The NYT Archive System Must be Down

Tam’s got a snippet from a New York Times column that tries to show how it was those evil Republicans who wanted to keep us women barefoot and pregnant – or at least out of the voting booth. I assume that the author’s access to the NYT archives must have been down the day he wrote that because I found a handy NYT article that shows it was the Republicans who finally got the 19th amendment moving.

In fact, it was the Democrats who seemed to provide the main opposition to the amendment. Out of 44 Republicans, 36 (82%) voted for it. Of the 37 Democrats, 17 (46%) voted against it. In the House vote, 200 Republicans (92%) voted for it and 70 Democrats (41%) voted against it.

5 thoughts on “The NYT Archive System Must be Down”

  1. It is one of the great ironies of history that the Democrats enjoy this wonderful image of being progressive and forward thinking–and yet, until the 1960s, it was quite the opposite. Republicans were the party of abolition, civil rights, and women’s suffrage (if not full equality under the law). Democrats were the party of slavery, of racial oppression, and often as not, opponents of votes for women. Partly this was because the Democrats were the party of corrupt party politicians elected by large numbers of barely literate immigrant voters.

    Even Republican enthusiasm for Prohibition reflected the progressive views of the party; women were major advocates of Prohibition because they were the ones being beaten and raped by their drunken, boorish husbands (who usually voted Democrat), and having to raise kids on what was left in their husband’s paycheck after he spent much of it at the bar on Friday night.

    1. When we had “Conservative Awareness Week” in college, we used to put up table tents in the dining halls with the facts about the history of the Republican Party & women. I considered the fact that some students would chase me around tearing them up as I put them down a sign we were doing something right. (We always made sure they were replaced.)

      Yes, we were considered a minority on campus and given an awareness week. It was always a blast.

  2. So what happened to the GOP in the last forty years?

    I blame the Religious Right for hijacking the conservative agenda and making it unpalatable to those who would like to maintain a wall between church and state. After hearing some of the Tea Party candidates speak recently and reading what Beck and Palin said today in DC, it seems they are making the same mistake. I can’t ever see myself casting a vote for Palin.

  3. Bitter & Clayton,

    You’re both confusing Party with Political Orientation.

    In the era we’re discussing, the GOP was the Progressives.

    They were the party in favor of plenty of .gov intervention: They created the FDA and carried the Progressive banner until it was taken from them by Wilson. Even as late as the 60s, it was as much the party of Rockefeller than of Goldwater.

    The idea of the GOP as the party of small government and social conservatism is something that’s happened practically within my lifetime.

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