Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [88]
It was Republicans who overwhelmingly introduced, promoted, and passed every civil rights act from the end of the Civil War right up to and including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. President Eisenhower pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, written by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, guaranteeing black voting rights, to be enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice.
During the endless deliberation on Eisenhower’s civil rights bill, Senator Lyndon Johnson warned his fellow segregationist Democrats, “Be ready to take up the goddamned nigra bill again.” Senator Sam Ervin, another liberal luminary—instrumental in the destruction of anti-communist Republicans Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon—told his fellow segregationists, “I’m on your side, not theirs,” and advised them to face up to the fact that “we’ve got to give the goddamned niggers something.”14
As president of the Senate, Vice President Richard Nixon “came down strongly on the side of civil rights,” as even Robert Caro admits, by issuing an advisory opinion that the filibuster could be stopped with a simple majority vote changing Senate rules.15 Meanwhile, Democrat Lyndon Johnson gutted the enforcement provisions of the 1957 bill to nothing: Anyone accused of violating a person’s voting rights was guaranteed a jury trial—and, consequently, jury nullification by Democratic juries.
Republican senator Charles Potter stood on crutches in the well of the Senate, having lost both legs in World War II, to denounce LBJ’s killer amendments, saying, “I fought beside Negroes in the war. I saw them die for us. For the Senate of the United States to repay these valiant men … by a watered-down version of this legislation would make a mockery of the democratic concept we hold so dear.”16 Even in its watered-down form—thanks, Democrats!—all eighteen “nay” votes came from the Democrats.
The following year, President Eisenhower introduced a bill to create the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and to fix the enforcement provisions of the 1957 civil rights bill that had been gutted by the Democrats. In response, Democrats staged the longest filibuster in history—more than 125 hours. But in the end, the bill passed and was signed into law by Eisenhower on May 6, 1960.
The Senate vote on the 1960 Civil Rights Act was 71–18. Once again, every single vote against a civil rights bill came from a Democrat, including legendary liberal, hero of Watergate, Sam Ervin.17 Representative George McGovern voted “present.” He would also be the Democrats’ candidate for president in 1972.18 The vote of the Tennessee delegation in the House was typical: The two Republicans from Tennessee voted for the 1960 civil rights bill, the six Democrats from the state voted against.19
Until 1964, every civil rights act had presented no possible constitutional problems—those federal laws were fully within Congress’s enumerated powers to enact because they were directed at government officials (Democrats) who were violating the Constitution by denying black citizens the right to vote.
Federal laws aimed at discrimination by government actors are expressly within Congress’s authority under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Democrats opposed these civil rights laws not because of any questions about Congress’s authority to enact them—they couldn’t care less about the Constitution—but because they wanted to keep discriminating.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was again supported overwhelmingly by Republicans and less so by Democrats. As with the 1957 and 1960 civil rights acts, it was Republicans who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act by huge majorities, with a distinctly smaller majority of Democrats supporting it. In the Senate, for example, 82 percent of Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared with only 66 percent of Democrats. In the House, 80 percent of Republicans supported the ’64 bill, compared with only 63 percent of Democrats.
The only reason Democratic majorities were beginning to support civil rights for blacks was that by 1964—thanks to Republican voting rights acts—more blacks were voting.