It's Cynicism

Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country, just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ‘60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle, they love to engage in revisionist history. Rep. Virginia Foxx 11/19/09

Chris Matthews does a good job slapping this lie down. (“Here are the facts – 46 Democratic senators voted for the Civil Rights bill, 46, and 27 Republicans..”) but it’s Democratic Representative Dennis Cardoza who truly puts his finger on what’s offensive about Foxx’s historical revisionism. “John Lewis a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.”

And her postscript about Jesse Helms not being the House? It’s certainly true, he wasn’t. Jesse Helms was also not a Republican at that time. He was one of those Southern Democrats who left the party over the issue of Civil Rights… And was welcomed with open arms into the GOP.

Virginia Foxx was an adult during the Civil Rights era, and during the Republicans' successful use of the “Southern Strategy” to appeal the racist Southern Democrats, so she’s not just being ignorant here. She’s lying her head off, and counting on her supporters being either too bone-ignorant or too dishonest to object.

Yet another nasty look at the base Republican base.