Word: dirksenism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...temperature, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield left his bed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, bundled up against a chill wind, and was chauffeured to the Capitol. Mansfield had made sure in advance that other Administration stalwarts would also be on hand. As for the G.O.P., Minority Leader Everett Dirksen warned potential no-shows: "By God, you're going to be here." To a man, they were. Thus, after a Dirksen-led filibuster had tied up the Senate for a total of 13 days in an attempt to thwart the Administration's bill to repeal Section...
Leading the attack on Mansfield's petition to impose cloture, Dirksen castigated the Administration's attempt to foist "compulsory unionism" on hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers. "The basic concept upon which the whole structure of Government rests," he said, "is the concept of freedom. God help us if we impair it, if we tarnish it, if we sully it, if we transmit it to the next generation in impaired form." Mansfield countered with harsh words. He decried "the resentments, the irritations, the vendettas and the whatevers against organized labor" that had prompted the talkathon. Noting the Senate...
...McNamara, hospitalized for a thyroid ailment, was the only absentee- the Administration needed 66 votes to close down Dirksen's filibuster. It remained for Hubert Humphrey, president of the Senate, to announce how far short of the mark the Administration had fallen. "On this vote," boomed Humphrey when the tally was completed, "there are 51 yeas and 48 nays. Two-thirds of the Senators present and voting not having voted in the affirmative, the cloture motion is rejected." Two days later Mansfield tried again; this time the vote was 50 to 49 for cloture. Thus repeal...
...Dirksen used to advantage a Senate rule by which no committee other than Appropriations may meet while the main body is in session. "I must insist on that rule," he intoned in his best steamboat-Gothic profundo. "I cannot, helter-skelter, permit one committee to meet and not another." Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright protested in vain that his Foreign Relations Committee urgently needed to review President Johnson's $275 million supplemental request for economic aid to South Viet Nam. The problem could easily be resolved, Dirksen countered, by getting Mansfield to withdraw his motion to take up repeal...
...week's end the pressure had gotten too much for Mansfield, who announced that he would ask for a vote this week on a cloture petition to shut off the filibuster. That was fine with Dirksen. With all but six of his 32 Republican colleagues firmly behind him, and strong support from Southern Democrats, he was confident of getting the 34 votes needed to defeat cloture. For Mansfield to win, said Dirksen, "it would take nothing short of a miracle-or an earth convulsion...