Rep. Louie Gohmert: ‘It’s Time to #CancelDemocrats’ - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Rep. Louie Gohmert: ‘It’s Time to #CancelDemocrats’
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Rep. Louie Gohmert at CPAC in 2016 (Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)

As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.”

For the past several weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and various Democrats have been swept up in the Cancel Culture. They have been busily applauding the tearing down of statues of Confederate leaders (not to mention Washington, Lincoln, U. S. Grant, Columbus, and African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass). Not to mention that they have cheered for the renaming of U.S. military bases named for this or that Confederate general.

Whereas, In 1964 the Democratic Party led a 75-calendar-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Ostentatiously, Pelosi made a point of removing the pictures of four of her predecessors as Speaker of the House, all with ties to the Confederacy — every last one of them Democrats. So too has she called for the removal of various statues spread throughout the Capitol of those who had an involvement with the Confederacy. Again — all of those statues were of Democrats. They had, she said, “committed treason.” And she went even further, saying that President Trump was spending his time “preserving relics of the Confederacy.”

Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert has taken Pelosi and her fellow Democrats at their word — and taken direct aim at the biggest Confederate relic of all: the Democratic Party. Over here at Breitbart, the Congressman explains what he is about. And after I highlight some excerpts, I have posted the full text of his resolution.

Among other things, the Congressman says this:

Many on the left and their willing accomplices in the media would tell you otherwise, yet a cursory examination of our nation’s factual history and records proves the riots and chaos that have swept across our country in recent months stand as a devastating reminder of the racist policies and values held by the Democratic Party throughout much of its history.

Because of this, I introduced a privileged resolution in the House calling upon Congress to acknowledge the indecorous history of the Democratic Party. I asked that the Speaker of the House be instructed to ban any political organization or political party that ever publicly supported slavery or the Confederate States of America.…

On June 18th of this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of portraits from the Capitol building honoring four previous Speakers of the House — all of whom were Democrats. That was a good start on the job that she should now finish if she is going to avoid blatant hypocrisy.…

Efforts by Democrats to destroy all public traces of their own history of supporting slavery, the Confederacy, and segregation in an attempt to shift blame onto Republicans must no longer go unchallenged. It is time for Democrats to play by their own rules, and accept the standards they have forced onto everyone else. They must divest themselves of their name that has denied so many the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their recent actions demand nothing less. Instead of canceling our culture and history, it’s time to #CancelDemocrats.

Congressman Gohmert has gotten it exactly. Here is the text of Gohmert’s resolution, co-sponsored by Reps. Andy Biggs, Jody Hice, Randy Weber, and Andy Harris:

RESOLUTION

Raising a question of the privileges of the House.

Whereas, On July 22, 2020, H.R. 7573 was brought to the House floor for a vote, with the purpose of eliminating four specific statues or busts from the United States Capitol along with all others that include individuals who “served as an officer or voluntarily with the Confederate States of America or of the military forces or government of a State while the State was in rebellion against the United States” yet failed to address the most ever-present historical stigma in the United States Capitol; that is the source that so fervently supported, condoned and fought for slavery was left untouched, without whom, the evil of slavery could never have continued as it did, to such extreme that it is necessary to address here in order for the U.S. House of Representatives to avoid degradation of historical fact and blatant hypocrisy for generations to come. 

Whereas, The Democratic Party Platform of 1840, 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856 states “That Congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery … are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.”

Whereas, The Democratic Party Platform of 1856 further declares that “new states” to the Union should be admitted “with or without domestic slavery, as [the state] may elect.”

Whereas, The Democratic Party Platform of 1856 also resolves that “we recognize the right of the people of all the Territories … to form a Constitution, with or without domestic slavery.”

Whereas, The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 penalized officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave and made them liable for a fine of $1,000 (about $28,000 in present-day value); Law-enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest people suspected of being a runaway slave on as little as a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership; the Democratic Party Platform of 1860 directly, in seeking to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act, states that “the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.”

Whereas, The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in Congress; the 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in Congress.

Whereas, Democrats systematically suppressed African-Americans’ right to vote, and by specific example in the 1902 Constitution of the State of Virginia, actually disenfranchised about 90 percent of the black men who still voted at the beginning of the twentieth century and nearly half of the white men, thereby suppressing Republican voters; the number of eligible African-American voters were thereby forcibly reduced from about 147,000 in 1901 to about 10,000 by 1905; that measure was supported almost exclusively by Virginia Democrats.

Whereas, Virginia’s 1902 Constitution was engineered by Carter Glass, future Democratic Party U.S. Representative, Senator, and even Secretary of the Treasury under Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, who proclaimed the goal of the constitutional convention as follows: This Democrat exclaimed_ “Discrimination! Why, that is precisely what we propose. That, exactly, is what this Convention was elected for — to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limits of the federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every [African-American] Negro voter who can be gotten rid of legally.” 

Whereas, In 1912, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s administration began a racial segregation policy for U.S. government employees and, by 1914, the Wilson administration’s Civil Service instituted the requirement that a photograph be submitted with each employment application.

Whereas, The 1924 Democratic National Convention convened in New York City at Madison Square Garden; the convention is commonly known as the “Klan-Bake” due to the overwhelming influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the Democratic Party.

Whereas, In 1964 the Democratic Party led a 75-calendar-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Whereas, Leading the Democrats in their opposition to civil rights for African-Americans was a fellow member of the Democratic Party, Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia — a known recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan.

Whereas, Democrats enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws and civil codes that forced segregation and restricted freedoms of black Americans in the United States.

Whereas, On June 18th, 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal from the Capitol portraits of four previous Speakers of the House who served in the Confederacy saying that the portraits, “set back our nation’s work to confront and combat bigotry;” the men depicted in the portraits were Democrat Robert M.T. Hunter, Democrat Howell Cobb, Democrat James L. Orr and Democrat Charles F. Crisp.

Resolved,

  1. That the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall remove any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy, from any area within the House wing of the Capitol or any House office building, and shall donate any such item or symbol to the Library of Congress.
  2. That any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy shall either change its name or be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.

In sum: Wow.

As has long been discussed in this space (here is but one example from all the way back in 2008), the Democratic Party was built on racism. It is in fact, past and present, America’s Party of Race. The central driving force of the party has always been race — using racism as the political gas that fuels election victories and passage of whatever is on their “progressive” agenda of the moment.

As has been acknowledged by the Democratic Party itself with decades of fundraising events named “Jefferson-Jackson” dinners, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson are considered the co-founders of the modern Democratic Party. And as Northwestern University’s historian Garry Wills makes clear in his book on Jefferson’s role in establishing and building the Democrats, Jefferson “depended on them for his political existence.” The “them” in that sentence refers to slaves. In other words, the party created by Jefferson and Jackson, slave owners both, was a wholly politically owned subsidiary of the slave owners who backed the party with its serious political and economic power.

The result of this was exactly what Gohmert has listed in detail in his resolution. The power of slave owners in what was fashioned as America’s Party of Race was specifically what was manifested in those repeated Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. It was manifested in the party’s heavy opposition to the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. Fully 100 percent of Senate and House Republicans supported the abolition amendment, with a majority of Democrats opposing.

Not to mention, as Gohmert’s resolution notes, opposition to

The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in Congress; the 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in Congress.

While Gohmert doesn’t mention it — even House Resolutions can pack in so much of a seriously lengthy history — Democrats in Congress also opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875:

  • The Act of 1866 gave the newly freed slaves full citizenship and guaranteed the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
  • The three Acts of 1870 and 1871 were designed to enforce the voting rights of blacks and targeted the Democrats’ ally — the Ku Klux Klan, which had begun serving, according to historians, as “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party” (Columbia University historian Eric Foner) and the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party” (University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease). The U.S. Army was empowered to enforce the laws, while U.S. Marshalls could bring charges against the Klan.
  • The 1875 Act made discrimination in public accommodations against the law. The Supreme Court overruled it, and sections of it were incorporated into the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968.

And not to be forgotten is the motto of the Democrats’ National Convention of 1868 that nominated former New York Gov. Horatio Seymour and Francis Preston Blair Jr., a former Democratic Congressman from Missouri. The motto:

This is a White Man’s Country, Let White Men Rule 

Yes, you read that right. And among the delegates to that Democratic Convention was former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest — the first “Grand Wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan.

There will be more coming on this issue in this space.

But make no mistake. Speaker Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues have opened the door wide. Confederates, she has said, “committed treason.” What she conveniently leaves out is that the participants leading the Confederacy were all Democrats. Which is to say, her party was directly complicit.

Congressman Louie Gohmert has taken Pelosi at her word. The Democrat Party that she leads is exactly a “relic of the Confederacy” (to borrow her own words). The Congressman has made plain “it’s time to #CancelDemocrats.”

Speaker Pelosi — over to you.

And stay tuned.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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