LePage to John Lewis: Thank Republicans for Civil Rights

Having apparently had it up to here with the media’s hysteria about Donald Trump’s feud with CIVIL RIGHTS ICON (!!) John Lewis, Maine Governor Paul LePage jumped into the mix this week, telling Lewis that he should remember which party was responsible for pushing civil rights forward.

“John Lewis ought to look at history,” LePage said in an interview with a Maine radio station. “It was Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves. It was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant that fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”

This is a terrific argument and it’s one that will almost certainly be dismissed by modern Democrats – many of whom have no understanding of this country’s history themselves. The modern Democratic Party has gone to great lengths to paint Republicans as racist oppressors; it does not do well for their image to admit that they are the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the party of the Ku Klux Klan. No, no, we have to pretend that none of that ever happened – or that Donald Trump somehow went back in time and did it with the help of Jeff Sessions and the guy from InfoWars. Sure, that’s the ticket.

Look, no one’s trying to take anything away from John Lewis or to minimize what he and his fellow activists went through on the march for civil rights. But just like John McCain’s military service doesn’t exempt him from political criticism, Lewis’s cracked skull doesn’t earn him a lifetime free pass to say whatever idiot nonsense that comes to his mind. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if Lewis had grown up to become a Republican, we wouldn’t see this halo of protection around him.