Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (39294)	9/22/2000 5:55:40 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

No, he didn't. In fact, he lost an election because he chose to fight for Civil Rights.

To: Bill who wrote (39294)	9/22/2000 6:19:45 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The Gore Sr. record--- Very liberal, weasling on Civil Rights The vice president will thus enjoy a freer hand in editing his father's image. He's already done so, with skill: Appearing on Larry King Live in 1995, for example, he discussed his father's civil-rights record, saying, "He voted for the Voting Rights Act. They said that he'd lose his seat over it, and actually he did." A nice story-but not quite true. The Republican victor, Brock, had also voted for the Voting Rights Act (as a member of the House). "The vice president has said his father lost in 1970 because of civil rights," says Brock, who went on to become chairman of the Republican National Committee and now lives in Maryland. "That's simply not the case." Gore Sr.'s record on civil rights is mixed. It featured acts of courage-he refused to sign the "Southern Manifesto," which called for southern states to ignore court desegregation orders-but he was hardly on the ramparts. "I was by no means a torchbearer for racial equality in my first campaign for the Senate in 1952," he wrote in a 1972 memoir. He had another chance to become a torchbearer in 1954, when the Supreme Court's Brown decision came down, but again he declined, declaring merely that Brown had to be enforced because it was "the law of the land"-a statement he later regretted as "timid." He had another opportunity to strike a blow for civil rights in 1964, by voting for the Civil Rights Act. But it was an election year, and he could not find a way to get behind it. He was concerned that the law allowed the federal government to cut off funds to hospitals and schools that resisted desegregation-a radical step that would hurt sick people and children, he thought. Six years later, he wrote, "I feel very deeply that I was right." Race must surely have played some role in Gore Sr.'s defeat, but other issues were more important. He was widely perceived as out of touch with his constituents. In 1969, he was loudly booed at a University of Tennessee football game. (In an otherwise admiring piece for Harper's, David Halberstam noted that "Albert has always been considered a little arrogant and uppity.") He won only 51 percent of the vote in a primary against a more conservative Democrat, who pointedly refused to endorse Gore Sr. in the general election. And then Brock was able to exploit Gore's weaknesses by criticizing him on school prayer and Vietnam. For Gore, the defeat was stinging, and he refused to congratulate Brock during his concession speech. Later, he wrote, "I did underestimate the depth and bitterness of the feeling among some Tennesseans about my Senate record." britannica.com