Charles Lane: The Romney lesson - The Washington Post

Gov. George Romney - 1962

It is important to remember that in 1962 George Romney was Michigan Governor when bipartisanship had meaning.  That was because a large section of the Republican Party was still the party of Lincoln and the Democratic Party was still the party of George McClellan and the southern segregationists.  I sometimes ask myself - if I had been born a southern Republican committed to civil rights, when would I have left the Republican Party?  Probably when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. = GWC
Charles Lane: The Romney lesson - The Washington Post:

"How different history might have been if George Romney had prevailed in the intra-party debates of his day. The 1960s were a time of robust competition for black votes between Republicans and Democrats. Richard Nixon won about a third of African American votes in both 1960 and 1968. This is one reason the period was so fruitful, legislatively, for civil rights. Romney was a leader of the GOP’s then-sizable liberal-to-moderate wing. He was pro-business, chilly toward labor unions — and believed civil rights was both good policy and, for Republicans, good politics. He fiercely resisted Barry Goldwater’s right-wing takeover of the party in 1964 and, after his own 1968 campaign for president fizzled, joined Nixon’s administration as housing secretary. In that role, Romney launched the “Open Communities” initiative, which made federal grants for local infrastructure conditional on fair housing."

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