Understandably, many Republicans shook their heads when news broke Monday on the NAACP’s announcement of a “travel advisory” for Florida, especially upon learning that the wildly partisan advisory revolved around bogus allegations that the state’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, was “openly hostile” to the black community and allegedly doesn’t want black children to learn black history (a claim that is also untrue).

Among those on the right rolling their eyes over the NAACP’s actions was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who took to the Twitter machine to express his outrage over how far the organization has fallen over the years.

“This is bizarre. And utterly dishonest,” Cruz wrote. “In the 1950s & 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinary good helping lead the civil rights movement. Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way.”

That’s when some on the Very Online Left lost their minds, including AOC (whose tweet we’ll get to in a minute) and some so-called “historians” like Kevin Kruse, who posted that “In 1965, Dr. King called for a national boycott of the state of Alabama, saying that Democratic Gov. George Wallace’s policies constituted ‘a reign of terror’ against Black Americans.”

Cruz did not back down, pointing out that Wallace, a Democrat was “an incorrigible racist” and that “Dr. King’s standing up to his bigotry was heroic & helped change America.”

“Florida today, by contrast, is an oasis of freedom, which is why vast numbers of African-Americans are moving there,” Cruz went on to note.

Democrat “political scientist” Norman Ornstein also chimed in, declaring that Cruz would have been “first in line” to filibuster the Civil Rights Act”:

Guess who would’ve been first in line to filibuster against the voting rights act, and the civil rights act. Yes, Ted Cruz! https://t.co/ZljiJED3P8

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) May 22, 2023

“Nonsense. That shameful filibuster was led by Democrats—your party,” Cruz told him in response. “My party—the Republicans—proudly voted for the Civil Rights Act in much higher percentages than the racist Dems.”

This is when AOC decided to join in on the action, thinking she had a “gotcha” with her message to Cruz:

Why don’t you go ahead and tell people what happened to the parties after that, Ted https://t.co/fiJgIgVZHO

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 23, 2023

Cruz responded accordingly with a series of tweets where he educated her and his other critics on how Democrats have been racist towards the black community pretty much for the entirety of their existence:

First, the Dem party founded the KKK.

– Then the Dem party wrote Jim Crow laws.

– Then the Dem party filibustered the Civil Rights Act.

Today, the Dem part[y] filibusters school choice—trapping millions of Black kids in failing schools.

– Today, the Dem party pushes abolishing the police, which results in many more Black lives murdered.

– Today, every Dem senator voted against my bill to stop DC from throwing 40% of Black kids out of schools bc of vax mandate.

The Republican Party was founded to oppose slavery.

– Our first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln, who won the Civil War and ended slavery.

– It was Republicans who voted for the civil Rights Act in a much higher percentage than racist Dems.

– Today, we produced the lowest African-American unemployment EVER, under the Trump economic boom.

– Today, we produced the lowest African-American poverty levels EVER, under the Trump economic boom.

– Today, (in 2017) I passed the largest expansion of federal school choice EVER (making 529 plans cover K-12), over the objection of ever single Senate Dem.

– Also, just two years ago, the Dem governor of Virginia had put the photo of A MAN DRESSED AS A KKK KLANSMAN on his personal yearbook page.

– And today, the sitting Dem President—Joe Biden—gave in 2011 a flowery eulogy for an “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK.

– And to add to all that, the Dem party aggressively supports open borders—which has led to the deaths and brutal assaults of thousands of Hispanics, and
@aoc somehow can’t seem to find her White pantsuit to cry over their suffering.

Something else to keep in mind, too, is that contra to popular myth (driven by AOC, “historians,” and our Democrat-apologist media) about the supposed “party switches” after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in reality, the southern Democrat shift to the Republican party didn’t happen until the late 1980s, early 1990s and beyond — and had more to do with economic opportunity, national security concerns, and the Democratic party’s race to the far left than “racism”:

If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats’ 1964 about-face on the issue. Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties. Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats. It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. They say things move slower in the South — but not that slow.

The same holds true of state legislatures in the south, many of which remained firmly in Democratic control and with Democratic governors at the helm until the mid-1990s/early 2000s.

Lastly, an important note from my RS colleague Brandon Morse related to Cruz’s point about how Democrats treated the black community post-1964 Civil Rights Act:

I can help! Democrats doubled down by embracing the “soft bigotry of low expectations” angle, becoming a party bent on telling a myriad of groups that they’re weak and incapable without the party’s help in an attempt to keep them under their thumb. Y’all are heinous.

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) May 23, 2023

‘Nuff said.

Related: Ted Cruz Spills the Tea on Backroom Democrat Campaign to Replace Dianne Feinstein