1879 Shutdown with KKK similar to recent Govt shutdown Compare

iHstorical comparisons are a tricky business, and wrong examples teach dangerous lessons. Take loose comparisons between this government shutdown and the previous 17. Nate Silver and others suggest that this shutdown will not harm the Republican Party because the last one cost them only two house seats. More controversially, the sheer number of previous shutdowns legitimates this one as a political tactic. If there were 17 recently, what makes one more so awful?
This shutdown has no precedent in living memory. Our recent ones concerned budget disputes, new legislation, or substantive restrictions on the allocation of money. Now, Republicans seek to repeal a statute, a statute that has been exhaustively legitimated through all political channels, including a Supreme Court ruling, two presidential campaigns, and 41 failed repeal attempts by House Republicans. To understand our current crisis, we must travel back more than a century. In 1879, the Democrats threatened to defund the federal government unless Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes repealed laws protecting the right of freed slaves to vote against the use of terror and violence by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The Democrats' threats backfired, and Republicans swept to victory in election of 1880. The parallel should serve as a warning to today's conservative obstructionists that their tactics are self-defeating and illegitimate.

Like health care today, in 1879 the issue at stake was subject to ferocious public contestation. The Enforcement Acts had put teeth in the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote would not be denied on the basis of race.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/today-s-budget-brinksmanship-takes-cues-from-1879-s-ku-klux-klan