Vincent J. Curtis
15 Jan 2017
On Friday, Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) told NBC News’ Chuck
Todd that he felt that Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate on account of
Russian hacking, and that he would not be attending Trump’s inauguration. The obvious follow-up question was, “Well,
who then is the legitimate President-Elect – Hillary Clinton?” That
question went unasked on account of Todd’s tongue being black from eight years
of licking Barack Obama’s boots.
John Lewis is regarded as a hero, at least within the
Democrat party, on account of his activities in the civil rights movement in
the 1960s. As a young man, Lewis was
deeply involved in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that
organized the 1963 March on Washington, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, the
1965 Selma voting rights campaign; and he was a freedom rider. The incident for which he is most famous is
the “Bloody Sunday” incident at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
At that incident, some 600 freedom marchers crossed the
bridge, and were met by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to
disperse. Rather than do so, the
marchers stopped and prayed. The police
responded with tear gas and night sticks.
Lewis had his skull fractured by police, but he managed to escape. Before he was taken to hospital he went
before television cameras to call upon President Johnson to intervene in
Alabama.
Lewis tried to enter Congress in 1977. Georgia’s Fifth District was vacated by
Andrew Young, and Lewis entered the Democrat primary against Wyche Fowler,
Jr. He lost to Fowler in the run-off 62 –
38. Lewis was thereafter given a job in
the Carter Administration. He resigned that
job in 1980, and was elected to Atlanta City Council in 1981. Fowler was elected to the Senate in 1986, and
the Fifth District again beaconed Lewis.
Lewis defeated Julian Bond in a surprising upset in the run-off 52 – 48. Lewis was elected and re-elected to represent
the Fifth District ever since, winning (when he was opposed) by wide margins.
The Fifth District lies in the north of Atlanta, and is a
solid Democrat seat. Since 1845, the
Fifth District has been represented by a Republican for only eleven years.
Lewis himself has been described as one of the most liberal
representatives in the Congress, and certainly the most liberal to represent a
district in the South. He has been
labelled a “far-left Democratic leader” by GovTrack, and a “hardcore liberal”
by Issues2000. The Washington Post described
Lewis in 1998 as, “a fiercely partisan Democrat…” The Associated Press described Lewis as a “fierce
partisan critic of George W. Bush” and said he was “the first major House
figure to suggest impeaching George W. Bush.”
In the 2008 election, Lewis first endorsed Hillary Clinton, but later
changed to support Barack Obama after sampling the political winds.
Later in the 2008 campaign, Lewis said that John McCain and
Sarah Palin were “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” that brought to mind “George
Wallace.” In January, 2016, Lewis twice compared
Donald Trump to George Wallace - before the Iowa Caucuses, and the New
Hampshire primary.
That blow to the head must have changed something in Lewis’s
mind. Alabama Governor George Wallace
was a Democrat. The whole South in that
era was Democrat. The cops got their government
jobs through their connections either with the Klan or the Democrat party. Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
were both reluctant to intervene in the civil rights disturbances in the South
in the early and middle 1960s.
So what political party did Lewis join? The Democrat party! As between a party that at the time embraced Rockefeller
Liberals and the party of George Wallace, Lewis chose the party of Wallace. If you were going to have a career in
politics in the South at that time, pragmatism dictated that you join the
Democrat party. And that’s what Lewis
did.
To be sure, Lewis maintained a far-left liberal
progressivism, but he still had to wait his turn in Democrat party politics to
get his chance at Congress. The black, Democrat
Fifth District was not sufficiently impressed with Lewis’s credentials to give
him the job in 1977. He was obliged to
go through a routine, and then he was chosen nine years later when it was his
turn.
Luckily for Lewis, the politics in the Democrat party
started to turn towards his far-left views more and more as the partisan divide
grew between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Factional Democrat party partisanship for its
own sake could therefore and in good conscience become part and parcel of
advancing Lewis’s liberal views.
Tellingly, when Clarence Thomas was undergoing his high-tech
lynching at the hands of Senate Democrats, what did we hear from Lewis? Nothing. Crickets.
The conscience of the Congress was silent when a conservative black man was being abused by fellow Democrats. Lewis’s record appears empty of defenses of
black Republicans.
Lewis’s attack on Donald Trump is newsworthy partly because
the ‘conscience of the Congress’ is the one saying what other Democrats fear to
say but would like to – that Donald Trump is illegitimate. It is not clear whether other Democrats put
Lewis up to putting that sentiment into the public discussion, but one thing is
for sure: that Lewis expects to hide behind his reputation as ‘the conscience
of the Congress’ that was built on his having his head broken at Selma in 1965 –
by other Democrats.
John Lewis has long been a fiercely partisan Democrat hack. He is the kind of black man the Democrats love
to have, on account of his race and his reputation as a civil rights organizer
who paid the price. He gives them cover from their own racist past. His reputation gives moral cover whenever Democrats act immorally. He represents one of
the safest black Democrat seats in the House, which was long Democrat and black
before him, and will be afterwards. He
has been a part of the Democrat House leadership since 1991. There is a reciprocity between him and the
party. If he has had good, long
relations with any black Republican, it is hard to find in the public record.
In short, John Lewis has become what has been called a “Plantation
Democrat.” His past reputation is
protecting him from the consequences of many of his extreme views, but after
his calling Trump’s election “illegitimate” without saying who is the
legitimate successor to Barack Obama, his high reputation for being a ‘conscience’
of anything is becoming more and more threadbare.
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