During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought against the Democrats, including Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham who let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators. Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant, and Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the entrance of two black students at the University of Alabama in 1963. All of these racist Democrats did not become Republicans.

The so-called “Dixiecrats” were a group of Southern Democrats who, in the 1948 national election, formed a third party – the State’s Rights Democratic Party – but continued to be Democrats for all local and state elections, as well as for all future national elections.

It defies logic for Democrats today to claim that the racist Democrats suddenly joined the Republican Party after Republicans finally won the civil rights battle against the racist Democrats. Notably, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois pushed through the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fact, Dirksen was instrumental in the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. hailed Senator Dirksen’s “able and courageous Leadership” in obtaining passage of civil rights legislation.

The corrupted business, technological, and psycho-therapeutic jargon so prevalent in our society today has no place in the world of politics, there is no room for wishful thinking. It is one thing to have optimism but to have specious optimism is a recipe for disaster.

Local Republicans tapped Scozzafava as the nominee in July because they believed her centrist views would appeal to a coalition of centrist Republicans, independents and Democrats in a moderate-minded district that Barack Obama won with 52 percent of the vote in 2008. The national party supports her for the same reason: her perceived electability. This is a case where the wingnuts are…well acting like wingnuts and the national party is acting more pragmatic. The hard right is not concerned about winning as much as they are about being heard, even if it means handing the seat to a Democrat.

The GOP has a real opportunity to become the true party of reform, but history will not simply repeat itself without a little nudge.

Texas Kay Bailey Hutchison called Friday for more “enlightened” leadership in state government, arguing that statements from rival Rick Perry on subjects such as secession hurt both Texas and the Republican Party. “While I do think I can do more in Texas to govern better, I also want to build a Republican majority,” she told a group of civic and business leaders in Dallas called the Friday Group.

” The issue here is not race, it is civility!” This is not to say that we are suddenly racially pure, but constantly talking and reducing everything to black versus white is not helpful to the cause of restoring civility to our public dialogue.

The Democrats must understand that the American people are shopping. The American people want to choose the plan they are going to pay for. This is not being bigoted, but it is called “shopping around”. We “shop around” every day in our everyday lives. We take in the cost and the durability of the item we seek to have and then we purchase it. On both concerns, with regards to cost and durability, the public option is found wanting!

After eight years of Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, Congressmen arrested outside embassies, and other anti-war, anti-globalization, anti- Bush protests, it was easy to get the impression that liberals love to protest. It seems like the Saul Alinsky way-”How to Be an Activist 101.” You have to cause a scene, right? Wrong. Now Democrats tell us a citizen being disruptive is suspect.