Word: rayburnisms
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...hold out against the Senate bill, set New York's Republican Representative Kenneth Keating to working out a party position on the bill with Acting Attorney General Bill Rogers. Then Joe Martin, who ordinarily confers a dozen or so times a day with his old friend Sam Rayburn, announced that he was not on "talking terms" with "Mr. Rayburn...
...Capitol Hill wondering when they would get together, the two entered on a war of nerves, each refusing to go to the other. Said Martin: "I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to see the Speaker on a subject like this. I'd be an interloper." Replied Rayburn: "My door is never locked. I'm always glad to see Mr. Martin or any other member of the House." How long would the waiting game go on? Grinned Joe Martin: "My kidneys are good...
Deep Stuff. Martin did not even send Rayburn the proposal worked out by Keating and Rogers. Instead, newsmen handed Sam a copy. He read it once, grunted, read it again, then again and again, finally announced: "This is very deep stuff. I'll have to have a little more time to digest it." Whereupon he disappeared into his office, taking with him four fellow Texans to aid in the digestive process. The Republicans' "deep stuff": 1) the contempt of court provisions of the bill would apply to violations of voting rights only, and not to all criminal contempt...
...Rayburn consulted with Northern liberal Democrats, who warned him that the Republican plan would be politically difficult for them to oppose. Late one afternoon, Rayburn went over to the other side of the Capitol for a heart-to-heart talk with Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson. They agreed that some sort of civil rights bill had to be passed at this session; otherwise, the party-splitting issue would return to plague the Democrats in Election Year, 1958. Next morning Lyndon went to work to find out just what kind of a jury trial compromise could get past the Senate...
...over but the voting. Late that afternoon Martin, Rayburn, Johnson and Knowland held a joint press conference, announced their agreement on the 45-day, $300 compromise of a compromise of a compromise. With that lineup of congressional leadership behind it, not even the outside chance of a Southern Senate filibuster was likely to stand in the way of a civil rights bill. Washington's most knowing advocates of civil rights legislation thought it would be a good, effective law. Their reasoning: most of the acts denying Negroes in the South the right to vote are performed by men widely...