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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Politics / Woods State GOP Claims King Was Republican

Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:39 AM

click to enlarge king.jpeg
The state GOP is marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination with a press release claiming he was a Republican. "Dr. King exhorted America to fully become a place where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and his fellow Republicans responded by passing civil rights legislation over the objection of many Democrats of that era," state GOP chair Robin Smith says in the release. King may have been a Republican at some point in his life, but it's ridiculous to claim that he belonged to the GOP in the '60s. King voted for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson for president and criticized Barry Goldwater. Republicans have tried to claim King as one of their own before. A black conservative group drew harsh reaction in 2006 by running a radio ad asserting King was Republican. Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who marched with King, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for." And even some conservative Republicans denounced the ads. Update: State Democratic Party flack Wade Munday comments: "As a graduate of a divinity school which was reformed after the civil rights tradition of individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr, I find it appalling that such a legacy and tradition of reform should be reduced to an unprincipled partisan talking point. To diminish the life of Dr. King for purposes of political gain shows how contrary to Dr. King the Tennessee Republican Party is." See Aunt B and Sean Braisted

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The state GOP has lost its collective mind. The leadership has adopted a sort of Branch-Davidian nuttiness.

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Posted by liz garrigan on April 2, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Aw, you folks are being too hard on the state GOP. Maybe this is just their way of signaling a change in policy. Now they're going to be the party of unions, poor people, and the anti-war crowd.

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Posted by Aunt B. on April 2, 2008 at 1:13 PM

i am no republican. i am no democrat. hate them both. even so, this use of dr. king as some kind of historic validation of a modern version of a void-of-individual-identity party is loathsome. the gop should be ashamed.
dems have no right claiming him either, by the way.

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Posted by angry guy on April 2, 2008 at 3:06 PM

I believe we have a violator!

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Posted by mmays on April 2, 2008 at 3:20 PM

This is an old rehashing of that ridiculous Frances Rice column. I saw it back in January on local GOP websites, too.
Try as they might the Republican Party just can't (pardon the pun) whitewash its racist past and present. Just own it, attone for it, condemn it where it still exists and move on. Pretending it doesn't exist isn't going to work.

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Posted by Southern Beale on April 2, 2008 at 4:11 PM
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