Chris Matthews welcomed Vanity Fair editor and author of a recent book about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Todd Purdum, on Hardball Friday and multiple times during the discussion made references to how much he thinks the Republican Party has changed.

During the interview with Purdum, Matthews asked questions like "I wonder what happened to the Republican Party?" and "What happened to the party of Civil Rights?" and said the Republican party has become a party of "Dixiecrats."

In his "Let Me Finish" segment, Matthews revisited the topic of civil rights saying,

The Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln right into the 1960's. All but six Republican US senators... voted for the Civil Rights Act.... It was the Southern Democrats who fought civil rights... I think we should remember this for one big reason. The reason the Republican Party shifted from being a party that shared its principles on civil rights with the northern and western Democrats is that it had to pursue its distorted and it had to pursue its notorious southern strategy... and that coalition is now today the one running the Republican Party....

Matthews continued that he believes Lincoln would distance himself from today's GOP, and he made the claim it is dominated by racists from the South,

Today's Republican is party dominated by the South with little to no support from the North. Thanks to this bit of history we learned tonight, we know what came first, the southern strategy that led to a marriage of partisan purpose by the Republicans and old Jim Crow attitude. The result is a party of Abraham Lincoln that Lincoln himself wouldn't be caught dead in!