With all the fake quotes attributed to presidents out there, do you really want to hang your hat on this one, G?
If you mean: do I want to buy the book, read the book and determine if the book contains all the information you require, I have to admit I have better things to do right now and better things to spend my money on.
At the same time, as I said before, the book (not the blog WB cited, the actual book) is written by someone fairly reputable and I can't find anything on line that tends to refute what the book allegedly said.
Furthermore, if we take the line in the context of the era and the background of LBJ it could easily be a case of him saying, in effect, "I’ll have those [African Americans] voting Democratic for the next 200 years [because they'll appreciate this]." That is not particularly shocking (a politician expecting that his legislation will win a new constituency), nor does it necessarily contradict his other comments about losing the south (at the time the south was primarily white).
As such, all I'm saying is that I don't have a particular reason to disbelieve it.
Personally, like a lot of the threads here, it seems to me that everyone, including me and you, are debating minutia (whether this quote is real) and/or side issues (MEM and the farm bill). The real questions are:
- Do these policies help our hurt minorities?
If the latter, does the DNC really believe it creates a permanent underclass by doing so or is it a misguided, near religious belief, in the power of statism to fix problems?
Thoughts on those?
