title:  GOP Governor Demands A ‘Thank You’ From Rep. John Lewis Because Republicans Freed The Slaves
text: Just when you thought Republicans couldn t be bigger pricks toward Rep. John Lewis, one governor is demanding that Lewis thank today s GOP for ending slavery in 1865.Rep. John Lewis is a civil rights hero who risked his life fighting for voting rights with Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. He was at the Lincoln Memorial as King delivered his  I Have A Dream  speech, So he knows full well what President Abraham Lincoln and the early Republican Party did to free the slaves and advance civil rights.But that Republican Party has changed significantly over the last 150 years, and is now controlled by white supremacists and racists and spends most of its time trying to suppress voting rights and deny civil rights to people of color more than it does defending the legacy Lincoln built.Maine s Tea Party Governor Paul LePage, however, still thinks Republicans like himself deserve praise for something the party did over a century and a half ago.During an interview with WVOM, LePage criticized Lewis for calling Trump illegitimate and demanded that Lewis thank white Republicans for freeing the slave. John Lewis ought to look at history,  LePage said.  It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice. Except that Hayes sold-out the fight for civil rights in exchange for the presidency. As the Bangor Daily News pointed out, Hayes struck  an informal deal after a contested election that gave him the White House in exchange for promising to pull Northern troops out of the South. Pulling out those troops marked the premature end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow laws in the South that would remain intact for a century until King and Lewis spearheaded a renewed fight for equality.It should be pointed out that Democrats were the ones who passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law while Republicans began pandering to racist southerners and have turned their backs on their liberal past ever since.But now Republicans like LePage think that they are owed praise for ending slavery even though Republican today would like to bring slavery back.According to Alternet,Not content to merely support an insurrection against the duly elected government of the United States, 80 percent of the Republicans surveyed by CNN also expressed admiration for the leaders of the South a cabal whose allegiance to white supremacy was most tellingly summed up by the Vice President of the Confederacy s sentiment that its,  foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. In fact, 20 percent of Donald Trump supporters think freeing the slaves was a bad idea. Seriously.So the idea that John Lewis owes thanks to Republicans like LePage is absolutely laughable, especially since LePage has called for  people of color  to be shot.If the only civil rights accomplishment Republicans can point to is the freeing of the slaves 150 years ago, their r sum  is in severe need of an update. Of course, that will never happen because Republicans are controlled by racists. Abraham Lincoln is surely rolling in his grave.Featured image via Flickr