# Arnold flunks Austrian history

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arnold-flunks-austrian-history/262986>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [September 3, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arnold-flunks-austrian-history/262986 "2004-09-03T17:41:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arnold-flunks-austrian-history/262986/41 "2004-09-05T06:33:35Z")

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> [@ElvisL1ves](#):
>
> **hajario** , you’ve overlooked the differences in party orientation caused by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was passed by a coalition of moderate/liberal non-Southern Democrats and moderate/liberal non-Southern Republicans (yes, there used to be such a thing). The bulk of the conservative white Southern Democrats were so alienated by the vote against them in their own party that they became ripe for recruiting in Nixon’s 1968 Southern Strategy and, for the most part, converted to the Republican Party that they now _control_. Zell Miller is one of the last holdouts. The number of speakers at the RNC who claimed credit for the Republicans passing the Act, compared to the party’s current leadership and orientation and, for the most part, composition, is as disingenuous as claiming it’s still the party of Lincoln, the trial lawyer turned reluctant war-fighter and civil rights activist. The faction that now runs the GOP is the one that opposed the 1964 Act.

I didn’t overlook anything. I am well aware that it was the Dixiecrats that were against the Civil Rights Act and that both parties are very different now. Lieberman claimed that he watched the voting back then and that’s what made him become a Democrat back then. That statement makes no sense. I can understand why that would make him a Democrat _now_ but that was not his claim.

Haj

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