More conservative bullshit debunked:
The Senate and Civil Rights: Cloture and Final Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
To pass a civil rights bill in 1964, the Senate proponents of that bill developed a
. First, Majority Leader
maneuvered the bill away from the Judiciary Committee and made it the Senate’s pending business. Second, a bipartisan legislative team of senators and staff, led by Majority Whip
and Minority Whip
, developed a plan
. Finally, they enlisted the aid of Minority Leader
. Only Dirksen could provide the Republican votes needed to
and bring about passage of the bill. “The bill can’t pass unless you get Ev Dirksen,” President Lyndon Johnson told Hubert Humphrey. “You get in there to see Dirksen. You drink with Dirksen! You talk with Dirksen. You listen to Dirksen.”
In an era when there were many factional divisions within both political parties, the biggest headaches for Democratic leader Mike Mansfield often came not from Republicans but from the conservative bloc of his own party caucus. The filibuster that threatened to derail the civil rights bill in 1964 was not led by the opposition party, but by an opposing faction within the majority party. To invoke cloture on the civil rights bill, Democratic proponents of the bill needed strong Republican support. If the bipartisan team could gain the support of Dirksen, a small-government conservative from Illinois, they might win over other conservatives.
. read on......
Democrats introduced, led passage of the Civil right Act
Shortly after President John F. Kennedy publicly called for a robust Civil Rights Act, Emmanuel Celler, a New York Democrat, introduced the House version of the bill on June 19, 1963, according to an article in the
.
Following Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson strongly pushed for the measure and
a joint session in Congress days later, urging members to pass the bill.
The House passed the measure in February 1964. Once it hit the Senate, it was met with opposition from a group of southern Democratic senators.
The group, known as "the Southern bloc" of the party, represented former Confederate states and was predominantly led by West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.
At the time, a two-thirds vote, or 67 senators, were required to invoke cloture and end the debate. That happened on June 10, when a coalition of 27 Republicans and 44 Democrats ended the filibuster with
.
On June 12, 1964, 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans
for the legislation, and 21 Democrats and 6 Republicans voted against. It was signed into law July 2, 1964.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President
, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor,
. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the
.
Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn't have passed without the support of Majority Leader
of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip
, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.
Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?
You don't need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not.
You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren't from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference between parties.
But what happens when we control for both party affiliation and region? As Sean Trende
, "sometimes relationships become apparent only after you control for other factors".