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(Note: Some of this is adapted from several posts I made here: http://www.rantrave.com/Rant/The-Democrat-Partys-Long-and-Shameful-H.aspx)
Democrats have always been liberal on social and economic issues. Republicans have always been conservative on both. Democrats have always insulted Republicans by calling them fundamentalist nutjobs and the party of, by, and for the rich. Republicans have always insulted Democrats by calling them communists, socialists, and the Nanny State party.
Right?
WRONG.
Once upon a time, there were 67 Democratic Senators, and a comparatively paltry 33 Republican ones. The House was similarly lopsided, with 248 Democrats (59%) and only 172 Republicans (41%). The President of the United States of America was a Democrat. Clearly, the Democrats had a lock on legislation and the national agenda. Anything they wanted to get done would get done, or so it would appear. But things were more complicated than that.
The year was 1964. The country was still in shock over the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Schools had just been desegregated. George Wallace -- the Democratic governor of Alabama -- had only recently made his famous "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" to stop black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was working its slow, arduous way through both Houses of Congress, blocked at every turn by Democrats such as Robert Byrd, while Republicans argued eloquently for its passage.
If it sounds like I'm trying to say Democrats were conservative racists, it's because I am. It's a thesis shared by the rant I've referenced at the top. It is also a woefully inaccurate thesis, one that intentionally obfuscates the political realities of the day, most especially this fact: In 1964, neither party marched in lock-step, because regional differences meant a Republican and a Democrat in New York had far more in common than a Republican in New York and a Republican in Georgia.
In 1964, Southern states were absolutely dominated by the Democrats. But these weren't just any Democrats. In fact, these were not true members of the "Democratic party" at all; rather, they were members of a faction called the "States Rights Democratic party," known colloquially as "Dixiecrats." This was a socially conservative, pro-segregation faction that bore little resemblance to the other Democrats in the North. And they were a solid voting bloc. Republicans couldn't win in the South unless they were even more conservative; in 1964, only one Southern state sent a Republican Senator to Washington: John Tower of Texas, who was raised a Dixiecrat, but decided the national Democratic party was becoming too liberal and had re-registered as a Republican.
There are no absolutes in politics, of course. Not every Southern Democrat was against the Civil Rights Act, and not every Northern Democrat was for it; again, Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, actually tried to filibuster it. The same goes for Republicans. But it was close. Let's look at the actual vote numbers by party, and then by region.
The original House version of the bill passed 290-130 (69%-31%). The voting broke down like this, per party:
* Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
* Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
As you can see below, most of the Republicans in the House at the time were from the North, a state of affairs it's hard to imagine happening today. Here is how the Democrats and Republicans in the House voted, now broken down by region:
* Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
* Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
* Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
* Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
So there were solid North/South voting blocs, not Democratic/Republican voting blocs. In the North, Democrats voted almost entirely for the Civil Rights Act, with a paltry 9 siding with the Dixiecrats. The Republicans had a similar -- albeit not quite as wide -- spread in favor of Civil Rights.
In the South, as you can see, there was a grand total of 10 House Republicans. But again, they managed to get elected by being even more socially conservative than the Dixiecrats. *All* of them voted against the Civil Rights Act. You can't even say that of the Southern Democrats, 7 of whom managed to find the moral fortitude to vote for it.
When the Senate passed its version, the House voted for it with only slight variance on the numbers above, so I won't delve into that vote here. Instead, let's look at *how* the Senate managed to pass it. Again, here is how the vote broke down by party:
* Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%)
* Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
And per region. First, the South:
* Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%)
* Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (Our friend Jim Tower).
By now, it should be clear that the Dixiecrats were their own party. They had little-to-nothing in common with their Northern counterparts, aside from the name. The North voted like this:
* Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (Our friend Robert Byrd)
* Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%)
The Northern Democrats were just as solid a voting bloc for Civil Rights as the Southern Democrats were against. But look at the Republican numbers again... In both the House and the Senate, Northern Republicans voted for Civil Rights, but not in quite so high a proportion as Northern Democrats. The few Republicans in the South were strongly against the bill, and the Republican party in the North was not as solidly for it as the Northern Democrats.
The Dixiecrats could easily read the writing on the wall. Their coalition with Northern Democrats couldn't last. The national Republican party, while not exactly hospitable, seemed somewhat friendlier, with its smaller majorities for Civil Rights.
Because of the North's liberal tendencies, the Democratic "Solid South" had already begun to show cracks. After Civil Rights, the conversion of the South from conservative Democratic stronghold to conservative Republican stronghold began in ernest. No longer at home in the Democratic party, the Dixiecrats started jumping ship.
Strom Thurmond switched his party affiliation from States Rights Democratic to Republican almost immediately after the bill passed. (He remained there, never renouncing his segregationist views, until his death in 2003). Over the next ten years, an exodus followed. Republicans started regularly winning elections in the South, and people like Trent Lott -- who had been an assistant to a Democratic Congressman -- began registering as Republicans.
Most readers are probably not aware that even Jesse Helmes, practically a figurehead of the modern Republican party, only became a Republican after the Civil Rights Act passed. In 1963, this Dixiecrat wrote of the civil rights movement, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." Five years later, he was a Republican.
Welcome to the modern Dixiecrat party.
In closing, I should point out that not every racist left the Democratic party. Like I said, there are no absolutes in politics. Robert Byrd, a man who had once been a leader in the KKK, the Senator who tried to filibuster the Act, the only Northern Democrat in the Senate to vote against it, remained a Democrat. He renounced his racism and even earns high ratings from the NAACP today. He has spent the remainder of his life trying to make up for his past.