Rep. Tom McClintock, the California Republican who had to be escorted by police out of a town hall filled with anti-Donald Trump protesters last weekend , said Wednesday that Democrats are acting the same way they did in the lead up to the Civil War.
“I gave a speech on the House floor yesterday, and pointed out there are starting to be some very striking similarities between the election of 2016 and the election of 1860,” McClintock said on the Phil Cowan Show on AM1380.
“I mean, just go through the laundry list real quick,” he continued. “You had riots in the streets in those regions that were controlled by the opposition party. The opposition party refused to accept the outcome of the election or its legitimacy. We saw the doctrine of nullification that was John C. Calhoun’s notion that if a state didn’t like federal law, they were free to disobey it. Then ultimately in 1860, we saw the secession movement and the secession, that is the ultimate rejection of our Constitution, of our country, of everything it stands for. We’re seeing a secession movement now in California, which, according to the polls, is backed by a third of the population.”
McClintock said it was the same Democratic Party that seceded from the union in 1861 that was protesting today.
“The same Democratic party that is reacting in a similar manner today,” he said. “Now again, we’re not anywhere nearly as far down the road as we got, but we know where that road leads and it’s not a good place. Our entire system of government works as long as Americans are talking with each other and not shouting at each other, and that’s what makes these times so disturbing and potentially so dangerous. People have stopped talking with each other.”