Yes, segregationists were Democrats during the New Deal, but so what? The parent described slaveholders as "the spiritual inspiration of modern Republicans," and we both know what they meant: the "Southern Strategy" Republicans used to flip the South toward them by consciously appealing to racism.

The point is that the parent takes an extremely tenuous connection between Republicans and slaveholders, while denying the much more overt connection between Democrats and slaveholders and segregationists.

There is this notion that the parties "flipped" sometime in the mid 1960s that's simply false. Republicans were from the inception the party of religious wackadoodles and capitalists. Democrats, at least since right before the civil war, were the party opposed to big business, banks, etc. The segregationists weren't just Democrats. They were New Dealers. They were New Dealers because the south was agrarian and at odds with big business (over tariffs) and banks (over monetary policy and debt). When Wallace broke off in 1968 to run on a segregationist ticket, he touted his pro-labor background. And as a result of that coalition, the New Deal and related programs were inextricably tied up with segregation: excluding most Black people from social security, creating redlining through the FHA, etc. See: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/rothstein-segregation-color-o... ("Walker’s second point overlooks that the New Deal did not merely concede to private bigotry but pursued independent racial policies that did much to create a segregated landscape that persists today.")

The South didn't really flip until Clinton. (Reagan won it, but he won everything.) Carter decisively won a bunch of southern counties that were 95% white. And ultimately it did so not because of the "southern strategy" but because southern states industrialized, and Republican ideas of low regulation and low taxes were great for attracting jobs and industries from northern states.

Sophistry laid bare for all to see.

There are a number of highly concerning posts you've made attempting to normalize a flagrant attack on the rule of law across this thread, but this post in particular is extremely difficult to reconcile with the principle of charity.

What "charitable" reading is there of the statement that "slaveholders are the spiritual inspiration for modern Republicans?" I'm simply pointing out that slaveholders and segregationists are the actual ancestors of modern Democrats. Not just because they share a name, but for concrete economic connections that endure to this day. Southern agrarian interests were opposed to the high tariffs Republicans imposed to protect northern industry (because they were exporters of unfinished commodities), and centralized banking (because they debtors). White labor unions excluded Black workers, who were competition.

Sophistry is overlooking by handwaving about the "Southern Strategy."

No. Sophistry is ignoring 50 years of post-Nixon/Goldwater era Republican political strategy.

It's tremendously difficult to believe someone could live in the states and not have any idea this was going on.

Even former RNC chair Melhman was fairly straight to the point on the issue in 2005: "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization." Nothing has changed since then.