Word: dirksens
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Near adjournment time one afternoon last week, Illinois' Republican Senator Everett Dirksen arose in the Senate. "Mr. President," he proclaimed, "I present an amendment in the nature of a substitute." Passing to Senate Parliamentarian Charles Watkins a 74-page rewrite of the House-passed civil rights bill, Ev resonated: "I doubt very much whether in my whole legislative lifetime any measure has received so much meticulous attention...
...last Nov. 20, after 22 days of Judiciary Committee hearings, the bill was debated for nine days, then passed by the House 290 to 130. On March 26, the Senate voted to take up the bill, has been debating it steadily since March 30. During the last three weeks, Dirksen, who insisted on 50-odd amendments in return for precious G.O.P. votes in invoking cloture against the Southern filibuster (see box), was "beating out the iron upon the anvil of discussion" in conferences with other Republicans, Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The fruit...
...predictably disagreed was Georgia's Democratic Senator Richard Russell. "Stripped of any pretense," he charged, the Dirksen substitute amounted to "a punitive expedition into the Southern states." Russell continued...
...South, as one who has never been ashamed of being a Southerner, and as one who believes that the people of the South are as good citizens as people anywhere else in the country, I resent this political foray." He also had a word of warning for Dirksen. "Unless I am badly fooled," said Russell, "he has killed off a rapidly growing Republican Party in the South, at least so far as his party's prospects in the presidential campaign are concerned...
...cloture: two-thirds of the Senators who are "present and voting." Thus, if all 100 Senators were present, 67 votes would be needed to stop the Democratic filibuster against the civil rights bill. The bill's bipartisan supporters say that now that they have presented the package of Dirksen-sculptured amendments, they will have the necessary votes when a cloture petition is filed, probably by the middle of this month. Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, leader of the filibuster forces, makes "no claim as to being able to beat the gag rule." If the bipartisan coalition manages...