Casting the Republicans as the party of civil rights.

If there is a God, he obviously has a sense of humor to allow Christopher Cox to make the following statement without lightning striking him down.

From the L.A. Times:

And if it reminds voters that the Democrats once embraced slavery, that's not such a bad byproduct, strategists say.

Bush, who keeps a bust of Lincoln prominently displayed in the Oval Office, is making Civil War references a staple of his speeches promoting democracy overseas and policy changes at home. And a glossy, GOP-produced "2005 Republican Freedom Calendar," spotlighting key moments in the party's civil rights history, has been distributed to party officials nationwide.

"We started our party with the express intent of protecting the American people from the Democrats' pro-slavery policies that expressly made people inferior to the state," Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) wrote in a letter printed on the calendar.

And after they went to all of that trouble to bury Lincoln's corpse 10 feet down under two tons of concrete to keep it from being stolen. Had they known, I'm sure they would have put a countermeasure in to keep his corpse from being raped by Cox and Karl Rove.

A Palm Beach Republican group paid for a newspaper ad that listed a raft of black Republican officeholders during the 19th century and said, "Throughout the history of America, the Republican Party has been at the forefront of the fight for civil rights."

The focus on the party's past reflects the realignment goals of White House strategist Karl Rove and demonstrates that Republicans view winning a larger portion of the black vote as a major factor for success in future national elections.

Turd blossom will stop at nothing. Fortunately, the Times reminds us that the Republican party of today bears no resemblance to the Republican party of over 100 years ago.

Historians note that the GOP's heritage is more complex than all the references to Lincoln imply.

In the decades following the Civil War, the party became more identified with pro-business policies than civil rights.

In national elections, black voters began flocking to the Democratic Party in the 1930s, drawn by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

And the Democrats gained a virtual lock on the black vote in the mid-1960s, as President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed several civil rights bills through Congress while the GOP pursued a "Southern strategy" aimed at courting white voters.

In the years that followed, Republicans led the fights against affirmative action and the creation of a national holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Referring to the GOP's new efforts to promote its civil rights record, Yale University history professor David Blight said, "It's appalling to me as a historian and as an American citizen. It necessitates ignoring and avoiding at least 80 years of the history of the Republican Party, that the Republican Party became the bastion of white solidarity, white comfort."