More good news for Republicans -- the Civil Rights disaster

On the Sunday Idiot Shows, Newt Gingrich helpfully pointed out that passage of comprehensive health care reform is the worst political disaster for Democrats since passage of Civil Rights legislation under LBJ.

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill “the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,” Gingrich said: “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Quickly called on that -- that overcoming decades of apartheid and doing the morally correct thing was probably worth the price (that LBJ himself recognized), Gingrich quickly backs away.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was quoted Sunday as saying that President Obama and the Democrats, by passing comprehensive health care legislation, "will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the passage of civil rights legislation.

The article went on to note how Johnson's support for civil rights legislation broke apart the North-South coalition in the old Democratic Party and led to the realignment of the South into solid Republican territory.

Gingrich responded with several emails saying that the context misrepresented his views by implying that he believed Johnson was wrong to sign the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s. To the contrary, he said, the civil rights revolution of 1956-1965 was "morally absolutely necessary" for the country and Johnson was correct in pushing for the legislation. Other Johnson actions, he said, inflicted more damage to the Democratic coalition.

Not only is this guy unfit to be president, he's unfit to teach history. He was absolutely correct, in the first case, to note that Civil Rights legislation did in fact rupture the Democratic Party. Yes, the war would prove LBJ's undoing, but it was Civil Rights that broke the South from the Democratic Party. And good riddance, even if it did result in Nixon, Wallace, and Reagan (and, alas, Gingrich).

That southern arm of the Party no longer exists in any real sense. The correlation couldn't be farther from the truth. What is true is that, yes, many Democrats are going to face tough odds in November, but tackling one of the most intractable problems of our times and doing something that is morally upstanding seems worth what will be a tough price to pay for individual politicians and a brief one for the Party, but will stand as nearly as great an achievement as was Civil Rights was nearly 50 years ago.