If you get into an argument with a Republican about the GOP’s lamentable support for voting rights and its fractured relationship with Black Americans, it won’t be long before your rhetorical sparring partner bellows “Robert Byrd” at you and declares the argument over.
This analysis leaves out the fact that Byrd had a well-documented change of heart later in life, and that the so-called “Southern strategy” Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater employed in the 1960s lured racist whites into the Republican fold, where they have remained ever since.
A half-century later, a Trumpified Republican Party that’s left the legacy of Abraham Lincoln far behind, is still flipping Democrats the Byrd as it stands steadfastly in the way of the voting rights legislation that’s now slowly and torturously making its way through Congress.