Political Memes

They're not wrong, exactly, but they are also not right. The Dems used to be the racist conservatives and the Reps the pro-civil liberty, desegregation party. The confusion is that around the mid to late 1960s, the Democratic and Replican parties had an ideological flip, largely over the civil rights movement. So since the early 70s, Reps have been the right leaning party, while Dems have been more left leaning.

People making cynical arguments about the history of each party pre-1970 being the responsibility of the current party members, or coloring their current politics, ignores this fact of the shift in ideologies. It fails to put the responsibility on the ideology itself. It's the same shit when Republicans claim that they're the "Party of a Lincoln" and deserve credit for ending Slavery, even while trying to disenfranchise black voters, end racial protections, roll back the civil rights movement, and blame violent crime on the entire race. Conservativism is the problem, no matter what the party name is/was.