History 101: Who was Strom Thurmond?

Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change.
Strom Thurmond is one of the great ideological losers in post-war American politics. At every essential juncture in the forties, fifties, and sixties, the Veteran senator from South Carolina came down hard on the wrong side of history. He fought even the mildest of Civil Rights measures, employed demagogic Rhetoric, and cloaked calls for a white-dominated Southern culture in the code of states' Rights. Worse, Thurmond's moral vision appeared so narrow that he professed not to understand how...

Of Senators and Segregation
By Aaron Goldstein on 6.30.10 @ 6:08AM Shortly after I had learned of the passing of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia I came across his obituary in the New York Times . The headline read : Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92 It is worth noting that Byrd died almost seven years to the day when Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina passed away. Naturally, I was curious as to what the headline in the New York Times read when he left this mortal coil: Strom...

Partisanship and the Press
By James Taranto David Weigel, a former Washington Post reporter, is sorry--so sorry he apologized twice. Last Thursday Weigel issued his First Apology on the Post's website: I'm a member of an off-the-record list-serv called "JournoList," founded by my colleague Ezra Klein. Last Monday, I was deluged with angry e-mail after posting a story about Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) that was linked by the Drudge Report with a headline intimating that I defended his roughing-up of a young man with a...

Dueling NY Times Obituary Headlines: Strom Thurmond vs. Robert Byrd
Doug+Powers Here’s the 2003 obit headline from the New York Times for non-Klansman Senator Strom Thurmond: And here’s the obit headline for former Ku Klux Klan Grand Kleagle, Senator Robert Byrd: Both headlines, it’s worth noting, were written by Adam “major league a-hole” Clymer. (h/t James Taranto )

Strom Thurmond's Mixed Record
Editor's Note: This article was published last December after Trent Lott declared that the United States would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had won the Presidential Election of 1948. The piece suggested that it was ironic that Thurmond was to become the icon of the segregationist movement because when he first came to power he was regarded as a moderate. As of this moment, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott is fighting for his political

Kevin Alexander Gray: The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
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The Detestable, Decrepit Strom Thurmond
They fought for the South. And they still bore the resentments of its defeat, and the humiliation of Reconstruction, and many of them still feared and despised the blacks in their midst. Strom Thurmond was their man. When Harry Truman insisted that the Democratic Party embrace the cause of Civil Rights at the 1948 convention, Mr. Thurmond bolted the party and ran for president as an independent. He took the South, but Mr. Truman took the nation. He fought school Desegregation tooth and claw. In...

Charlie Crist Sued
By Larry Thornberry on 7.1.10 @ 6:08AM TAMPA -- Florida's former RINO Governor Charlie Crist, who shed his Republican disguise in April to seek a U.S. Senate seat as an independent, has shaken both sides of the money tree to great effect. But it's not clear now if he'll get away with it. A Florida Republican legislator and attorney in Naples is suing Crist in an attempt to get Crist to, as we phrase it in the South, do right. When Crist filed for the Senate seat in the spring of 2009 as a...

Remembering Robert Byrd's Racism
Yesterday, the media was pushing hagiographic narratives about the redemptive story of Robert Byrd’s past on Race Relations. The moral of the story is that you can always make up for being a Racist son-of-a-bitch. But the real subtext of the story is: being a Democrat means that you can promote segregation, join the KKK, vote against both black Supreme Court nominees, and use the word “nigger” on national television — and still be remembered as a promoter of black...

Have Obama and the Democrats forgotten how to fight?
One of the strangest lead sentences I have ever encountered appeared in Politico last week . It read: "John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of Climate Change Legislation in the Senate this year -- so aggressive that it's rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way." This Story The story went on to say that Kerry's "zeal" is "making some Swing-vote Democrats cringe at the thought of negotiating with someone they fear is tone-deaf to the political realities...

Journalists never trash the press corps. But last Friday, David Brooks did
But that doesn't change the fact that white, conservative voters in Thurmond's Dixie, in the Privacy of the voting booth, chose a black man over Strom's son. To savor this irony, I called up the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose great-grandfather is believed to have been a slave owned by Thurmond kin. "Given that Strom Thurmond's family owned my family, Strom is somewhere trying to think how an African American Republican could beat a relative of his," Sharpton told me. Though he called it a...

What does a Klansman " like Robert Byrd " have to do to win the approval of the NAACP?
FILE - In this Feb. 6, 1974, file photo Senate Majority Whip Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., sits alone in his Capitol Hill Office in Washington. Byrd carried himself like a man from another century. Dead Monday, June 28, 2010, at age 92, he very nearly was. A poorly educated son of Appalachia, Byrd became patriarch of the Senate. He was its most passionate scold, teacher, interpreter, defender and manipulator. (AP Photo/File) Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, holds up a cell phone...

POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: Thursday, July 1, 2010
From CNN's Leslie Bentz The CNN Washington Bureau's morning speed read of the top stories making news from around the country and the world. Washington/POLITICAL For the latest political news: www.CNNPolitics.com CNNMoney: House OKs Wall Street Reform Bill The House voted 237-192 Wednesday to pass a sweeping package of Reforms to the Financial regulatory system, moving the Bill a step closer to the finish line. But the Senate isn't likely to take up the measure until the week of July...

Remember the last time senators opposed Thurgood Marshall's confirmation?
I’ve been casting around for something smart to write all day about the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who have been doing their best to tar and feather the legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first black Justice. Marshall has been a talking point for the last two days, with Republicans casting him as an Activist Judge in this week’s Confirmation Hearings for Elena Kagan, who served as one of his clerks. The ill-thought-out strategemhass...

Jack Kelly: Trent Lott must go
At the 100th birthday party for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond on Dec. 5, Lott noted that his home state of Mississippi had voted for Thurmond when he ran for president in 1948. "We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead," Lott continued, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Thurmond, then the Governor of South Carolina, was the Candidate of the Dixiecrat Party, whose sole reason for being was to preserve segregation. So more than a...

The legend of Strom's Remorse.
For many years, there's been a cherished Washington lie about Strom Thurmond. The lie is that Thurmond, though once a leading segregationist, later renounced that view as morally wrong. Trent Lott repeated the lie at his Dec. 13 Press Conference. Thurmond,

In speech, Obama to argue for immigration overhaul
Washington— President Barack Obama hopes to rally new momentum behind the push for an Immigration overhaul by explaining why he thinks a comprehensive approach is the only way to fix what he and others say is a system badly in need of repair. Obama was laying out his rationale in a Speech Thursday, his first as president on the issue. Obama wasn't expected to announce any new proposals or policy changes. But feeling pressure from a range of supporters, he was aiming to jump-start the...

In speech, Obama to argue for immigration overhaul
Washington — President Barack Obama hopes to rally new momentum behind the push for an Immigration overhaul by explaining why he thinks a comprehensive approach is the only way to fix what he and others say is a system badly in need of repair. Obama was laying out his rationale in a Speech Thursday, his first as president on the issue. Obama wasn't expected to announce any new proposals or policy changes. But feeling pressure from a range of supporters, he was aiming to jump-start the...

SPIN METER: What happened to the Kagan standard?
Washington— Elena Kagan declined to discuss her passions, demurred when asked anything that might tip her hand on the Supreme Court and invoked her right to remain inscrutable even on cases buried in the past. In short, Kagan did her best to ensure her High Court nomination Hearing was just the kind of benign event she criticized years ago for lacking "seriousness and substance." Her dodges over two days of questioning prompted chuckles in the Senate Judiciary Committee as members, keenly...

For Senate Advocates of Unemployment Insurance Extension, a Battle to Nowhere
Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have repeatedly blocked attempts to extend Unemployment Insurance over Deficit concerns. (epa/ZUMApress.com) On Wednesday night, a bare-bones measure to keep federally funded Unemployment Insurance checks headed to the long-term unemployed failed in the Senate. Moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine had signed on to vote for cloture on the $34 Billion bill. But without Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who passed away...

Trent Lott...er...Kay Hagan must go.
[ from the diaries by haystack...this right here is some good stuff... ] Trent Lott Kay Hagan either meant what

State-By-State Immigration Policy Changes Ahead
Immigration Policy is generally set at the Federal level. But in the first few months of 2010, 45 States introduced more than 1,000 bills and resolutions relating to Immigrants and Refugees. The trend indicates that many local Governments are not waiting for the Federal Government to overhaul Immigration Laws. Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE...

Byrd to lie in repose in his beloved Senate
Washington (AP) - Sen. Robert C. Byrd is making his final sojourn to a Senate chamber that for 51 years echoed with his impassioned speeches and came to be the place he called home. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, was to lie in repose for six hours in the Senate chamber, his casket resting on the Lincoln Catafalque, a bier that was built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. Byrd, who served longer than any other senator in history and became a guardian of the chamber's customs and traditions,...

Byrd to lie in repose in his beloved Senate
Washington — Sen. Robert C. Byrd is making his final sojourn to a Senate chamber that for 51 years echoed with his impassioned speeches and came to be the place he called home. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, was to lie in repose for six hours in the Senate chamber, his casket resting on the Lincoln Catafalque, a bier that was built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. Byrd, who served longer than any other senator in history and became a guardian of the chamber's customs and traditions,...

Filibuster Filigree
By Quin Hillyer on 7.1.10 @ 6:09AM The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have highlighted so many concerns about Solicitor General Elena Kagan's record that senators should not vote to confirm her to the Supreme Court before giving their constituents a thorough opportunity to weigh in. It would be entirely consistent with past Republican positions, and not just defensible but highly advisable, for Republicans and moderate Democrats to announce a specifically time-limited Filibuster of Ms....