Word: rayburnisms
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...easy. The Rayburns were a poor farm family, and Father W. M. Rayburn-a Civil War cavalryman who had ridden to Appomattox with Robert E. Lee-was barely able to feed his eleven children. "Character is all I have to give you," he told his sons. "Be a man." Sam went off to East Texas College, paid his own way by sweeping floors and ringing the school bell. Before he left home, his father pressed $25-the family savings-into his hand...
After college, Sam pursued his dream and won election to the Texas legislature. At night he studied law, passed his bar examinations at 26. At 29 he was Speaker of the Texas house of representatives, the youngest in history. Two years later, when he was 31, Sam Rayburn went off to Congress, as the newly elected Representative of Texas' Fourth District. He was home at last...
Although he presented a cool exterior to the public, and rejected intimacy, Sam Rayburn was a warmhearted humanitarian. The day after his close friend, former Vice President Alben Barkley, died, Rayburn let his emotions show. Stepping into the well of the House, he delivered a moving eulogy in a choked voice. "God bless his memory," he said. "God comfort his loved ones. God comfort...
...Speaker Rayburn's incurable illness gave inevitable rise to the question of his successor. The odds-on choice: Massachusetts' Representative John McCormack, 69, a craggy Bostonian who has been Democratic floor leader for 17 years, longer than any other man, and who served as Speaker pro tern during Rayburn's absence in the closing weeks of the past session...
Among dark-horse candidates for the speakership is Missouri's Representative Richard Boiling, a Rayburn protege and an influential member of the House Rules Committee. But McCormack, because of his age, is not likely to be a long-term Speaker-and Boiling, at 45, should have plenty of later chances. Another possible contender is Pennsylvania's conservative Representative Francis ("Tad") Walter, who is far more popular with Southerners than McCormack, and who has displayed impressive abilities as a House presiding officer. But the mere mention of Walter, one of the authors of the McCarran-Walter immigration...