Louie Gohmert resolution would ban all Democrats from Congress because of the party’s 1840s support for slavery
Should Republicans be allowed to make up almost 100 percent of Congress?
Context
The official Democratic Party platforms in 1840, 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856 all formally supported slavery.
“Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states [namely slavery],” the 1840 party platform read. “All such efforts [to abolish slavery] have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.”
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 in large part as an anti-slavery party. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and the party has never formally endorsed or condoned slavery in a party platform.
Now, a modern-day member of (what has become of) Lincoln’s party has introduced two resolutions as reminders of the Democratic party’s history — one of which recently received a vote in the House.
What the two resolutions do
One House resolution, H. Res. 1063, would ban from Congress any political organization or party that has ever publicly supported either slavery or the Confederacy. In other words, it would ban all Democrats from serving in Congress — a proposal of dubious constitutionality at best.
Another, H. Res. 1148, called for the removal of any item from the House wing of the Capitol Building that portrays or references any political party that has ever publicly supported either slavery or the Confederacy. In other words, it would have banned all portraits and statues of Democrats. (In recent months, many portraits and busts depicting former Congress members with Confederate ties have been removed.) It failed in a House vote on September 29.
Both resolutions were introduced by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX1), the former on July 23 and the latter on September 24.
What supporters say
Supporters argue — or, more likely, troll — that at a time when other reminders of Confederate ties are disappearing, it’s only fair for the Democratic Party to do the same.
“A great portion of the history of the Democratic Party is filled with racism and hatred,” Rep. Gohmert said in a press release. “As the country watches violent leftists burn our cities, tear down our statues and call upon every school, military base and city street to be renamed, it is important to note that past atrocities these radicals claim to be so violently offensive were largely committed by members in good standing of the Democratic Party.”
The party is “blatantly and offensively tied to slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, and the Ku Klux Klan,” Rep. Gohmert continued. “Whether it be supporting the most vile forms of racism or actively working against civil rights legislation, Democrats in this country perpetuated these abhorrent forms of discrimination and violence practically since their party’s inception.”
What opponents say
Who would oppose removing statues tied to supporters of slavery? Well, Gohmert himself did, making his resolution clearly a stunt.
A July House vote to remove all Confederate statues from the Capitol Building received unanimous Democratic support at 232–0, versus a majority of Republicans opposing it 72–113. Rep. Gohmert voted in opposition. The House-passed bill has not received a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Opponents of Gohmert’s two new resolutions may note that Democrats haven’t officially supported slavery for about a century and a half, and that today the party is actually much more likely than Republicans to take down Confederate statues.
Opponents may also note that, even though the majority of Democrats in the 1860s indeed supported slavery, hardly all of them did. Indeed, a sizable anti-slavery contingent existed, even if it was the minority view within the party.
The Democratic party’s vote on the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, reflects this. In the Senate, four out of 10 Democrats voted in favor. In the House, 14 Democrats voted in favor versus 50 opposed, with eight abstaining.
Odds of passage
The statues-and-portraits resolution was tabled on September 29, or taken off the agenda for further action. Democrats voted unanimously to table 220–0, while Republicans were almost entirely opposed 2–176, meaning they supported further consideration of banning statues of Democrats. Only Reps. Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN9) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL16) crossed party lines.
The ban-Democrats-from-Congress resolution has attracted five cosponsors, all Republicans. It is still alive in the legislative process, awaiting a potential vote in the House Administration Committee — which is controlled by Democrats.
This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.
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