A majority of Republicans actually voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
However, zero southern Republicans voted for it. In fact, the votes on the act were split much more along geographic lines than party.
I did not look up how they voted but there were only 2 Republican Senators and 8 Republican Representatives from the south in the 88th Congress. How many Democrats voted against it?
For the record, I edited my post within two minutes of posting it because I suspected my comment was too broad; given the fact that the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon had not yet taken place many "Dixiecrats" would have opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Please respond to the other issues noted - Lilly Ledbetter, ERA and the Dream Act all of which suggest in the strongest manner the Big Tent rhetoric of GOP Pols is total bullshit.
Dixiecrats were an offshoot of the
Democrat Party that began in 1948 in an effort to defeat Truman and
returned to the Democrat party within a year or two after Truman was elected.
Here are some snips from Wiki on the ERA
The ERA was opposed by Eleanor Roosevelt and most New Dealers. (Democrats All) They felt that ERA was designed for middle class women but that working class women needed government protection. They feared that ERA would undercut the male-dominated labor unions that were a core component of the New Deal coalition. The amendment was opposed by most northern Democrats, who aligned themselves with the anti-ERA labor unions but
the ERA was supported by southern Democrats and almost all Republicans.
In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower asked a joint session of Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the first President to show such a level of support for the amendment.
A Republican.
The Republican Party included support of the ERA in its platform beginning in 1940, renewing the plank every four years until 1980.
In 1961, feminists encouraged the newly elected President John F. Kennedy to support the ERA. Though Kennedy was elected on a pro-ERA platform and took a position favoring the amendment in a letter to Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, the chairman of the National Woman's Party, he did not speak out in favor of the amendment due to his ties to labor.
A Democrat
Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan achieved success on Capitol Hill with her House Joint Resolution No. 208, which was adopted by the House on October 12, 1971, with a vote of
354 yeas, 24 nays and 51 not voting Griffiths's joint resolution was then adopted by the Senate on March 22, 1972, with a vote of
84 yeas, 8 nays and 7 not voting. The Senate version passed after an amendment proposed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina that would exempt women from the draft failed.
The ERA was then presented by the 92nd Congress to the state legislatures for ratification with a seven-year deadline for ratification.
President Richard Nixon immediately endorsed the ERA's approvalA Republican
On December 23, 1981, a United States District Court ruled that the ERA's deadline extension was unconstitutional and that a state legislature may rescind its prior ratification of a proposed amendment to the Constitution. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States . The Administrator of General Services claimed that the required number of states (38) had not ratified the amendment even if the deadline extension was valid and the rescissions were invalid:
"the Amendment has failed of adoption no matter what the resolution of the legal issues presented here."
The Supreme Court agreed and ordered the case dismissed as moot on October 4, 1982 thereby recognizing that the ERA had failed to win ratification, but did not issue a ruling on the merits of either the deadline extension issue or the rescission issue in this case.
