The longest-touted and best-advertised problem facing the 85th Congress was a promised drive in the Senate for civil-rights legislation. Well aware that the Democrats had lost large chunks of their usual big-city vote in civil-rights-conscious areas in the November election, both Democrats and Republicans from the North and the West were ready to combine politics with principle by finding a way to change the Senate's famed Rule XXII and its built-in right of filibuster. Not only did they have the Southern conservative Democrats to contend with; some conservative Republicans and Northern Democrats feared...
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