“We had a sweetheart deal with the National Democratic Party. ‘We’ll go along with all your programs, if you’ll go along with our segregation.’ But once that Civil Rights Bill passed in 1964, then Lyndon friend became Lyndon the enemy,” says Hollings.Retiring Senator Fritz Hollings still believes in Roosevelt's New Deal, Kennedy's New Frontier, and Johnson's Great Society. Even if you disagree with his votes, as some did, Kevin points out that he did not sell out like others.
“And now, the Republican party is white, and the Democratic party is the majority black, I would say [in South Carolina]. And in Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia. You can just go right across the spectrum.”
“What are you saying? That all of these folks that keep voting Republican are racist,” asks Wallace.
“Not quite. They are conservative. They honestly don’t believe in government, like we do in the Democratic Party,” says Hollings, laughing.
“We believe in feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless, and educating the uninformed and everything else like that. They believe in private education, a privatized Social Security, privatized energy policy – privatize, privatize. They don’t believe in ‘We the people’ in order to form a more perfect union.”
I had always thought that Sen. Hollings was a conservative Democrat; it turns out he he is a Moderate-to-Liberal like many of us towards the center.
In administrative news, President Bush has selected Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Michael Leavitt to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services. How those two go together are beyond me. Before joining the administration, Secretary-designate Leavitt served as Governor of Utah before being named to the EPA.
Is it just me or does Bush try and surround him with former Governors because they have executive experience? With exceptions of a few, most of his cabinet members served as Governors.
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