RUSH: Let’s grab a phone call quickly. Who’s next? Sarasota, Florida, Jeff, I’m glad you waited. Thanks for your patience, and hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. I was calling in regards to Martin Luther King’s birthday, and national holiday, we’re celebrating it, and what I wanted to comment was — well, actually I had two comments, but I’m very tired of the revisionist history that they’re talking about with Martin Luther King, because most people, I would reckon 90% of anybody I’ve ever spoken with think that he was a die-hard Democrat. It’s not true. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, his father was a Republican, his grandfather was a Republican.
RUSH: I did not know any of this.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Martin Luther King was a Republican?
CALLER: Okay, he ultimately became a Democrat, well, a de facto Democrat when he was in jail and you see Kennedy had voted against the 1957 civil rights bill when he was Senator. And when Martin Luther King was in jail, Coretta made a Faustian bargain with Kennedy to get Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail by throwing her support in their direction, and Kennedy reciprocated by saying, ‘I’ll go along with the civil rights bill.’ But, yes, Martin Luther King was a Republican.
RUSH: So you’re saying he was a Republican ’til 1960, basically?
CALLER: Basically.
RUSH: Well, I do know that Richard Nixon was the first political figure to bring Martin Luther King to Washington as a political figure in the fifties.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: But I didn’t know that King was a Republican nor his ancestors. I didn’t know that, either.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Jeff, thanks much. I’m in a hurry here, but one other related story to Martin Luther King Day, this is from the San Francisco Chronicle today: ‘The Northern California Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Observance Committee… after more than two decades of planning San Francisco’s annual celebration… abruptly disbanded in December.’ This is the first time in 20 years there’s not a Martin Luther King march. The marchers are too old, they can’t do it anymore. ‘Reverend Cecil Williams and four board members cited declining participant numbers over the years and sensed it was time to pass the torch to younger activists.’ But the younger activists didn’t show up. Nobody took the torch. The Martin Luther King parade canceled in San Francisco for the first time in 24 years.