The Confederate Flag is distinctly different than being a KKK member. There are many characters who regularly fly the Confederate Flag that have nothing to do with the KKK. You should not confuse the two. Doing so is a sign of ignorance.
There are no known Republican KKK members. Find me an example of one Republican that is a member of a traditional KKK lodge.
OK... explain why are KKK members still running for office as Democrats in 2010, 2012, and 2014? - one example. I have explained in detail before the split between mainstream Democrats and rural Democrats in North Carolina in recent years. A split that caused the state Democratic party to go bankrupt in North Carolina and sell their headquarters. The turmoil also caused the 2014 Senate Campaign to be funded and ran by the Wake County Democrats rather than the state party.
The KKK was started by confedracy loyalist butt hurt they lost the war. Even confedracy supporters who are not official kkk memebers are still supporters of a group who fought a war to keep black people as slaves.
So this goes back to Lincoln being a Republican and anti-right wing. No self respecting southern racist identified as a Republican for 100 years after Lincoln. They simply hated him and everything associated with him this included liberalism. The south has always been majority conservative. In Lincoln’s time the conservatives organized themselves as no nothings, formed from the Whig party - both right wing political ideologies. The democrats were complicated in the time between Lincoln and the civil rights acts. But what bound them was mainly they were the party of the working people, whereas the republicans were more of an intellectual and elite party, more for big business. The civil rights act realigned the parties and muddled the worker v owner fight and it became more of a status quo v progressive fight. Even though you can still see vestiges of workers in democrat politics and businesses in republican politics. I would love to get into the importance of Reagan but it would cause digression. The point is this country has been divided between industry in the north and rural in the south, liberal v conservative since it’s inception. No political party of prominence has ever been founded on conservative principles in America. At its base, this country is liberal. Conservatives move in and out of parties with phony populism and, yes, racial issues. So saying the kkk is a democrat organization is not accurate. It’s actually an anti-Lincoln, ant-liberalism organization based on hatred of equality.
Amazing equivocation and cheesy moral relativism right there. Factually speaking, the KKK was founded by Democrats in the Reconstruction South to oppose the freedoms introduced by the "radical republicans" after the war. The KKK has remained a Democrat organization for over 100 years and is clearly associated with Democrats today. Show me one republican member of congress with KKK ties. There are none. Many Democrat congress members have been closely affiliated with the KKK and are so today. The Democrat Party owns the KKK and is full of racists to this very day.