On MSNBC's The ReidOut, New York Times editorial board member and MSNBC analyst, Mara Gay proved that she knows very little about the civil rights movement or how the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed when she attempted to slime the "modern" Republican Party as being in opposition to civil rights. When in reality, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s would never have passed without GOP support.
ReidOut host Joy Reid started off the nasty and historically illiterate segment by going after the Tea Party movement. "The Tea Party is now the base, and he's one of them, and these tea party people are now the fundamentals of the party. So, it's not as if Trump is some sort of outlier. I think that’s what we’re missing," she stated.
"Trump isn't some freak who’s dragging the party to the right. He represents the median belief system of many of the people who vote for him. It's that simple," Reid insisted.
Gay jumped in to smear the GOP as a bunch of racists who are against civil rights for African Americans, which of course is an obvious lie to anyone who took a fifth-grade-level history course.
"The origin of the Republican Party as we know it today really has to do with a backlash to civil rights. And so any understanding of that Republican Party without that historical backlash to civil rights is incomplete," Gay said with a straight face.
While facts and logic are a foreign concept on MSNBC and The New York Times, they aren't here at NewsBusters. The truth is in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was in serious trouble because of Southern Democrats in the Senate.
Even then-Democrat President Lyndon Johnson told Hubert Humphrey that “The bill can’t pass unless you get Ev Dirksen," who was the Republican Senate Minority Leader at the time.
Despite having 67 members of the Senate, barely 40 Democrats supported cloture on the Civil Rights legislation. According to Senate.gov's history of the legislative fight, "This meant that Dirksen had to deliver at least 25 votes from his 33-member caucus that was divided among 21 conservatives, five moderates, and seven liberals."
In the end, the Republican Party under the leadership of Everett Dirksen, "the final tally stood at 71 to 29—27 Republicans and 44 Democrats joined forces to support cloture."
This ignorant segment on MSNBC was made possible thanks to the endorsement of Chase. Their information is linked.
To read the transcript click "expand":
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
11/28/2022
7:15:20 p.m. EasternJOY REID: Part of it is they are the base. Right? The Tea Party is now the base, and he's one of them, and these tea party people are now the fundamentals of the party. So, it's not as if Trump is some sort of outlier. I think that’s what we’re missing. Is that Trump isn't some freak who’s dragging the party to the right. He represents the median belief system of many of the people who vote for him. It's that simple.
MARA GAY: I mean, that's right. We have to kind of go back to the historical origins of the modern-day Republican Party, which does not mean that every single Republican subscribes to these beliefs. Quite the opposite. But yet, the origin of the Republican Party as we know it today really has to do with a backlash to civil rights. And so any understanding of that Republican Party without that historical backlash to civil rights is incomplete. And so while of course a majority, we hope, of Republicans do not espouse these views, I think we can safely say that.
That thread has always been there and there's always been a tension between the ways it is expressed, excuse me, what's acceptable, what kind of language can we use around it, how close do you get to some of the grosser parts of that base, versus just plain conservative economic agenda, and so that tension has always been there. The difference is that Donald Trump has brought forth an id if you will, I'm certainly not the first to say this, that is really the darkest face of that. And I think it's really up to the Republican Party to excise that, confront it once and for all and move forward, but they do not appear in a position to do so.
