Senate Democrats are trying to assume the high ground against President Trump by rubbishing his nominees. Consider the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. The sum total of arguments against Senator Sessions are that at one time, many decades ago, he may have made a flippant offhand comment about the Ku Klux Klan and that he has suggested that the radically leftist NAACP and ACLU may be radically leftist.
His record of prosecuting Klansmen, desegregating Alabama schools, and generally upholding the law is, of course, totally ignored. So are Senate Democrats concerned about placing the former Klansmen to the highest levels of our legal system? No, not at all! The record of Senate Democrats and the brutal suppression of blacks in the South is stunning – and largely ignored by the leftist establishment media and educational systems.
In 1937, leftist icon Franklin Roosevelt appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States Attorney General Hugo Black, a man who had actually been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and never denied that fact. Senate Democrats, from the North as well as the South, voted overwhelmingly to confirm Hugo Black to the Supreme Court.
Harry Truman, the Democrat president who himself had briefly joined the Ku Klux Klan, appointed as his attorney general Tom Clark, widely believed to have been a Klansman and whose racism was so well known that black leader Paul Robeson described it as "a gratuitous and outrageous insult to my people." Truman later nominated Clark also to the Supreme Court.
So clearly Senate Democrats have no problem with men who had actually belonged to the Ku Klux Klan being put in charge of the Department of Justice or placed on the United States Supreme Court. But, of course, Senate Democrats could not control whom a president nominated, but only whether they voted to confirm a presidential nomination or not.
House Democrats chose for majority whip a man who openly and clearly advocated "white supremacy," John Sparkman. Senate Democrats chose Sparkman to be chairman of three important Senate committees. His overt racism and links to the Ku Klux Klan were publicly called out by Republicans, but Democrats simply ignored these.
How openly did Democrats accept this Senate Democrat who was overtly opposed to civil rights for blacks? Senator John Sparkman was selected by Adlai Stevenson to be his running mate on the 1952 Democrat presidential ticket, and not one single Senate Democrat opposed this ticket. So much for Senate Democrats' concern about the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen Harry Truman, John Sparkman, and Hugo Black were all Senate Democrats who rose to higher posts by their party with no concern at all about their open sympathy for white supremacy and their membership in that most notorious association of white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan. But Senate Democrats, of course, could not pick Truman and Sparkman as their party's vice presidential nominees, nor could Senate Democrat nominate justices to the Supreme Court.
Senate Democrats do, however, choose their own leadership. The Democrat floor leader in the Senate is picked only by Senate Democrats, the very same politicians who are trying to smear Jeff Sessions, a man who no one has suggested ever had anything to do with the Ku Klux Klan. These Senate Democrats chose Robert Byrd, a high-ranking official in the Ku Klux Klan, to successively higher posts in the Senate Democrat leadership.
In 1971, Senate Democrats ousted Teddy Kennedy as Democrat whip and elected Klansman Robert Byrd in his place. Ten years later, when President Reagan was elected, Senate Democrats promoted Robert Byrd to Democrat floor leader in the Senate, the highest office they could give him in the Democrat leadership. Then in 1989, Senate Democrats chose Robert Byrd for the highest constitutional office the Senate can elect anyone to be, president pro tempore of the Senate, third in line for presidential succession, and Senate Democrats also made this Klansman into chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, giving him extraordinary power over federal spending.
The record of Senate Democrats toward the Klan is extraordinary, considering the attacks this gaggle has been making against a man who actually fought the Klan. Perhaps if Senate Democrats passed a resolution apologizing to America for producing out of their number Klansmen who became president, vice presidential nominee, attorney general, Supreme Court justice, Democrat floor leader and president pro tempore of the Senate, then the rest of America would pay a bit more attention to their silly attacks on Senator Jeff Sessions.
No comments:
Post a Comment