Posts tagged: Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Futility of Attempting to Reap What You Failed to Sow – Part II

By , October 31, 2013 2:48 pm

So a friend asked me to check Moynihan’s thesis against vote tallies for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, another piece of landmark legislation. I don’t know about my friend, but the vote(s) on that bill stunned me. A greater number of Republicans voted for the bill than did Democrats. There were a number of votes (parliamentary procedure is beyond my ken, so I won’t go into them) but basically on both sides of Congress, 80% of Republicans voted for the bill and between 61% and 69% of Democrats went for it, depending on the vote.*

And the Moynihan thesis? It holds here as well. A bi-partisan majority of 73% passed the bill in the Senate. A bi-partisan majority of 70% voted “yea” in the House (on the the Senate version of the bill).

*Of course, Democrat numbers would have been better had it not been for their Southern siblings who voted 8 – yea, 107 – nay on the bill.

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