Following Sen. Jeff Sessions' confirmation in which Democrats derided him as racist, Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on Fox News to state some truth: the "Klan was founded by a great many Democrats."
"The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan," he said on Wednesday. “You look at the most racist. You look at the Dixiecrats; they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats. Now, the Democrats just accuse anyone they disagree with of being a racist”
An article in Town Hall recently put this very clear historical fact into full perspective:
Indeed, the closer one looks across the arc of black history, the more ironic it seems that voters would associate civil rights with the Democratic Party. Founded as the anti-slavery party, the Republican Party was responsible for winning passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts. In fact, had Democrats not overturned the 1875 Civil Rights Act, the strikingly similar 1964 Civil Rights Act might never have been necessary.
Breitbart dutifully noted that "it is no coincidence that more than a hundred years of history are missing from the Democratic party’s official website."
Not that skeletons in one's closet should be the deciding factor in any argument. Every political party has them. Cruz merely points out the irony of the Democrats crying racist on their opponents when history shows they were once upon a time (and still are) harbingers of racism.
