Evening star., 1949-08-26
The ExiIed Southerners

It is hard to understand the embittered
protests which have come from the f1ve
Thurmond supporters who have been ban
ished from the Democratic National Com
mittee.
rarty regularity is the first rule OF pro-
fessional politics, and when the national
committee members from the South turned
away from President Truman to support
the States Rights candidate, Governor
Thurmond, they must have known that
they were inviting expulsion from the
national committee, which is an instru-
ment of the regular Democratic organiza-
ton. In organization politics, as in any
thing else, there must be certain amount
of discipline, and it was hardly to be ex-
pected that the national committee, which
is the policy-making body of the party.
would welcome back the unrepentant
boilers. They chose their political bed
during the last campaign, and they ought
not to complain now If they are made to
lie in it.
It is even harder to understand why
these Southerners should want to return
to the party fold.
They walked out because of the position
taken in the party platform, and by the
President personally, on civil rights There
may have been other considerations, but
this was the dominating one. And with
respect to civil rights, nothing has changed.
It is true that Mr.. Truman, in his in
formal address to the committee, invited
the South to return to the party, but the
invitation was conditioned on acceptance
by the South of his terms. Those terms
are the promises made to the people in the
platform, including the civil rights plank,
and the President declared that these are
exactly the things that the people are
going to get.
# this is the case, what place is there
In the councils, of the Democratic Party
for the Southerners who will not accept
the civil rights program? Why do they
want to return now to a political philos-
ophy which they repudiated in 1948, and
which will be the party's philosophy again
when another election year rolls around?
The Democratic Party has long since
ceased to reflect the thinking of the South,
or at least the thinking of most of the
political leaders in the South. And COIN
cidentally, by virtue of abandonment of
the two-thirds rule for presidential nomi-
nations, the South has lost its old power
to influence If not to control party policy.
So when the President said that the tail
no longer wags the dog, he was not far
wide of the mark
This would seem to leave the South with
q severely limited number of choices It's
political leaders cannot stay in the Demo-
cratic Party at the policy-making level II
they will not accept the party program and
will not support the party candidate. They
can do any one of these things: Cd Swal-
low the bitter civil rights pill and return
to the fold. 90 Fumble along, waiting to
see what may turn up and not knowing
what to do next. 90 Strike out on their
own, and, since the Republican Party offers
no better haven than the Democrats, see
what can be done about setting up a
permanent independent political organiza-
ton in the South.
The people who boss the political show
IN the South probably would prefer the
third course, since 1t would at least give
them some bargaining power in national
politics. But the big question is whether
the rank. and file of Southern voters, tied
to the Democratic label since the Civil
War, would go along. The indications are
that the bulk of the voters are not ready
to break away, and until they are ready
the best guess is that most of the Soutt's
political leaders will stay In the wait-and-
see camp.