Brad DeLong is obviously a very bright fellow, but that just goes to show that being a bright economist is no guarantee of being even a good historian. Yesterday he explained “Why I [that is, He] Could Not Be A Republican,” and it’s because of some foolish, racist comments made by William F. Buckley … in 1957. (Well, he also mentions “Richard M. Nixon and his henchmen … changing the Republican Party from the Party of Lincoln to the Party That Doesn’t Like Black People.”)
Now there are no doubt very good reasons why an intelligent and reasonable person would choose not to be a Republican (and, truth be told, I don’t doubt that DeLong has lots of them), but dumb comments by a magazine editor 45 years ago would not seem to be one of them, at least not without comparing them to dumb comments by Democrats of the day.
In that regard, if I’m not mistaken all 96 signers of The Southern Manifesto discussed in my last post were Democrats.
Of course one could easily explain “Why I could not be a Democrat” or in my case “Why, over the decade of the ’90s, I ran from being a Democrat to being a Republican” by saying McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton and their various henchmen changed the Democratic Party from the Party of FDR-HST-JFK the 1st to the party that doesn’t Like Americans
Brad should have saved his scorn for Trent Lott.
My bad; Brad is all over T.Lott here.