General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Elizabeth Warren Left The GOP [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)The Republicans like to boast that MLK was a registered Republican, though that remains a bit murky, there's no real proof that he was anything, either a D or R. But it's one of those things that sounds entirely plausible because the GOP rolls were heavily populated by black Americans as a consequence of history. Lincoln was a Republican, after all, and for people who moved up from the south, it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who stopped them from voting below the Mason Dixon. And in the north, the Republicans were champions of the abolition movement going back to the days of slavery. There's a lot of history there, and loyalty, and familial customs at play.
Many of those black "registered GOP" voters were crossing the line to the Democrats long before they bothered to change their party registration. The flight began in earnest in the sixties, but a lot of folks didn't get around to it until much later. See this piece from NPR for more background:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/07/14/331298996/why-did-black-voters-flee-the-republican-party-in-the-1960s
I agree with you that a lot of people vote GOP because they don't see the big picture. They hear BS about how the Republicans won't let anyone "take their jerbs" and how they won't let the government "take their guns" or "take their money" in taxes...they hear that nonsense from the red lipsticked, decolletaged ladies of Fauxsnooze and they take it as gospel. And of course, the GOP are a bunch of chickenhawk-cynical-tough guys, and there's a subset of people who like that "tough talk" attitude, for reasons I've never quite figured out.