Major Social Legislation Votes by Party
From Matthias Shapiro: "One of the more entertaining themes running around the media these days is that the almost entirely Democratic passage of the health care reform bill is pretty standard issue for major social legislation. After all, the theory goes, Republicans never really supported any major social legislation and this bill was about as bi-partisan as it could get under the circumstances.
We live in a world of accessible information. Quite frankly, if you’re too lazy to go look up the damn facts your own damn self you should probably make it a practice of just keeping your mouth shut. So when I hear people saying that this kind of narrow, one-party passage of major social legislation is par for the course, I look it up for myself. Guess what I found?"
Thanks to Tom Sullivan for finding this blog.
14 Comments:
Lehrer was wrong, but Shapiro's charts are misleading.
It is true that Conservatives never really supported major social legislation which required massive income redistributions. The Civil Rights Act was not such legislation, of course.
The "great graphic and post" which looks at votes by party over the past five decades ignores the ideological shifts in those parties.
The Democratic Party of 2010 is not at all the Democratic party of 1964. The Republican Party of 2010 is not the Republican Party of 1964, either. Fifty years ago, Conservative Democrats dominated the American South. Moderate and left-leaning Republicans held many northern Congressional and Senatorial seats. Though the social votes of the 1960s appeared "bipartisan", most represented strong divisions between conservatives and liberals in both parties.
Forced busing of the early 1970's changed the political landscape. Over the next two decades, the American South became increasingly Republican. In response to busing and other liberal programs, Reagan and other party leaders helped the Republican Party become increasingly Conservative.
Today's political parties are much more united on social issues than they were in the past. I agree with Shapiro that Jim Lehrer was wrong to claim that Republicans did not support Social Security and Medicare. But Shapiro is equally wrong in comparing votes from the 1960s with votes of today.
I question the validity for what Matthias Shapiro considers sources...
The sad thing is that even if Matthias Shapiro scoured all the roll call votes and got his numbers from there he's ignoring the background byplay between members in the Senate and the House over future legislation...
So Matthias Shapiro should ask himself, "when is a vote not what it appears to be?"...
I think you're making this much more complicated than it is.
The result of the health care vote was the most lop sided vote on a major social program this side of WWII.
Not one Yay vote from the other side of the aisle. Not one.
The health care reform vote clearly demonstrates the "We won, elections have consequences, sit at the back of the bus, cram it down your throat, take no hostages, we don't negotiate" attitude of the last congress.
We all know the Republiocans are really interested in helping the poor and oppressed in this country.
The republicans are a black man's best friend, just watch FOX news and see how many blacks and minorities are part of the Fox news team.
Needs more data points over the same timeframe. If not that, a data source so that it can be done independently.
What also would be useful is if trade agreements were included as a separate category.
Fifty years ago, Conservative Democrats dominated the American South. Moderate and left-leaning Republicans held many northern Congressional and Senatorial seats.
Completely wrong. The Democrats that dominated what they called the "Solid South" were all "New Dealers" and were part of Wilson's, FDR's and Truman's coalition. Southern Democrats chaired many of the congressional committees that were key to getting FDR's "New Deal" passed. They were not conservatives, but progressives. They supported segregation, Jim Crow and the KKK. Wilson, perhaps the most "progressive" president spoke at KKK rallies and FDR came out against anti-lynching laws. The labor unions were also hot beds of Klan membership, denying membership to blacks and attacking capitalists as "race traitors". Cities like Detroit, Indianapolis and Chicago had large and active Klan chapters as a result. "Moderate" northern Democrats were only too willing to look the other way at anti-black racism and bigotry as long as it helped to secure them the political power to enact their progressive agenda.
Following their Gramscian march through our cultural and educational institutions in the 60's, the left set out to recast and rewrite their past in an effort to shift blame to their political opponents, but the facts still remain despite their crusade to bury them. Looks like they've convinced you.
"The Progressive Era And Race", David W. Southern
We all know the Republiocans are really interested in helping the poor and oppressed in this country. The republicans are a black man's best friend ...
Yeah, because nothing says "caring" like the dysfunctional schools, joblessness, high crime and illegitimacy rates that Democrat leadership, and their policies, has bestowed on the African-American community. You only have to tour Detroit, Baltimore or any other inner-city to see how generations of loyal support has paid off.
But rejoice, ese, it looks like the Democrats are getting ready to work that same miracle for your community.
> We all know the Republicans are really interested in helping the poor and oppressed in this country.
> The Republicans are a black man's best friend, just watch FOX news and see how many blacks and minorities are part of the Fox news team.
Yeah, those Dems, they're so much better -- I mean, while those nasty damned Republicans placed two different blacks, successively, into that lousy, stinking, #4 power spot, the Dem nominee, Kerry, carefully withheld placing any black person into a high-ranking staff position (at least, until someone noticed -- "Hey, how come he doesn't have any blacks on his main staff?") because, to him, race mattered so much...
Wait, what?
Oh, right, Don -- I see it now! You're a bag of bovine excreta!!
BUT WAIT, THERE's *more*!!
STICK AROUND FOR THE *big* PRIZE!
If Don would be attempting to suggest that "Fox" represents the GOP, and "the others" represent the Dems, what, then, to make of THIS?
A casual perusal of ALL the nets shows a rather conspicuously less than "10%" representation for black people across the board...
So why would that be? Must be racism!! Yeah, that's it!
Dem white bastiches jus' got it in fer da black man!
Or it could just be representative of the fact that black people have been getting taught for a generation, now, to reject white culture and aspirations, so that
a) There aren't as many college-educated blacks to fill that kind of position coming out of J-schools
b) The market demographic for news shows does not generally include blacks, because blacks just don't watch them.... partly related to the social forces mentioned in 'a'.
Don: NAWWWWW. It's RACISM, DAMMIT!
In summary, it seems Don's a frigging racist idiot, who thinks that everyone who's white (except, perhaps, him and his friends) is a racist, unlike black people, who never are.
aglittle,
No, sir. I am not "completely wrong". Although some senators in the Deep South voted with LBJ liberals on a few issues, most were definitely conservatives on both domestic and international issues.
Here, for example. are the July 28, 1965, roll call votes by Deep South senators on the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which created Medicare:
John Stennis, MS ……. N
Allen Ellender, LA …….. N
James Eastland, MS…….. N
Strom Thurmond,SC ……. N
Sam Ervin,NC……. N
A. Willis Robertson,VA….. N
Spessard Holland, FL …… N
Russell Long, LA ……. Y
Ben Jordan, NC …….. Y
Don Russell, SC ……… Y
Herman Talmadge, GA ……… Y
George Smathers, FL ……… Y
I have no idea why you provided a link to a book about 1900-1917 in response to my comment about the 1960s.
I have no idea why you provided a link to a book about 1900-1917 in response to my comment about the 1960s.
Probably because that period, 1900-1917, gave rise to the "progressive" movement which continued into the civil rights era.
Look, I can make lists, too.
October 3, 1924
Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention
August 17, 1937
Republicans organize opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman and Democrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black, appointed to U.S. Supreme Court by FDR; his Klan background was hidden until after confirmation
June 24, 1940
Republican Party platform calls for integration of the armed forces; for the balance of his terms in office, FDR refuses to order it
September 30, 1953
Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, nominated to be Chief Justice; wrote landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education
November 25, 1955
Eisenhower administration bans racial segregation of interstate bus travel
March 12, 1956
Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemn Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and pledge to continue segregation
June 5, 1956
Republican federal judge Frank Johnson rules in favor of Rosa Parks in decision striking down “blacks in the back of the bus” law
November 6, 1956
African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy vote for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President
September 9, 1957
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act
September 24, 1957
Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools
May 6, 1960
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming 125-hour, around-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats
continued below ...
continued ...
May 2, 1963
Republicans condemn Democrat sheriff of Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 African-American schoolchildren marching for their civil rights
September 29, 1963
Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defies order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate Tuskegee High School
June 9, 1964
Republicans condemn 14-hour filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who still serves in the Senate
June 10, 1964
Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticizes Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act, calls on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a staggering majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists—one of them being Al Gore Sr. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.
August 4, 1965
Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94% of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27% of Democrats oppose. Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law; higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats vote in favor
A single vote on Medicare does not prove your point. The fact is, that some of the most passionate and violent responses to civil rights era legislation and court decisions took place in the north, like the anti-busing riots in south Boston. Schools in heavily Democratic northern states like Rhode Island were legally segregated.
The common thread holding the Democrat coalition together was their committment to the progressive movement, which they saw as promoting the interests of the white working calss.
You are also wrong about the northern Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Bill being "moderates". Here are the ACU rankings for the 11 of the Republican Senators who voted "yes" and were still voting in 1971 (American Conservative Union ratings are on-line starting from 1971) Gordon Allott (82), Peter Dominick (87), Hiram Fong (67), Len Jordan (85), Jack Miller (91), Glen Beall (74), Roman Hruska (100), Carl Curtis (100), Milton Young (89, most senior Republican), Karl Mundt, and Wallace Bennett (94).
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che is dead,
My statement was that the southern states were dominated in the 1960s by Conservatives. Aglittle arrogantly stated that was completely wrong, but provided no evidence to support his assertion.
All the statements in your post about 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s events are completely irrelevant. None of the events you listed from the 1960s shows any evidence refuting my claim that the Democratic South was dominated by Conservatives in the 1960s.
What is it you are trying to argue? Are you supporting my original assertion that the Democratic South was dominated by conservatives?
Che is dead: "The majority of those southern Democrats, like their northern apologists, were progressives."
Not in the 1960s. The majority of Southern Democrats may have been progressives in earlier decades, but not in the 1960s. I showed you the Deep South senatorial votes on Medicare. You continue to offer irrelevant information about Civil Rights votes.
If you look at my original comment, you will see that I said:
"Moderate and left-leaning Republicans held many northern Congressional and Senatorial seats."
I never said that most northern Republicans were moderates. I was not wrong, but I have no more to say about it. I'm bored from discussing this issue with you. It's a little pointless.
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