Laughable party of Lincoln

I have to laugh when I read comments from Republicans that Donald Trump may mean the end of the party of Lincoln. They apparently missed the news that the end of the Republicans as the party of Lincoln occurred back in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act under President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat.

At that time the Dixiecrats of the South who wanted to continue Jim Crow segregation all switched to the Republican Party while the blacks who had been denied full citizenship by the Dixiecrats’ Jim Crow segregation laws switched to the Democratic Party.

In 2012 numerous former Dixiecrats turned Republicans passed state voter ID laws in an attempt to deny the vote to as many black voters as possible. Those Republicans assumed the blacks would all vote for the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Paul Ryan, who was running for vice president on the Republican ticket in 2012, is one of the Republicans lamenting the end of the party of Lincoln now, but he was silent back then when Republicans thought suppressing black voters would help their Romney-Ryan ticket win the election.

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 2:25 PM with the headline "Laughable party of Lincoln."