useful reference Caught my eye:
Bukuru Yesterday Newt Gingrich outlined the Republican strategy going forward, saying that the Democrats “will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for forty years” by signing civil rights into law. Leave aside the deep cynicism of this view of racial equality: Gingrich was expressing the Republican belief that health-care reform will be so unpopular that it will reduce the Democrats to minority status for two generations.
Besides the obvious inapplicability of the historical analogy – such as the fact that it was Republicans who supported and lobbied for Civil Rights legislation, and Johnson was crossing Dixiecrat party line – this is an astonishing use of history. The morality of Civil Rights legislation was and is utterly, utterly, unimpeachable – given that, what type of beast cares about the political consequences?
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