Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., on Thursday introduced a bill aimed at banning the Democratic Party for what he described as its historic support of slavery and the Confederacy one day after he voted in favor of keeping Confederate statues at the Capitol.

Gohmert, who joined more than 100 House Republicans to unsuccessfully oppose a resolution that would remove Confederate statues from the Capitol on Wednesday, responded to the defeat by introducing a resolution to ban organizations and political groups which historically supported slavery and Confederate states.

That list includes the Democratic Party, according to Gohmert. However, he did not mention that 72 Republicans who joined every Democrat in the House to vote to remove the Confederate statues.

While Democrats were for decades the preferred party of defenders of slavery and segregation in the South, Gohmert’s claims ignore the fact that the South overwhelmingly rejected the Democratic Party after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, switching in droves to the Republican Party. In contrast to the Democratic Party, […]