Motley Moose – Archive

Today Representative Virginia Foxx from North Carolina took credit for republicans passing the Civil Rights legislation over Democratic opposition. MSNBC’s David Schuster covered the story earlier today and showed a clip of the following exchange on the House floor.

Some of the most important legislation our Federal Government has ever passed, was the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s. And to this day lawmakers in both party’s hailed the Congressional action as crucial to helping our nation become a more fair and just society. Today however, a republican House lawmaker named Virginia Foxx delivered a whopper about who supported the legislation and who did not.

David Schuster MSNBC

The following is from the clip MSNBC aired on the altercation between Foxx and Democratic Representative Dennis Cardoza from California.

Foxx starts the fracas with these words:

Just as we were the people who passed the Civil Rights Bills back in the 60’s, without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle, they love to engage in revisionist history.

Cardoza responds:

I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson Administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that Civil Rights legislation. John Lewis…

Foxx: Would the gentleman yield?

Cardoza: NO I WILL NOT YIELD! 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!

Schuster: To be clear there were Congressional Democrats and republicans who supported the Civil Rights legislation. The divide was actually between north and south and maybe because Foxx is from the south, maybe that’s something she wants to forget. In any case when she says that the Democrats were not much help, she’s wrong.

Here is video clip of the entire exchange from Think Progress.

Think Progress had the following to say about the incident. Check out the full article here.

Foxx: Republicans ‘Passed Civil Rights Bills Back In The 60s Without Very Much Help’ From Democrats

During a debate on the House floor today over designating 21 miles of the Molalla River as “wild and scenic,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who opposes the legislation, tried to claim a progressive environmental record for her party. “Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country,” said Foxx.

snip

Foxx’s claim that Republicans were the real engine behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a common notion among conservatives. But as Cardoza points out, it was President Lyndon Johnson who “choreographed passage of this historic measure in 1964.” In fact, the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), voted against the legislation.

To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a “higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.” But this ignores the “distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians” on the issue. When this is taken into account, the facts show that “in both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans.”

More from US News and World Report

A comment by oft-controversial North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx had Democrats choking down anger again today. On the House floor, Foxx suggested that it was the Republicans, not Democrats or President Lyndon B. Johnson, who pushed through the civil rights acts of the 1960s. Think Progress has the video here.

Says Ryan Rudominer, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “It speaks volumes that House Republicans would send out one of its top lieutenants, Virginia Foxx, to make such an absurd statement about the civil rights era, given her own history of making such racially offensive remarks.”

In a statement, he reminded reporters that Foxx had used the term “tar baby” on the House floor and had suggested that the murder of gay student Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime.

Personally, I think Representative Foxx should get as much air time as possible. She is almost as insane as my other favorite republican member of the House, Michele Bachmann.