Redstate

Just an aside -- Nick, did you ever read the New Yorker article on the filibuster by Hendrick Hertzberg back in March?

You are a self admitted steam-roller builder, you should be used to this crap.

At least its factually correct.  Thats usually not the case.

Or one of the blueprints, for all that has followed on the Democrat side, right down to the paleontology references, except that Hertzberg dates the filibuster back to the Precambrian and Kennedy is talking about people as though they were from the Quaternary period.  So they jump around by a 538 million years or so, but they're making the same sorts of references.  Doesn't matter.  It sounds old on TV.

Here's Hertzberg's article

Republicans and Democrats alike have taken advantage of the Precambrian rules of their chamber to dispose of nominees who, if put to a vote in the full Senate, would have been confirmed.

Here's Kennedy on the Senate floor yesterday, according to Dana Milbank:

The real lexicographical villain, Frist aides said, was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who called Bush's judicial nominees "Neanderthals." Neanderthals, the majority reported, were "an extinct human species . . . living during the late Pleistocene Epoch."

Judge for yourself, of course, but I think most of the arguments going on now were pretty much foretold more than two months ago by Hertzberg.  Almost all the rest has been riffing on these themes, with help of course from Nan Aron.

One reason I didn't go back and try to liveblog the testimony today.

What's the viscious smear?

I don't see it?  If both paragraphs are factually correct, then there is no smear.

factually correct that is. The Civil Rights Act was filibustered by Democrats not Republicans. All of the major civil rights legislation was opposed by Democrats.

and by the way, at the time Thurmond delivered his 'grand filibuster' he was a Democrat. He switched parties a number of years later.

all Southern conservatives who are now Republicans.  

Interesingly, if you look at the Blue state/Red state map, all the Blue states were Union states during the Civil War.  And all the Red states were slave states, with one or two exceptions.....

Fritz Hollings and the great Republican Robert "Kleagle" Byrd?

No, you Republicans have locked up the solid South.  We Democrats have the Yankee New Englanders, California and Illinois.

And those Democrats who supported Civil Rights in the South are still Democrats.  Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, anyone?

First, more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats.

Second, the paragraph implies that Senator Thurmond was a Republican.  He filibustered the Civil Rights Act as a Democrat.

The two paragraphs side-by-side make it seem like Dems were heavily pro-Civil Rights and Reps were filibustering it when the opposite was true.

If Dems were winning the South, it would be "because the non-racists are fighting back agaisnt the racist Reps."  Since Reps are winning, its because "the racist Reps are voting against the tolerant Dems."

Take a moment and imagine that maybe, just maybe, the South is voting Republican for other reasons.  Maybe they are more religious, more patriotic, more optimistic, more content with life, more individualistic and more suburban than the "yankee northeasterners."  LA, NY, and Boston seem quite liberal but they have continuous racial issues up to today.

As long as Dems think they're losing because of race, they aren't going to figure out how to win over voters in the South.  Gun control and respecting faith are immeasurably more important than race to Southern whites.  Obsess over race if you'd like, but that doesn't make it reality.

but interesting, no? the way things have flip-flopped in perfrect symmetry.

Maybe it's just a coincidence...and I am not saying it is all about race.  But perhaps something about being "conservative" is a clue (as opposed to Republican or Democrat.)

I lived in Texas many years ago (that's many, many years ago to you.)  And the Democratic Primary was the most important election--because the Democratic candidate always won in the general election. There was a joke making the rounds that you had the left wingers and right wingers in the Democratic party and all the moderates were Republicans.

The South was never really "liberal" and that is why they are mainly Republicans now.    

You said that perhaps the Republicans are "more individualistic" than the Democrats.  Oh my...

Not so.  Democrats are the most unruly, diverse group around.  I think you are hoping for such individualism....but your bretrhen ARE NOT liberterians.  Don't delude yourself.  Just check out all the comments here that are critical of the Supreme Court case in Lawrence holding that it was unconstitutional for the State of Texas to put two gay men in jail for engaging in consensual, private sex.

ABC News has since altered the story on their web site. The second sentence of the first paragraph, "Democrats have opposed the filibuster before -- in the 1960s, they accused Republicans of using it to block civil rights legislation," has been removed.

I had preserved the original in a pdf here.

I would say unless the article contains further details, these two statements are not what I would call "Truths".  Tough for me to think of Strom Thurmond as a Democrat.  Jesse Helms too.  

That depends on your definition of more.

In the Senate,

For:

D:     46

R:     27

Against:

D:     21

R:      6

This fight was not between Democrats and Republicans, it was between liberals and conservatives.  Which of these do you think Thurmond was?

More Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans.

And the fight was between Southern Dems and Northern Dems.  You can act like it was a liberal/conservative debate if you'd like.  But Republican have supported equal opportunity from their founding (via opposition to slavery) to their support of Civil Rights to opposition of reverse discrimination.  I hope we continue to be the main backers of a colorblind society and someday I hope we achieve it.

"Republican dominated, uber-conservative" Supreme Court.  I think you left off the normal modifiers. :)

Name ONE other Southern Democrat turned Republican apart from Thurmond and I will name 99 Dixiecrats who remained Democrats till the day they died.

I'll name one right now: Eugene "Bull" Connor.

I dealt with your astoundingly historically ignorant and slanderous assertion here ... Enjoy.

yet was factually correct, but there is a secret message conspiracy?

The Nancy Drew mystery continues...

The filibuster has been used historically by the minority party, which can't win with a vote count. Democrats have opposed the filibuster before -- in the 1960s, they accused Republicans of using it to block civil rights legislation.

Nick is wrong ...

This paragraph is factually incorrect. Twenty Senators filibustered the Civil Rights Acts. 19 were Democrats and 1 was a Republican.

PS: Don't be like MKS and try the lame trick of posthumously changing the partisan affiliation of Ellender, Russell, Talmadge and Co. They were DEMOCRATS.

Fritz Hollings, anyone. J. William Fulbright?

Trent Lott was not in the Senate, or politics, when the Civil Rights Act was debated. He was an undergraduate.

Jesse Helms wasn't elected to any office until 1972.

First elected to the Senate in 1986. Switched to the GOP 1994/1995. It occurs to him to switch parties 30 years later?

Don't you think you're stretching rather desperately here?

What makes you think he's a racist or segregationist?

The problem with showing current politicians who were once segregationists is that most of the old segregationists are dead.

As you may know, when LBJ signed the 1965 Civil Rights Act he said he feared the Democrats had lost the South for a generation.  In 1964, Goldwater took the Deep South, and in 1968 George Wallace again took the Deep South as a third party segregationist.

Today's Democrats in the South suppported civil rights (with only an exception or two.)  The segregationists for the most part ended up in the Republican camp. Perhaps today's voting patterns have nothing to do with that.

But explain why the old Confederacy is now rock-solid Republican and the Union states that were the source of the abolitionist movement are all Blue states now.  See e.g., Massachusetts, New York, California, and Illinois.

utterly ignorant this post makes you seem.

You've been called on your bizarre claim that Shelby was a segregationist. You've been proven wrong. But rather than take your lesson and move on you now try to twist it around so that voting Republican is equivalent to being racist or segregationist.

And California didn't have an abolitionist movement of any consequence.

The question was for me to name any Democrat who had turned Republican.

Is no longer Majority Leader for a reason.

You: And those Democrats who supported Civil Rights in the South are still Democrats.  Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, anyone? (as already demonstrated neither Lott nor Helms were in politics when Civil Rights were being debated.)

Knight: Name ONE other Southern Democrat turned Republican apart from Thurmond and I will name 99 Dixiecrats who remained Democrats till the day they died.

You: Selby n/t

I'm calling bull----. You were caught out and now you are trying to bull---- you way out. It won't work.

has been wrongly accused.  BUT why do African-Americans vote for Democrats in excess of 90% election after election. Are you saying that that 90% has been duped?

but then again, it was accurate...

But Goldwater was probably the most colorblind candidate to ever run for President.  How did he garner all these so-called racist voters?

George Wallace you have a valid argument for, but as you note he wasn't a Republican.

The "conventional wisdom" on this is actually another of the uncontested bits of wisdom that the media was able to propogate during the 1965-1980 era.

Republicans supported freeing the slaves, Republicans supported civil rights, and Republicans continue to support racial non-discrimination (in both directions).

This myth of the huge racist vote that exists in the South today is another prong of the "we're-liberal-and-we-lose-because-we're-right" crowd wanting to feel morally superior.  

Nick is wrong ...

That does not happen :)

Your correction involves who actually filibustered... 19 D's and 1 R. But that isn't what the paragraph talks about. It says "in the 1960s, they accused Republicans of using it to block civil rights legislation."

What actually happened, and what Democrats accused Republicans of later, are frequently divergent. A little farther up the page, someone asks, "Then why do 90% of Blacks vote Democrat? We're they all duped?"

Well, now that you mention it...

 

Ah, MKS, I've been looking forward to this for a while.

You've been banned.

Why?

If I may employ an animal metaphor -- and I may -- your ends of conversations around here are like nothing so much as the repeated butting against a stone wall of a brain-damaged, spavined goat, unaware that he's not really doing any damage to the wall, bleeding out of the stumps of his horns, and not even understanding why he attacked the wall in the first place. Your writing suggests that you are the one hyena that decides to move from carrion to fresh prey in one fell swoop by leaping, snarling, between a lion and his fresh kill, only to wonder why your packmates aren't there right behind you.

For further clarity: It's not because of your noxious opinions, nor because you're a Kossack. This lady, though her opinions and her take on certain religious beliefs are so noxious as to actually produce nausea in me -- and I can eat a marinara and boudin pasta dish while watching a colonoscopy on the Discovery Channel -- is not in the targeting scope right now, because she has the good grace to act like a guest in someone else's home.

You, however, have come into our house and peed in the vase our beloved late aunt gave us, and now, simply, we must pour your water down your throat and smash Aunt LiuLiu's vase over your head.

It is because your every word is an insult to the proprietors of this site; to the editorship; to your fellow commenters; to the readership; to writers, readers, and speakers of English everywhere; to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and indeed, the line of Anglo-Saxon and English monks who helped guide a rather limited Germanic tongue into the incredibly fluid, fluent tool it is today; and, in all likelihood, to every one who tried to teach you grammar, spelling, logic, and/or manners from the day you were born to the present.

I suppose I owe you a litany of your mendacity, idiocy, and all too frequently a combination of the two:

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

And here.

Really, that's just a sampling from the last couple of days. (By the way, Griswold was decided in 1965, which is not, in fact, the early Sixties.) To get the full, crippling weight of the keen intellectual acumen you bring to bear every time you waste bandwidth here, you've really got to page through every one of your bons mots here.

The upside -- if we may stretch that word past its breaking point to encompass things other than the sheer joy of your exit -- to all of this is that it shouldn't be hard to replicate your, ahem, contributions to date at will. Simply splice together, at random, the words "Conservatives are evil," "Republicans hate America," "you Republicans want to put gays in jail," "I like me," and/or "you all want to ban birth control," along with some utterly turgid legal or logical analysis -- again, we're stretching the language here, so bear with me -- and any commenter on this site can fill what we laughably will call the void caused by your absence.

Kindly let the door hit you on the way out. And please don't waste our time coming back under a different name. Everything else to the side, writing styles are like fingerprints. It takes surprisingly little energy for us to ban you clean and forever if that's what's called for.

'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof!

One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope.

He hath a spite against me, that I know,

Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why?

Farepoorly.

tonight, you are my hero! n/t

produced the desired effect?

Either way, I think you need to let your feelings out here pretty regularly.  Although this is a lot of fun to read.  

Welcome back!

So that's what snarky is.

And that's why I'm back.