Oh good, this again. Never before has one simple detail been infused with so much meaning by so many.
Once again, leaning so hard on the percentages here obscures the more important takeaway from the two parties transformation on civil rights issues. See this thread:
And, again, conservatives who make this claim today perversely use the votes of liberal and moderate Republicans -- whom conservatives at the time *despised* and soon drove out of the GOP -- as cover for today's conservative GOP.
See here:
See here:
And, again! -- if you're going to claim that the key difference here was party and not region, you really need to address the historical fact that the first wave of southern Republicans handled civil rights *exactly* like those old southern Democrats.
In summation, on behalf of political historians everywhere:
