Word: bilbo
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...Bilbo Draws Fire...
...good morals" to the majority of Senate members may be highly inflammatory to the public. A censure motion against William Langer of North Dakota for obstructing Senate business and a move to refuse seating to the vituperative Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi were both doomed to failure. The Republicans who insisted that Bilbo not be seated violated an old Senate tradition: that Senators whose credentials are in question be allowed to take their seats, pending a report of the Committee on Privileges and Elections. In Bilbo's case the unprecedented tactics were necessary because Southern Democrats who opposed Bilbo...
...Bilbo almost won out. He became violently ill before the showdown on his seating and died seven months later. If he had lived, it is almost certain that the upper Chamber would have voted to seat him, because in retrospect many Senators realized that failure to grant Bilbo a committee hearing was an unjust violation of traditional Senate procedure. These Senators, then, were supporting an unsavory colleague because he had received unfair treatment. In doing this, they almost lost sight of the fact that Bilbo himself made unfairness a sword, and abusive language his cutting edge...
When the Senate decided to form a committee to investigate the charges that Flanders and Morse levied at McCarthy, it disappointed Flanders himself but avoided the Bilbo pitfall--the residual sympathy which even a despicable Senator always receives when his traditional rights are violated. Tradition, for once, is working in favor of McCarthy's enemies. By holding hearings in an orderly, judicial manner the Warkins committee allowed McCarthy to cock the gun with which he seems destined to shoot himself...
South. In any case, Gartin certainly struck the right chord for many voters. One farmer summed up: "Gartin's going to beat Jim Eastland by a tremendous vote. When he mentioned Bilbo, that's what will carry him all the way to the Senate...