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>>I don't understand why the Republicans voted against.

>>Look, I get it, you support private industry.

So in the 60's the Republicans launched a thing called The Southern Strategy that was literally the Republican Party courting white racists. They never stopped.

Now that openly calling for segregation is frowned upon making the criminal justice system as punitive as possible is one of the ways they keep that strategy going. See also: Welfare 'reform'

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You do know that it was southern democrats that supported segregation.

The strategy was a way of party 'realignment', i.e. of getting southern Democrats to red rover on over to the Republicans.

What the other commenter said. Southern Democrats switched parties as part of the Southern Strategy ('realignment'). This wasn't backroom stuff, it's well-documented in lots of history books using contemporaneous resources.

Wikipedia is as good a place as any to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

There's a great quote by Lee Atwater about The Southern Strategy and how they knowingly use dog-whistle politics when their policy and rhetoric starts getting dated/transparent.

http://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infa...

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