, still with us crystal ball from msnbc and political strategist michelle bernard. and will confess, if that monologue sounds familiar, i did do a version of that on the rachel maddow show the other day. i would like to get some smart people around to talk about this. im a public school guy. i appreciate that. youre the resident political historian at the table. when you look at todays republican party and the dysfunction that defines the republican party in washington right now what we presented, can you look at this and apply some historical context and say, yeah, the party is going to be all right, they go through phases like this or seeing something extraordinary? >> it is hard to say. depends what the tea party manages to do. not the whig party so much. it is the democrats from the same period. party of the south and of the west, they flip names, but then the party is being driven very, very hard to the right in effect by a faction. that faction was the faction led by john c. calhoun. the politics lines up more exactly because that was the party of nullification, the party of not just small government, but really small government, and that eventually was going to lead to secession. thats the challenge i think the republicans face today. not so much, i dont think the tea party is interested in forming a whig party or having people fall out, they want to take the republican party over and well see if they do. >> what happens to -- if the tea party does take over the republican party, were seeing how their interests dont always line up with what has been the financial backbone of the republican party, the business community. and you look at our two party system now, the democrats are already sort of the party of labor. what happens to business if the tea party takes over? >> i actually dont think the tea party is going to take over. i think what well see in the next couple of months is the business sector really reassert itself. what happened with business in the past couple of years was, first of all, they didnt take tea party candidates seriously. when youre ted cruz came around, they said who is this crazy whacko guy and look where he is today. they also were turning a blind eye because they had so much contempt for obama. so now theyre saying, okay, we cannot turn a blind eye anymore. and we need to treat every contender seriously and then you also see the institutional components like roads, american victory project going forward. we see the business class asserting itself institutionally and not taking anything for granted. >> we did have some news this week, this was a bloomberg story yesterday that has the chamber of commerce, the political arm of that, run by scott reed, ran bob doles campaign, were planning to spend, we the chamber of commerce, spending a lot of many town support the thad cook ranz chrans of the world. >> i never thought i would see the day where im like, yes, chamber of commerce! but, you know, the problem with that is for as important as money is in politics, the business community is not going to take to the streets. it is just not who they are constitutionally. they might, you know, throw in money for lobbying and behind candidates, that is sort of the civilized thing to do, but theyre never going to be the ones at the town hall meeting, screaming at the members of congress. thats not going to happen. as much as im encouraged to see these sort of movements from the chamber and from more sort of reasonable people who would like the country to continue running, i am not ultimately hopeful that this is going to be that helpful because it is not just the money coming from the tea party that is the problem. it is the fact that the money is feeding into all of this anger from citizens in the districts who will show up who will call, who will take to the streets. and ultimately when someone is in your face like that, that is what the real pressure is on these legislators. >> i have to say, i am actually very hopeful that were going to see a big change. my prediction would be that were going to see the great american center rise. you are meeting -- it is anecdotal, but i would tell you, i have met republican after republican in the last few weeks, particularly over the last 16 days of the government shutdown, who have said, you know, ive done this very quiet quiet quietly, but im now an independent, ive done it this quietly but im a republican. they have said theyre doing so number one because when one party can hate one president so much, that theyre willing to destroy the country, that something is very, very wrong. when one party has the loudest voices in their party being anti-black, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-hispanic, something is very, very wrong. and then on top of that, youre willing to cripple the economy, we dont want anything to do with this. i do believe and im quite fearful of the tyranny of the minority, i think the tea party has a very good chance of taking over the republican party and i think as a result of that, we will see more and more moderate republicans migrate out and either self-identify as independents or become -- >> thats the question i had, take an issue like the affordable care act, like obama care, defunding obama care, the drive to do that behind the shutdown, the default brinkmanship we went through, the dispute there that exists in the republican party is not over the tea party republicans who want to get rid of it and the moderate republicans who say, no, this is a good law, republicans, we should be for it, it is entirely a tactical dispute. the tea party saying, basically taking the rhetoric that the entire parties agreed to its logical conclusion. every party said this is a kill -- >> getting back to crystal, i agree the tea partiers are fired up, they are out there. but the key to republican moderates is using that money to get nonprimary republican voters out to vote in those primaries. it is going to be difficult, but you need to get -- >> thats a big battle. >> thats a push. >> i dont think were there. you can see the dynamics in the last fight. the tea partiers make up a minority, even within the republican caucus. but the others are so fearful that they were quiet and allowed this to happen. i think the republican party has to hit bottom. they have to nominate someone like ted cruz and lose 40 states before there will be a real backlash. >> if the tea party takes over, not unlike what happened in 64 when the extremist wing of the republican party nominated barry goldwater and had to go through that experience. they caught on and changed and moved to richard nixon, conservative but not barry goldwater. >> they ended up at reagan and ended up -- >> reagan was different, a much more inclusive kind of politician than barry goldwater was. it is a much broader -- a different situation too. different time. but the other thing was neither the whig party nor the republican party had the freedom works, all that stuff feeding it. it is the anger. the money behind it is extraordinary. thats why i think the tea party, may not succeed in the short run, but it is not going away anytime soon. >> it is extraordinary. if you think in the last week to see orrin hatch who i used to think of as the conservatives conservative and john mccain coming out and saying we have got a serious problem, and republican party cannot be run by the heritage foundation, heritage action, the club for growth, i mean, normally you would never see that kind of public statement being made. and they said it, this shows us there is a -- it is not just a splint nerg the republicering in the repub lican party, they have an earthquake going on and the tea party is responsible for that. >> im curious, we talk about the difference between the tea party wing and the moderate republican wing, what does it mean? what would it mean to be a moderate republican anymore? >> youre a democrat.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 01:49:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015