Republicans On The Record (Newsmax)

Republicans on the Record

What does the record say about Republicans and the battle for civil rights and specifically for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352)?
Since Abraham Lincoln, Republicans have been there for blacks when it counted. Nevertheless, Democrats invariably take all the credit for the success of the civil rights movement and invariably fail to give any credit to Republicans.
In fact, the civil rights movement was not about politics. Nor was it about which politicians did what and which political party should take the most credit. When it came to civil rights, America's politicians merely saw the handwriting on the wall and wrote the legislation to make into federal law the historical changes that had already taken place. There was nothing else they could do.
The movement of blacks to the North, as well as their contributions as fighting men in the world wars, plus the hard work of millions of blacks and their families and churches, along with the efforts of many private groups and individuals made the civil rights movement succeed.
Civil rights for blacks found its historical moment after 1945. Bills introduced in Congress regarding employment policy brought the issue of civil rights to the attention of representatives and senators.
In 1945, 1947 and 1949, the House of Representatives voted to abolish the poll tax restricting the right to vote. Although the Senate did not join in this effort, the bills signaled a growing interest in protecting civil rights through federal action.
The executive branch of government, by presidential order, likewise became active by ending discrimination in the nation's military forces and in federal employment and work done under government contract.
Harry Truman ordered the integration of the military. However, his Republican opponent in the election of 1948, Tom Dewey, was just as strong a proponent for that effort as any Democrat.
As a matter of fact, the record shows that since 1933 Republicans had a more positive record on civil rights than the Democrats.
In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.
[See http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html and http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/3/82.03.04.x.html.]
It was appalling the other day to watch former Democratic Senator Bob Kerry totally gloss over Republican efforts in the name of civil rights. He implied that Lott's foot-in-mouth statement was representative of Republican views about civil rights since forever.
Kerry knows better. Yet being a loyal and predictable Democrat, Kerry can create the big lie with the best of them. The media are so in sync with that effort that they don't challenge him.
Kerry also maintained that all the Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.
Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.
I know. I was there.
When I moved to Georgia in 1970, the Democratic Party had a total lock on Georgia. Newt Gingrich was one of the first "outsiders" to break that lock. He did so in a West Georgia area into which many Northerners were moving. He gained the support of rural West Georgians over issues that had absolutely nothing to do with race.
In fact, very few party switches came about right after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Some exceptions who did switch were Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
Democrats like Bob Kerry will lie about Republicans but won't tell you some facts about the heroes and icons of their own party. One of their major icons was not always Sir Galahad jousting in the name of civil rights. His name was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
JFK – The Reluctant Civil Rights President
JFK evolved into a true believer in the civil rights movement when it became such an overwhelming historical and moral imperative that he had no choice. As a matter of record, when Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts, he had an opportunity to vote on the 1957 Civil Rights Act pushed by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Instead, he voted to send it to the conservative Senate Judiciary Committee, where it would have been pigeonholed.
His lukewarm support for theAct included his vote to allow juries to hear contempt cases. Dixiecrats preferred the jury system to trials presided over and decided by judges because all-white juries rarely convicted white civil rights violators.
His record in the 1950s did not mark Kennedy as a civil rights activist. Yet the 1957Act to benefit African-Americans was passed with the help of Republicans. It was a watered- down version of the later 1964 bill, which Kennedy backed.
The record on JFK shows he was a man of his times and a true politician, more given to equivocation and pragmatism than to activism. Kennedy outlined civil rights legislation only after most of the country was behind it and ready for him to act.
For the most part, in the 1960 presidential campaign he avoided the civil rights issue altogether. He did endorse some kind of federal action, but he could not afford to antagonize Southern Democrats, whose support he desperately needed to defeat Richard Nixon. Basically, he could not jeopardize the political support of the Dixiecrats and many politicians in the rest of the country who were concerned about the radical change that was in the offing.
After he was elected president, Kennedy failed to suggest any new civil rights proposals in 1961 or 1962. That failure was for pragmatic political reasons and so that he could get the rest of his agenda passed.
Introducing specific civil rights legislation in the Senate would have meant a filibuster and the obstruction of other business he felt was just as crucial as civil rights legislation. A filibuster would have happened for sure and it would have taken 67 members to support cloture to end such a filibuster. Sixty-seven votes Kennedy believed he did not have.
As it was, Kennedy had other fish to fry, including the growing threat of Russian imperialism, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs as Cuba went down the communist rat hole, his increase in the numbers of troops and advisers he was sending to Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In addition, the steel business was in crisis and he needed a major tax rate cut to stimulate a sluggish economy. Kennedy understood his options and he chose to be realistic.
When Kennedy did act in June 1963 to propose a civil rights bill, it was because the climate of opinion and the political situation forced him to act.
The climate of opinion had changed dramatically between World War II and 1964. Various efforts by groups of Protestant and Catholic clergy, along with the Urban League, NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality, black activists, individuals both white and black and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other subsets of his movement, are what forced civil rights to be crafted into federal law.
The National Opinion Research Center discovered that by 1963 the number of Americans who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30 percent in 20 years, to 72 percent. Americans supporting school integration had risen even more impressively, to 75 percent.
The efforts of politicians were needed to write all the changes and efforts into law. Politicians did not lead charge on civil rights – again, they just took credit, especially the Democrats.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act
When all the historical forces had come together, Kennedy decided to act. John Kennedy began the process of gaining support for the legislation in a nationally televised address on June 11, 1963.
Gathering business and religious leaders and telling the more violent activists in the black leadership to tone down the confrontational aspects of the movement, Kennedy outlined the Civil Rights Act. In it, the Justice Department was given the responsibility of addressing the worst problems of racial discrimination.
Because of the problem with a possible Senate filibuster, which would be imposed by Southern Democrats, the diverse aspects of theAct were first dealt with in the House of Representatives. The roadblock would be that Southern senators chaired both the Judiciary and the Commerce committees.
Kennedy and LBJ understood that a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats was the key to the bill's final success.
Remember that the Republicans were the minority party at the time. Nonetheless, H.R.7152 passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964. Of the 420 members who voted, 290 supported the civil rights bill and 130 opposed it.
Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96. Republicans supported it in higher proportions than Democrats. Even though those Democrats were Southern segregationists, without Republicans the bill would have failed. Republicans were the other much-needed leg of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.