The last of the old Dixiecrats to retire was John Stennis in 1988 (and of course Storm Thurmond on the Republican side in 2002). But Jim Eastland, the hideous Mississippi segregationist chaired the Judiciary Committee until 1977 for example.https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1116444556554317853 …
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Replying to @brianros1
Fritz Hollings and Robert Byrd were both in the Senate even after Thurmond. I'll grant you that neither of them was as bad as Eastland or Thurmond, but Hollings was openly pro-segregation as Governor of SC.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @brianros1
Isn't he the one who raised the confederate battle flag over the SC statehouse?
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Replying to @SeanTrende @baseballcrank
I’m referring to the Southern manifesto, opposed the CRA & VRA types. So Hollings is a slightly different category because he gets to the Senate AFTER all of that. Byrd is odd b/c you’re right, he was virulently anti-civil rights in the 50s and early 60s, but by the 70s he had
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Done an about face. Like Thurmond he shifted, but more vocally.
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Replying to @brianros1 @SeanTrende
Story of shifts in the opinion & positions of white politicians & voters in the South & border states (& the national parties appealing to them) is a halting & checkered one on both sides. My main beef is with the narrative that just magically dumps all blame on GOP after 64/68.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @SeanTrende
That’s not the historian’s narrative at all. What is true is that the GOP goes all in on the race baiters in the 1970 midterms (a Harry Dent strategy) & after it flops, you see that strategy basically disappear. The broader public narrative about the GOP & race comes from a bunch
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Replying to @brianros1 @SeanTrende
Well, historians when they talk within the profession, anyway. But the narrative on this platform & in progressive columns/blogs, for example, is terribly oversimplified.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @SeanTrende
I think every network & publication needs several house historians
. The Republicans definitely move right on race in the late 60s & 70s. It’s not an abrupt switch flipping moment, nor is it universal. But they could’ve said, no Strom we don’t want you. Instead they embraced him2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
True. But consider how the GOP today would react to defecting black Democrats. White southerners had been like that for a century. Realistically, no US political party turns truckloads of voters away, or ever has. The question is not who you take in, but how.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @SeanTrende
Sure. That’s why Democrats didn’t expel Eastland, Talmadge, etc or pull their seniority.
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