Chris Brook and Susan Navarro's Aug. 27 column was long on cheap shots and short on historical insight. One glaring factual error that merits correction is the assertion that "The (Civil Rights Act of 1964) ... was uniformly opposed by the Republican Party." In fact, Republican House members voted for the act at a higher proportion -- 138-34 -- than the Democrats, who favored it 152-96. The same was true in the Senate, where Republicans voted for it 27-6, while the Democratic margin was 46-21. The most important split, of course, was regional, with a vast majority of Southerners opposed to the bill. At the time, elected offices in the South were held overwhelmingly by Democrats.
I would hope that The Daily Tar Heel columnists could move beyond the predictable partisan barbs of talk radio to produce more sophisticated insight.
As it stands, though, this alleged "history" column is remarkably nonhistorical.
A far more interesting thesis than "I Hate Republicans" would be "How Republicans Went From the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Jesse Helms." The social and political factors that caused a wholesale partisan realignment in the formerly all-Democratic South, including Goldwater's presidential candidacy, the Republicans' ensuing Southern Strategy and Reagan's courting of religious conservatives, provide a more compelling and informative illustration of the current Republican Party configuration than a few Nixon comments or Bush campaign symbols.
Adam Schiffer
Ph.D. Candidate and Instructor
Department of Political Science
