Bill McCulloch, the GOP’s man on civil rights.
One of my motivators, one that has been present since I was a teenager, has been to set the record straight regarding conservatives and civil rights, as I felt they got a bad shake and the implication of this approach is, “You were wrong on these issues, so you’ll be wrong on all the others” regardless of how out there, how anti-capitalist, or coercive certain proposals are. The 89th Congress presents an interesting picture on both ideology and civil rights. While conservative Republicans are mostly supportive of the Voting Rights Act, it should be noted that Americans for Constitutional Action counted a vote for the Voting Rights Act as against their position. There’s a bit of an uncomfortable dual reality for modern conservatives to face regarding civil rights: although historically the record pf conservative Republicans gets savaged far more than deserved, it was a post-World War II truth that major conservative organizations and numerous prominent thinkers opposed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. While for some thinkers, such as Southerners Medford Bryan Evans and James J. Kilpatrick, it was about defending segregation, for others it was about defending wider concepts such as property rights, freedom of contract, and yes, state’s rights. Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) was on record against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and fair housing laws. Their issues were the ones that applied nationally, although ACA assistant director John J. Synon was with Evans and Kilpatrick. They also were against granting the attorney general sweeping powers of enforcement. William F. Buckley Jr. himself underwent a major change between 1957 and 1965 on the subject. An interesting piece on Buckley’s change is listed in references, and its worth a read.
Many conservative officeholders on the Republican side, however, didn’t heed the call of these organizations on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most of them didn’t on the Voting Rights Act (only two Republican senators, both from the South, did), but many did on fair housing. The latter two issues can be seen in this document, and the Civil Rights Act of 1966 would indeed not make it past the Senate, with fair housing having to wait until 1968. The latter issue was a far more national one than the previous two, both of which involved remedies for racial discrimination that primarily applied in the South, whereas housing discrimination was a far more national phenomenon. The GOP’s point man on civil rights, Bill McCulloch of Ohio, got an 85% in both 1965 and 1966, respectable scores from a conservative standpoint. One should bear in mind that for the House, of the five votes I include, four were counted by ACA. For voting rights, the regional character of support and opposition is quite striking as there were only five Republican representatives outside the South who were on record opposing both House passage and the conference report: H. Allen Smith of Glendale, California, James B. Utt of Santa Ana, California, George Hansen of Pocatello, Idaho, H.R. Gross of Waterloo, Iowa, and Robert McEwen of Ogdensburg, New York. Of these three, Gross and McEwen would support at least one other civil rights measure in the 89th Congress. Interestingly, times have largely changed for these districts, two are currently represented by Democrats: Glendale is currently represented by Adam Schiff of all people and Democrat Lou Correa represents Santa Ana. Ogdensburg is represented by Elise Stefanik, head of the House Republican Conference. There were only two Democrats outside of the former Confederacy to oppose the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Representative Paul C. Jones of Kennett, Missouri, and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. The former represented an area of Missouri that was culturally Dixie and today is represented by Republican Jason Smith, and Byrd had a past in the KKK.
The ACA scores I have here are modified to count for officially recorded pairs and on occasion, announcements for or against. I do this because I consider it a more complete picture on ideology. CQ polls for and against are not counted ideologically, although they are displayed for the listed civil rights votes. The file is below:
References
Felzenberg, A. (2017, May 13). How William F. Buckley, Jr., Changed His Mind on Civil Rights. Politico.
Retrieved from
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/13/william-f-buckley-civil-rights-215129/
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 
Nice summary of the historical political context, Mike. I think, as you may have likewise indicated before, that the shaping of the “liberal = pro-civil rights, conservative = anti-civil rights” framework in the post-WWII era was the result of a “switch” between Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism for both sides, as the old-school progressives of the 1920s were Jeffersonian and pro-states’ rights while the conservatives were Hamiltonian-esque in supporting government legislation to help big business.
Of course, while some progressives were supportive of the New Deal (the Bull Moose varieties weren’t, it seems), the diehard old adherents broke over the 1937 court packing plan – it represented the very centralized government cronyism they despised. And by the 1940s in the war years, the issues changed; it was no longer free trade vs. higher tariffs or lower vs. higher income tax rates, but rather excessive federal-instituted interventionist economic measures, namely price controls. So it wasn’t that the old progressives actually became conservative, but that they became designated “right-wing” by the new political standards because they increasingly agreed with conservatives in siding against the “new” modern liberalism of FDR and Truman in the 1940s.
Another motivation for the increasing conservative association with anti-civil rights, apart from the Jeffersonian-esque “states’ rights” argument, seems to have been the GOP desire to gain the Southern white vote and ignore the black vote. In 1952, the Southern GOP delegations of Arkansas and Mississippi, among others, were biracial (I believe Osro Cobb, like Perry W. Howard, II, led a black-and-tan delegation) and supported Old Right conservative Robert A. Taft; later during the Eisenhower presidency, the presidential administration sided with the lily-white faction, which eventually defeated the black-and-tans in Southern politics in taking control of the region’s GOP. Another detail to note is that the nature of civil rights changed: in the 1930s, the focus was federal anti-lynching legislation, which everyone understood was the only practical solution to stop antiblack Southern mob violence. However, conservative Republicans, namely Taft, inherently preferred less government action on civil rights issues if possible (namely concerning workforce discrimination), and thus were often less enthusiastic in the 1950s and 60s towards the strongest civil rights legislative provisions; the discontent of many Senate conservative Republicans towards Title III of the CRA 1957, evident in the vote on Anderson-Aiken, seemed to foreshadow the eventual fragments of conservative Republicans who disagreed with the federal expansion under the CRA 1964.
It appears that wars often have had a drastic impact on the determining factors of political ideology. Before the Civil War, left-wing Jacksonian Democrats supported the gold standard and the spoils system, the latter of which especially became a staple of conservative, “reactionary” Stalwart Republicanism in the Gilded Age. In the antebellum years, I believe gold was dispensed by the central government while paper money was suggested by business, so Jacksonians strongly favored specie. However, after the war, a rapid return to specie was favored by big business, while the centralized state produced a ton of greenbacks. And so the Jacksonians were divided: support the same past positions regardless of context, or follow a consistent Jacksonian spirit in the new era and favor greenbacks as the rallying cry of economic populism against the “Money Power,” as the Ohio Democratic governor William Allen put it? That issue definitely split the Democrats in the postbellum era because of the massive change in economic circumstances as a result of the Civil War. And for machine politics, it was always about who held power: during antebellum times, the weakness of the Whig coalition meant Jacksonian Democrats gained extra from spoils; when the pro-civil rights “regular Republicans” (the Stalwarts in the Hayes years) gained control, they supported portions of “reform” (many still opposed the Pendleton Act nonetheless). Hayes’s nomination of progressive reform Republican Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., to replace Conklingite Chester Arthur for NY Port Collector was strongly supported by Democrats and opposed by his own party; KKK Democrat John B. Gordon was notably bitter over the Senate GOP opposition, according to the biography of Roscoe Conkling by his nephew A. R. Conkling.
Thanks! Yeah, I think issue emphasis changed a bit although there was some genuine change based on experience. Hiram Johnson’s (R-Calif.) transformation was particularly dramatic, as he wouldn’t back the Fair Labor Standards Act as giving too much authority to the feds while he had supported minimum wage laws in California. The Democratic Party was always at heart a liberal party, it’s just that its inherent liberalism has taken different forms, and it has waned and waxed overtime. The Democrats’ liberalism was particularly compromised with the Bourbon Democrats of which Grover Cleveland was the exemplar as well as the rise of the Dixiecrats beginning in the 1940s. Interestingly, Republicans, including Stalwarts, supported the Pendleton Act as a way of protecting their current officeholders, as by that point the 1882 midterms had already happened, and Republicans had lost the House. Passage had occurred during the “lame duck” session of Congress, which existed until the adoption of the 20th Amendment.
In both the Bourbon vs. non-Bourbon and Dixiecrat vs. national Democrat key cases, the characterization is often “right-wing vs. left-wing” when the actual nature of the dispute appears to be “old liberal vs. new liberal.” Of course, in the next era of liberalism, the old guard that remains uncompromising is branded “right-wing” and “reactionary” by the new guard. We see this trend continued nowadays with countless numbers of “older” liberals like Bill Maher, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kyrsten Sinema, and Tulsi Gabbard, once deemed leftists yet currently designated “moderate” to “conservative.” And arguably, much of Trump’s voter base was never fully conservative to begin with, as his pivotal support which got him the 2016 victory was from inroads with the white working class who in the past often voted for left-wing populist Democrats, namely in Iowa and Ohio. Iowa’s 2nd congressional district (currently the 1st), which voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, had elected socialist-sympathizing Democrat Dave Loebsack to the U.S. House for over a decade, indicating a minority yet significant portion of populist voters who crossed party lines.
Hiram Johnson’s political shift appears similar to that of William E. Borah, Burton K. Wheeler, and to a much, much greater extent, Clare Hoffman. All were old-school progressives in the 1910s-20s, yet shifted right in the New Deal era, mainly around 1937 (Hoffman, of course, became a hardline conservative quickly) when FDR tried to pack the court. And they belonged to the isolationist wing of Progressivism; I believe during La Follette, Jr.’s losing defeat in 1946, he ran as an isolationist while his right-wing primary opponent Joseph McCarthy was interventionist and conservative?
It’s also interesting that the lily-white faction of the Southern GOP, which the modern-day strongly conservative Republican Party in the region flourished out of in the Eisenhower era, is designated by libertarian writer Murray Rothbard as the “progressive” flank. (Mises Institute, “Swan Song of the Old Right”) One key example perhaps would be Joel T. Broyhill of Virginia, who opposed the “new liberalism” manifested in the national Democratic Party programs, yet on a variety of issues, mainly local, had a “progressive reform” mentality in favoring legislation for bridge construction, highway improvement, better pay for federal employees, support for Metro, and federal aid to local school systems. (Washington Post obituary)
I’ve noticed a trend of certain atheists now being on the outs with the left because as it turns out, they didn’t just not believe in God, they also opposed religious dogmas, and are seeing this in the civic religion we observe from the left nowadays, in which every societal discrepancy by race is seen as without doubt caused by racism, an extreme version of the legal doctrine of “disparate impact”, itself a can of worms. This is showing us where the priorities of atheists are…in their politics or simply belief in the absence of God. I think another part of this though is that as conservatives we have a tendency to appreciate a great deal those on the liberal side who are as I like to say, “off script”, and some like a liberal much more who disagrees 20% with their side (Rogan, RFK Jr.) than a conservative who disagrees 20% with them. I think of Joe Lieberman and John McCain here, as neither one on balance was as much of a maverick as their respective sides thought them. I see the same with Democrats regarding RFK Jr., Rogan, Gabbard, etc. We would all do well to heed Reagan that “The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20% traitor.” A thought I’ve had for some time is the GOP is wrestling with itself on whether it wants to be more of an anti-establishment party or more of a conservative party. The former I think to some is more exciting and fresher than any Reagan conservatism 2.0.
Regarding La Follette Jr., although for him the apple fell a bit far from the tree in terms of personality and style, his politics were the same. McCarthy was domestically conservative and moderately internationalist, although as strongly anti-communist in such politics as you’d think he was.
Interestingly, regarding Southern Republicans, it is often forgotten that Eisenhower was quite keen himself on the GOP outreaching to Southern whites. The DW-Nominate first dimension measurement backs Rothbard’s assessment of the newer Republicans, with Bruce Alger of Dallas of course being the exception:
FLORIDA
William Cramer – 0.218
TENNESSEE
Howard Baker – 0.11
TEXAS
Bruce Alger – 0.616
VIRGINIA
Richard Poff – 0.265
William Wampler – 0.146
Joel Broyhill – 0.159
Interesting analysis, and thanks for posting the scores of the key GOP “new guard” of Eisenhower Southern Republicans. Cramer appeared to fit an interesting political mold: his Florida GOP was built upon a coalition comprising of white suburban Northern transplants and anti-Communist Cuban migrants. (I recall once on Twitter Dinesh D’Souza challenging Kevin Kruse to compile a list of Dixiecrats who switched parties, and Kruse cited Cramer, even though there’s no evidence whatsoever to indicate any affiliation with the SRP, especially since Cramer’s party affiliation switch in 1949 was at the urging of his law partner Herman Goldner who actually was pro-civil rights!) As to exactly why he voted against civil rights legislation until 1965, I never managed to crack that puzzle. Of course, when the busing issue became prominent, he took a hard line on the side of white suburban interests.
Howard Baker definitely fits more the mold of Moderate Republicanism, though I personally would argue that doesn’t belong in the same category as most other insurgent Southern Republicans of the era; he hailed from East Tennessee, which traditionally elected pro-civil rights Republicans.
The contrast on civil rights and political ideology between Alger and Broyhill/Poff is greatly fascinating to me, come to realize. Both Broyhill and Poff signed the Southern Manifesto in open support of segregation, and while Poff eventually apologized, Broyhill continued to support segregation policies throughout his career. And while the archreactionary-ultraconservative Alger definitely became an antagonistic opponent of civil rights, he didn’t start off as one, as the evidence I’m reading indicates that his turn towards anti-civil rights diatribes was purely expedient due to race-baiting from locally popular Democratic opponent Henry Wade that threatened to cost key white suburban support. It certainly would’ve been interesting to see how Alger’s stance on racial issues played out had it not been for the enormous pressure for him to abandon the gradualist approach he maintained as late as August 1956. Previously in 1954, he won the black vote in Dallas! (“Nut Country,” pp. 78-80) That may have been among the last few times the majority of black voters especially in an inner city cast their ballots for a hardline conservative Republican.
Perhaps principled conservative values and its emphasized dignities kept Alger in the moderately civil rights-sympathetic camp for some time while the lack thereof contributed to Broyhill and Poff caving in to segregation? Hard to know for sure, though I guess even the general pattern of post-WWII left-right ideology/civil rights correlations has some remarkably interesting aberrations. It’s a shame my high school Government and Civics class never explained such fascinating phenomenons in U.S. political history. If the world around us wasn’t crumbling so quickly, I definitely would want to invest some extra time to read V. O. Key, Jr.’s writings examining historical Southern political patterns.