What exactly are Republicans doing to attract racist voters? Both parties to my knowledge are pretty clear on their stances against racism. Your maps don't prove your point that Republicans keep good company with racist groups. I do find the shift fascinating though. I think you have to better than that to prove your point. Which policies by the republicans are racist? What language have they used? Again, Trump is an idiot so if you quote anything he has said I discount it as rubbish. Sure some have spoken out against LGBT issues but I think that's a whole separate issue with some in the Republican party. I think both parties need to be more responsive to racist issues. I think the Republicans could be a little more sensitive and the Dems need to stop labeling some of the policies the republicans have as racist when clearly they are not.

Sorry to take this thread so far off topic...

I'll reply in kind. I think that if Kap were a Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers caliber quarterback he would still have a job. But he is mediocre at best and no one is willing to put up with a mediocre quarterback that comes with a lot of baggage - even if he is better than all the other mediocre quarterbacks in the league right now.

1. owners are afraid of a major fan backlash if he played for them.
2. specific owners were specifically insulted by the manner and form of his protest.
3. in particular cases, he wasn't a good or necessary addition (i.e., for some teams it was about on-the-field performance.)

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Thanks. On the move right now. Respond soon

do mean what did they do now? or what (for example) caused strom thurmond to change his affiliation from the democratic party to the republican party in 1964? a pretty cursory read of the civil rights legislation of the early/mid 60s, and who was in favor of it, who was against it, and how that reformed the political landscape of the south explains it. goldwater's campaign in 64 was a particular case in point, but nixon did his part as well.

like thurmond, jesse helms was a democrat who turned republican in the 1960s. he's precisely the racist that the democrats welcomed, as old hickory said. he's precisely the racist the republicans welcomed as soon as the democrats broke trust with him through the civil rights legislation of the 60s.

it wasn't an overt appeal to racism as the party moved from the 60s into the 70s, 80s and 90s, rather coding their messages by using terms like welfare queen, forced busing, law and order, food stamps, forced integration.

there's a reason the republican natl committee chairman ken mehlmann apologized, in the mid 2000s, to the NAACP for the part his party played in this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Well now I know why earlier you used "student of history". LOL! I did not know any of that history.

I'm not so sure those terms you are saying are racist or are endeared to today's Republican party though. Food Stamps.. isn't that what they were called? Wouldn't Republicans want people off Food Stamps? Forced integration, mmm ok sure back in the 60's. Are there any politicians in office in the modern era that is against integration let alone forced? I guess you could say the modern day argument would be the transgender debate. Law and order? Who doesn't want that? How is that racist? Welfare queen... that term doesn't even remotely register as racist for me. When I think of welfare queen I think more poor white trash women living in a trailer park. Its more a stereotypical term for a white women on welfare than a racist one. Forced busing? Is anyone forced to take the bus this day and age? Unless you consider not being able to afford a car and thus forced to take the bus.. again not racist. Plus welfare queen would typically be on food stamps. Isn't welfare typically a program Democrats support?

Sure those things probably had a lot to do with racism back in the day but I really don't think so now. So if the racists still follow the Pubs today from way back when then I guess I have to just shrug my shoulders at that one. What can and should they be doing about it? The racists have to vote for someone. ;o)

thanks for your well laid out list. I concur with some/most of it. I would move the order around a bit as follows:

1) in most cases he wasn't a good or necessary addition because of his talent or lack thereof. For some he still is not; for those with injuries he should be added to the consider list since the beginning of the year.
2) coaches have expressed to owners a lack of desire to have him as part of their group
3) owners have decided his existence on their team has the potential to diminish their overall product and team value both in terms of perception of their fan base (and that of the NFL) and in terms of being a team distraction far more than they have decided his presence will add value to the team or the fan experience. They have made a business/value decision relative to potentially the "next best thing",

1a) and I appreciate this is purely speculative on my part but goes in hand with 1 and 2. I honestly don't believe Kap wants to play in the NFL anymore. I have no basis for that belief, except possibly to listen to Jim Brown's take on things and conclude that Kap was already not 100% all in when he began to take his positons last year.

thanks for the valuable interactive.

What do you think would have happened if the NFL owners had a policy in place for years that fired anyone paid by the NFL that failed to stand for the anthem? If the day Kap started his protest the league stated that it felt it's unpatriotic not to stand and would fired players that sat. Would things be better or worse today? BTW Obama was the Prez when Kap began his protest. People with short memories forget that salient point.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

while you are checking that history look up George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Al Gore Sr., J. Robert Fullbright, Robert Byrd and any number of other Dems who didn't switch parties but continued on in the Dem party after vehemently trying to stop the Civil Rights laws from occurring (and continued to be welcomed and lauded and given positions of power and prestige within the Dem party) and you might conclude, as I said before, that this issue isn't exclusive to one party.

Google Southern manifesto. Read it. And then consider that after signing on to it, some people could just "have a change of heart/mind" and then be absolved of it.

Then after you consider code words consider things like forced busing and welfare without the need to work (or which incentizes fathers to not be part of the family) and other real things that have happened and have affected the minority community as badly as any code word has in the last 50 years.

You might conclude that we still have many issues that need to be dealt with in this country but anyone who tries to pin the problems on one particular party (or tries to insinuate that only one party has a wing of bigots) really isn't that interested in fixing the problem.

Why did Kap turn down the player option to play in 2017? I still say he did it because he's trying to make a point. He had a contract; he could be on the team getting paid millions. To restructure the contract that gave him the player option, he gave up millions in guaranteed injury money. Why would he do that?

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I miss YaHey

see 1a) in my post above for my reasoning

And so what if it was #1? They exist because of those fans and for those fans.

EXACTLY

i think time will tell whether he really wants to play, but one way to know is if somebody gives him a contract that is at least middlin'. i think he's every bit the equal, today, in player quality, of cam newton (who has a very similar skillset) or eli manning (who has a completely different skillset). is he going to get a contract the equal of those guys? no. but the starter/placeholder/apparently now backup QB in chicago we were talking about earlier (glennon), if he was offered his contract? yes.

why did he decline his contract with SF? because a lot of people think he's a lot better than many people here think he is; and because, well, would you like to play QB in SF? it's pretty clear what SF's team was going to be like this year and for several years to come. so, depending on the coach and system (harbaugh's not there, kelly's not there), depending on the commitment to get talent, maybe that factored into kap's decision. but i have no idea, and i also have no idea whether his move was a wise one.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I agree with paragraph 1. I wont draw conclusions one way or another if he isn't made an offer. Mostly, because he was made an offer and turned it down. If he really wanted to play (and my speculation is he doesn't) and wanted to prove his worth he would have played.

your reasoning in paragraph 2 is weak at best. Those are not reasons why guys who want to play turn down contracts. This league is littered with poor teams that people accept contracts and play for. Including some of the ones you are advocating should be making him an offer now. And if a lot of people besides just here think he's a lot better than the contract he was offered, then he'd be getting a contract. And a lot of other people here would be chiming in on your side of this instead of the overwhelming position being opposite of yours (or silence).

the change in the democratic party didn't happen overnight, but it did happen pretty quickly, over a span of 10 or 15 years. it did happen overnight for helms and thurmond. in my opinion the republican situation almost exactly analogous today to the democrats in 68, where you had the wallace democrat and the humphrey democrat. the soul of the democratic party was at stake. the good angels won.

yes, robert byrd was a racist democrat who remained in the democratic party. remember, while byrd voted against the civil rights act in 64 he publicly renounced his segregationist views less than a decade later. about racism, if you were a democrat, you either had to have a change of heart or a change of party.

in bringing up the southern manifesto, are you trying to demonstrate that the democrats were racists? because, if so, yes! exactly! this is what old hickory points out fairly often, and he's quite right. what old hickory fails to add is that "dixiecrats" were "betrayed" by the kennedys and by LBJ in the 60s, when they championed and pass civil rights legislation and the voting rights act. the southern manifesto was signed in the mid-50s, when the republican party really was the party of lincoln and the democrats were the champions of segregation and jim crow laws. but the republicans sold out in order to get all the segregationist sympathizers to come over to their side.

that's why i cringe every time a republican congressman says he's a member of the "party of lincoln." the republicans traded that in to be the party of the dixiecrats rebadged.

it was only a matter of time before the republicans had their same come to jesus moment the democrats had in the 1960s. i thought it would come a lot sooner. i was wrong. but it's here now.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

i just don't know why he turned down his extension. it may have been a huge miscalculation on his part. i don't know. i'm not claiming any wisdom. i'm just offering the best speculation i have. the only thing i really don't think is that he turned it down because he doesn't want to play. if he didn't want to play all he had to do was retire.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Fair enough my position is speculation to begin with

Simply retiring wouldn’t give him this attention (for good or bad)

my intent was to give Orphius some other pieces of history so he could look at more than what you provided. Please don't mistake my willingness to engage you on Kap with a willingness to engage you here. I've seen what that has gotten me and others in the last 12 months. It's a pity because it used to be a real sharing of different viewpoints.

Good luck with your position. I wish you well.

pardon me for responding to your post. my mistake.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Why is any of this an issue?

Those are 3 very legitimate reasons for not signing Kaep. He is not going to be happy you helped kill his grievance against the NFL and all team owners. But, I congratulate you for correctly identifying the basis for the defense and that summarily eviscerate Kaep's grievance.

Maybe you should commence a second career as an evil, dark-hearted management-side labor lawyer ...

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

it's not, necessarily. folks here very strenuously tried to make the point it was only based on his athletic performance he didn't have a job. i think that's now pretty well been debunked. that was the point of the thread. a mid-season reality check.

these other issues are valid. as a business owner i wouldn't want to be told who to hire, beyond the requirement to not discriminate against protected classes. however - and i know you and i don't agree on this - i see the choice to take a knee during the anthem for heart-in-the-right-place reasons as much less difficult to accept than much of the stuff that players don't face hardly any retribution over at all. so, to me, if you're going to take away a player's career over this, as an owner i think it is incumbent on you to debate the relative merits of kap's "sin" versus players who do much worse with no real ill effect on their careers.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Name another player in the League, who is average, at best, who has committed a "sin" and stayed in the League.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

this.

He is not getting a starters salary with all of his baggage, however he would definitely be in the league right now if he would take a reasonable deal. Whether you agree with it or not, baggage comes with a price. He took his stand and put principle over money, well now it's time to pay the piper.