the house and senate harry byrd jr. was content to retire in 1982. he never joined the republican party in all those years, you can still say he played an enormous role with white southerners away from the democratic party in the wake of the civil rights act. these days going to be hard to believe that there was ever room for harry byrd in the democratic party or bill scranton in the republican party. their passing is a reminder that it really wasn t that long ago when the two parties in american politics were very different. rush limbaugh stokes a heated battle. that s next. three weekends. asthma doesn t affect my job. you missed the meeting again last week! it doesn t affect my family. your coughing woke me up again. i wish you d take me to the park. i don t use my rescue inhaler a lot. depends on what you mean by a lot. coping with asthma isn t controlling it. test your level of control at asthma.com, then talk to your doctor.
conservative white southerners where harry bird jr. came in. his father had the most powerful organization in virginia. elected to the senate with fdr in 1932 and later received 15 electoral votes in the 1960 election as a protest against jfk s civil rights policies. when byrd resigned from the senate due to his poor health in 1965 his son, young harry, was appointed to fill his seat. byrd jr. was just as conservative as his father on civil rights and other issue and denied the democratic senate nomination in virginia in 1970 when he refused to pledge his support for whoever would be the 1972 democratic presidential nominee. byrd just decided to run for the senate as an independent and won that election easily. by 1980, he was routinely voting with republicans and he decided to enforce ronald reagan for president over jimmy carter. then with reagan in power and working kevative majorities in
had still been alive. i had that thought twice this week william scranton and harry bird jr. had died. one was 96 years old and one was 98. both absent from the political stage for decades. played no role in the current one. except well, they kind of did, not directly, but their stories loom over american politics today. they illustrate the roots of the deep and intense regional, racial and cultural divisions that define the two parties today. they result in the maddening gridlock that no one seems happy about at all. if you want to know how the american political system came to this, you can do a lot worse than know the stories of bill scranton and harry bird jr. scranton an old school republican. the son of the northeast, the town in pennsylvania he came from scranton was named after his ancestors and he embodied a strain that mixed with robust