At their annual meeting on Dec. 25 in San Francisco, leaders of the Democrat Socialist National Committee (DSNC) — formerly known as the Democratic National Committee — unanimously approved a resolution that would unilaterally rename the Republican Party the “New Dixiecrat Party.”
The action by the nation’s top liberals is seen as a response to a resolution floated by the Republican National Committee earlier this year to rebrand the 250-year-old Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
In remarks before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her party had taken note of discussions after the 2008 elections about the damage done to the Republican “brand” during the Bush presidency. Political observers believe that by rubberstamping Bush’s initiatives, especially the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq and anti-regulatory economic policies that caused the Bush Recession, the GOP leadership had befouled its image with the public.
Party officials cite polling and demographic data indicating that not only has the GOP’s power base retracted to the boundaries of the old Confederacy, its self-identified members are almost exclusively old white people. They note that only 2 percent of Republicans are Latinos and just 1 percent are African Americans — and just 15 percent of GOP registrants are under 35 years old.
Pres. Barack Obama addressed the meeting by video link from his vacation overseas in the nation of Hawaii. He stressed that by rebranding the conservative party, the DSNC was helping him fulfill his campaign promise to “put the urgent need for bipartisanship ahead of everything on the national agenda.” He said he saw his party’s “unflinching drive for comity with its enemies at home” as the first step toward his ultimate goal of “world peace.”
In calling for the vote, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, chair of the steering committee that wrote the rebranding resolution, said his committee had settled on New Dixiecrat Party after studying the 1948 campaign platform of the old Dixiecrat Party, which was officially known as the “States Rights Democratic Party.”
“We found that the 1948 platform was still remarkably well-suited to stand as our opponents’ manifesto in 2010 and beyond,” Frank said. “Except for the names of the party leaders back then, Republicans today wouldn’t need to tweak a word.”
1. We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man.
2. We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights guaranteed by it to every citizen of this republic.
3. We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction of the constitutional rights of the states and individuals. We oppose the totallitaran, centralized bureaucratic government and the police nation called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican Conventions.
4. We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one’s living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.
5. We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.
6. We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national origin in appreciable numbers.
7. We stand for the check and balances provided by the three departments of our government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the executive and judicial departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish in the United States a police nation that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.
8. We demand that there be returned to the people to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights and the discharge of our responsibility as democrats for human welfare. We oppose a denial of those by political parties, a barter or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government. We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.
9. We, therefore, urge that this Convention endorse the candidacies of J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding H. Wright for the President and Vice-president, respectively, of the United States of America.
After the committee voted in favor of the rebranding resolution, members also voted to support the construction of FEMA camps for the interment of people who hold “dangerous political views” and to fund health-care reform by raising revenue with a tax on right-wing millionaires and reducing waste by the creation of death panels for elderly conservatives.
Before the official business got underway, a a non-sectarian holiday meal was served that included vegan steak tartar with arugula salad, white wine and non-fat, decaf lattes by transvestite waitpersons.
The DSNC annual committee meeting is traditionally scheduled for Dec. 25 as part of the left’s ongoing efforts to stamp out Christmas.
- Topic: News & Comment
