From THINK PROGRESS:
During a debate on the House floor today over designating 21 miles of the Molalla River as “wild and scenic,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who opposes the legislation, tried to claim a progressive environmental record for her party. “Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country,” said Foxx.
Foxx then extended her claims of the GOP’s progressive history to the issue of civil rights. “Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle,” said Fox. “They love to engage in revisionist history.”
When Foxx finally yielded her time on the floor, Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) passionately rebuked her:
CARDOZA: Today, what I’m hearing on the floor really takes the cake. The gentlelady from North Carolina, in her statement just now, indicated that the Republican GOP had passed the Civil Rights Act legislation with almost no help from the Democrats. I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that civil rights legislation. John Lewis…
FOXX: Would, would the gentleman yield?
CARDOZA: No, I will not yield. John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.
When she was given a chance to respond, Foxx could only say that Jesse Helms wasn’t elected to the Senate until 1972.
(Video at THINK PROGRESS link)
Virginia So-not-a Foxx is not only a liar, but she’s apparently deaf as well. Cardoza never said Jesse Helms voted against civil rights, just that he objected to it.
From Steve Benen at AlterNet:
Matt Corley [of Think Progress] added, “To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a ‘higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.’ But this ignores the ‘distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians’ on the issue.”
This comes up from time to time, and since some confused people like Virginia Foxx have trouble remembering the details, it’s worth the occasional refresher.
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 LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party welcomed the racists 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 its 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, Thurmond, Pat Buchanan, and Virginia Foxx.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
Yeah, the GOP can lay claim to a progressive heritage–emancipation under Lincoln, the first national park under Grant, a whole slew of progressive legislation under Teddy Roosevelt, the Interstate Highway System under Eisenhower, and even the environmental policy of Richard Nixon. If they really stretch this line of reasoning, they can point to someone like Betty Ford who was in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. That’s the tradition in the Republican Party that my family and I came out of.
The problem is that the modern GOP has completely renounced all of that in their current incarnation. Instead, the right wing of the Republican Party has taken in the right wing of the old Democratic Party–the very people and their physical and political descendants who waged war against Lincoln and Grant and wouldn’t have been caught dead voting for Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and now constitute the party’s base–and purged what passed for its left wing, people like my family and me, who all became Democrats. The current GOP now looks much more like the Dixiecrats of the Solid South, people who oppose that progressive tradition that “crazy like a Foxx” tried to hide behind. That she used the GOP’s abandoned progressive traditions shows her ignorance of the significance of her party’s history, if not her abject hypocrisy.
As for me and my family, we’re all pissed off at the people who stole our party away from us and have sworn revenge. A prime example is my mom. In 1964, she did get out the vote for Barry Goldwater. In 2008, she did get out the vote for Obama in Utah and helped turn both the county she lived in as well as Salt Lake City blue. Go mom!
Republicans must have minorities to rebuild their party. The number of people of color is growing. The GOP knows they have to draw Latinos and African-Americans to their party or it will die. I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more of this skewed crap.
(Go, mom! I like that story, Vincent.)
No kidding about what the GOP needs to grow. As of right now, the only minorities I’ve seen going to the GOP are South Asians (but not in overwhelming numbers), and economically conservative factions of other minority groups, such as Cubans among Hispanics and Lebanese among Arab-Americans; certainly the rest of those groups has no love for the GOP, no matter how culturally conservative they are. The Chaldeans (Iraqi Catholics) I know aren’t going to vote for the GOP any time soon, thanks to Bush.
Eventually, a conservative party will arise that has a large contingent of minorities, but the current GOP won’t be that party.
i think they’ll be losing the cuban vote, too, pretty soon. the older generation is dying off, and the younger ones don’t have the knee-jerk reaction to the name ‘fidel’ as their elders.
I don’t know who’s going to die off first, the Castros or the people in Florida who hate their guts.
i think once fidel kicks the bucket, raul is going to make a lot of changes for the better. i think he’s afraid of his big bro. raul probably won’t be around much longer either, and a new generation that is more worldly will take over. i hope that happens soon, and when it does, i hope that means that ileana ros-lehtinen and her pips, the diaz-balart brothers, will go away.
political parties are like the modern sports teams. there was a time when a player stayed with a team for years and years, if not their entire career. when you rooted for a team, you knew the guys you were rooting for. now, teams are nothing but brand names, and what you get changes so often that the only things that stays the same are the team names. it’s difficult to be faithful to something that’s just an illusion.
the rethuglican party is no more the party of lincoln than the democratic party is the party of franklin pierce.
American political parties have usually been about issues more than ideology. That’s not as true now. Strange days.
now the rethuglican party is about idiotology.
😀 Dang, girl. I’ve arrived. 😀
did you notice that i used your name in vain? don’t worry, i’m already doing penance. 😉
Hey, my quote is the biggest; so, you can totally use my name in vain. (Such a nice surprise. My kids will get a kick out it….they know I really talk like that. 🙂 )
at first, i put real magazine names on there, but then i thought i’d have a little fun with it. glad you approve. 😀
Maybe Foxx’s brain split in two and fell in her rocket tit bra….that’d explain a lot.
well, if they can split an atom, i guess it’s possible to split so-not-a foxx’s brain. 😉
While I realize that North AND South Carolina make Texas seem like one big Parisienne salon in terms of political sophistication, I cannot for the life of me see what even the most inbred hicks in North Carolina could see in Virginia Foxx in order to vote for her old biddy ass.
She’s not articulate.
She’s not lovable, like many old ladies.
She’s not attractive, and I’m sure she never was.
She probably smells like pee.
She’s got googly eyes and has a tone like a horrible old school marm.
Seems to me those Carolina hicks would prefer some old redneck guy over this shriveled sack of mothballs.
Now we learn she’s a big fat liar to boot. For her to try to give the Republicans credit for civil rights legislation tells me she’s either a plain old liar or she had a case of Reaganesque, rapid onset Alzheimer’s.
If Sarah Palin would like to see the ghost of her political future, Foxx is it.
😆 maybe i should change your quote to:
hilarious!
by the way, i was just over at your place telling you to come over here.
See. It was the pee line that just bounced me over to Pulp Friction. Rockin’ list, Karen.
You know I actually tried to read the autobiography of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama 10 Commandments notoriety. The narcissism I could take, cuz I worked with news anchors, but the whole “we lost cuz everyone was on drugs except for me” thing made me throw it and never pick it up again.
(sheepishly)….hee, hee “we lost the Vietnam War cuz everyone was on drugs except for me” thing.
zippy is hilarious, and i’m so glad you were prompted to click over to pulp friction, wcp. i love it when someone discovers a great website via the raisin. it makes me feel like a matchmaker. 😉
p.s. if judge roy moore was not on drugs, maybe he should be.
He’s on plugs…hair plugs. Really, really bad ones.
i wonder if he can actually list the 10 commandments, unlike lynn westmoreland, who wanted to put them in every federal office, gas station, and public bathroom (all the places rethugs have put a st. ronnie statue).
Thanks, babies.
I have to credit my late mother for the ‘smells like pee’ line.
When she was about 88 (and definitely smelling a bit like pee herself) we found a gorgeous retirement home for her.
We took her on a tour of the deluxe facility and even she was impressed. But then she said to us as we were leaving, “The place is very pretty, but I can’t stand being around old people. They smell like pee.”
😆
hahahahahahaha
The Foxx is watching the revisionist history henhouse!!!!!
The GOP
Has a progressive* environmental record .
* Progressively toxic, in a deforested, don’t-drink-the-water, global warming kind of way.
“Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle,” said Fox.
* Don’t know if it was the fire hoses turned on pedestrians, or the attack dogs, those people in White hooded matching outfits who liked burning things in people’s yards, or the need for a young schoolgirl to have a National Guard escort to attend school that skews Foxx’s historical memory.
The GOP has always been big on Civil rights, like gay marriage, health care for all, and things of this nature.
In other news, black is white & up is down.
i bet virginia so-not-a foxx looks in the mirror and says i’m so pretty. she’s that delusional.
I’ve heard that there is a required history exam for Rethug politicos and if you pass, you can’t run for office.
People really fail to see that history is not a past event but part of a continuum. The modern GOP is truly the secessionist mentality of 150 years ago. Just as those who defended slavery stood and argued straight faced that the bondage of the African was a sacred commandment of God, we have these bozos who tell us that Jesus wants us to destroy the environment or that they were for something before they were against it. This calcified philosophy has evolved within the limited parameters of time but is as self serving, pernicious and repugnant as it’s always been.
along with the history exam that they are required to fail, i understand that there is also a class in distortions and fairy tales taught by frank luntz that they must take.
here’s an interesting article that takes the wind out of the rethuglican talking points.
karl rove (a disiciple of goebbels) has taught his people like virginia foxx (who no doubt wears depends) to just lie lie lie and eventually the united states of stoopid (the one st ronnie created) will believe you
i would bet there are plenty of people who believe foxx is right, just like there are plenty of republicans who believe medicare is private insurance, and obama is a islamic communist. foxx has no problem lying since she knows tons of people will believe her
ps – i like how i got top billing!
LOL
the problem is that people come up to virginia so-not-a foxx and tell her to look them straight in the eye so they can figure out if she’s lying or not. then they get so distracted by one eye going one way and one in the other that they forget the original question.
now you can add critic to your resume, dcAp! 🙂
you owe me a keyboard because this one has juice all over it
next time, hold that juice box more carefully, dcAp! 😐
Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” is an important book to get this matter. Bear in mind that the Republican Party of the 1960’s comes before the Conservative Revolution of the 70’s and 80’s.
Yes, there were a great many pro-civil rights Republicans in the 1960’s. But there’s a reason why Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond made their way to the Republican Party over time. (This is a good time to wonder about Ronald Reagan, once a Democrat, leader of the Revolution about the time pro-civil rights folks were run out of the party.)
The myth of Republican support for civil rights legislation is popular, but absurd. I rather suspect that Abraham Lincoln would look at his party with utter disdain these days.
wickle,
the modern day rethug party lives on myths and fear. they have nothing else. lincoln, and goldwater for that matter, are spinning in their graves watching the jokers that make up the rethug party these days.
Just a quick note. I’ve lost faith in our cause and as a result I see no reason to continue blogging. It’s clear progressives have had a huge mistake and the American people are hurting because of our actions and policies.
We should all be ashamed for the pain we’ve caused.
nice try, troll. i know you’re not the real helenwheels, so cut this shit out.
What kind of a sad life does someone have to live to think that this is a good way to pass the time?
I have a troll who frequents my blog. He rants into my spam folder all the time about how awful a person I am. I don’t get it …
i think they don’t have the cojones to confront people in their real lives, so they make believe they’re brave and confront people online. this particular bozo doesn’t even have enough testosterone to post as himself. i just wanted him to know that i know what’s going on. his next comment gets deleted.
The GOP has always fought against legislation designed for the social advancement of the marginalized, by first, denying there is even a problem, then second, when the facts overwhelm it, it says that you can’t legislate morality or force people do things they don’t want to do, then third, in the face of the inevitable implimentation of these progressive policies, it calls them failures before giving any of them a chance to work, and finally, after enough time has gone by and the policies have actually suceeded, the GOP claims them as its own. This is the case with every progressive social policy.
you are soooo correct, z! you summed it up perfectly.