House Democrats on Tuesday killed a Republican resolution that would have effectively banned the Democratic Party or any political organization with a past history of supporting slavery and the Confederacy.
The House voted 223 to 176 to table the resolution sponsored by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), who introduced it in July as a counter to the overwhelming bipartisan House vote to remove statues of Confederate leaders from the U.S. Capitol.
Gohmert reintroduced the privileged resolution last week, forcing a swift procedural vote in the House that mostly fell along party lines.
The resolution also would have directed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to remove any item that names, symbolizes, or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy, from any area within the House.
House votes to remove Confederate statues from Capitol and replace bust of chief justice who wrote Dred Scott decision
Gohmert introduced the resolution in July shortly after the House voted to remove the statues of Confederate leaders and replace a bust of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. chief justice who wrote the Supreme Court decision that said people of African descent are not U.S. citizens.
The vote was 305 to 113 for the bill to replace the bust of Taney, which sits outside the old Supreme Court chamber on the first floor of the Capitol, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black member of the Supreme Court. That vote came amid a broader push by Democrats to remove statues, portraits and other art in the Capitol honoring Confederate leaders and other controversial figures, at a time of national reckoning over systemic racism after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Gohmerts resolution cited Democratic Party platforms in the 1800s and the filibuster by some in the party against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law.
A great portion of the history of the Democratic Party is filled with racism and hatred, Gohmert said in July. Since people are demanding we rid ourselves of the entities, symbols, and reminders of the repugnant aspects of our past, then the time has come for Democrats to acknowledge their partys loathsome and bigoted past, and consider changing their party name to something that isnt so blatantly and offensively tied to slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, and the Ku Klux Klan.