Try this one on for size: The Democratic Party wants to embrace its members from 1829, ignore them from 1865, but then come back to them by the mid-20th Century. Seriously.
Politifact decided to ignore a lot of what people are talking about these days and hone in on a statement Senator Steve Martin made in agreement with E.W. Jackson regarding the impact of Planned Parenthood on the black community in comparison to the KKK. During his response, Sen. Martin said:
“The fact is that both the KKK and Planned Parenthood are creations of the Democratic Party.”
When Politifact followed up with Sen. Martin, he clarified his statement and corrected the assertion that the Democratic PARTY was behind the organizations.
Martin released a statement saying he “regretted the carelessness and inaccuracy” of his comments regarding the KKK, calling his statement an “impromptu” response to questions about Jackson’s comments that Planned Parenthood has been more lethal to blacks than the KKK.
PolitiFact Virginia respects when people tell us they erred, but we still feel obliged to complete our fact checks of their statements. So we asked several historians about the origins of the KKK.
Politifact then spends the rest of the article disproving Martin’s FIRST statement made in error and corrected by the Senator himself.
They rate his initial statement false because, well, even Senator Martin himself said it was false.
But on the statement that the KKK was founded by a Democrat? Well…
Carole Emberton, an associate professor of history at the University at Buffalo, wrote in an email that various “Klans” that sprung up around the South acted as a “strong arm” for many local Democratic politicians during Reconstruction. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest — believed to be the KKK’s first Grand Dragon — even spoke at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, said Emberton, author of “Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence and the American South after the Civil War.”
But Emberton added a major caveat:
“The party lines of the 1860s/1870s are not the party lines of today,” she wrote to us. “Although the names stayed the same, the platforms of the two parties reversed each other in the mid-20th century, due in large part to white ‘Dixiecrats’ flight out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By then, the Democratic Party had become the party of ‘reform,’ supporting a variety of ‘liberal’ causes, including civil rights, women’s rights, etc. whereas this had been the banner of the Republican Party in the nineteenth century.”
So Senator Martin is right. But if you want to get into debates about who is a Democrat at what point in time, well then you get into a sticky point. He’s right in that Forrest was a Democrat THEN but by today’s standards he and the Democratic Party of the 1800s isn’t the Democratic Party of today.
So we’ll have the Democratic Party clear this up themselves:
Oh, hey, look at that. DPVA’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner! You know, the one named after Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson – Jackson being viewed as the first Democratic president of the United States.
Hey, when was that again? Oh, that’s right: 1829.
So Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Democrat of the same era as the great founder of the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson, is NOT representative of today’s Democratic Party so statements tying him to the part are to be dismissed.
But Andrew Jackson? He’s still OK. Trail of Tears not withstanding.
Politifact and the Democratic Party are trying to have it both ways. They’re trying to cherry pick and whitewash their own history to show historical roots but not the troubles that those roots carry.
And why?
Looks to me like they’re trying to make it toxic for anyone to stand up for Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson.
Why else would they focus on this non-issue but ignore the false attacks coming his way?
VPOD: “Yogagate” shows Jackson’s detractors getting desperate
JHPolitics: BuzzFeed Criticizes Jackson for Basic Christian Theology
Virginia Virtucon: Getting Jackson Wrong…Again
Instead, they’re going to nitpick historically accurate but nuanced arguments about the political affiliations of people 150 years ago.
Gosh, next Politifact will be trying to say that the Democratic Party of today isn’t the Democratic Party of long time West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, former KKK member and sitting Senator until his death in 2010.
