The Winners

When the sparring and slugging of the civil rights fight finally ended last week, the political judges at ringside began picking the winners. The consensus, pending confirmation at the polls: the Republicans, as a party, by a decision--and Vice President Richard Nixon, as an individual, by a knockout.

The original bill was sent to Capitol Hill by a Republican Administration and supported there by a heavy Republican majority. But Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson took it over and nearly succeeded, with softening amendments, in making it a Democratic Party bill. That bill pleased hardly anyone: Southern popular sentiment was clearly against any bill at all, while the North held its nose at the weak Johnson version. In the final result, it .was House Republicans and Assistant Attorney General Bill Rogers who managed to put some teeth back into the bill.

Through the fight, long after G.O.P. Senate Leader William Knowland had thrown in the towel and when even House Republican Leader Joe Martin was considering retreat, Vice President Nixon punched hard for a meaningful bill. The verdict on his efforts was best rendered by his opponents. Just when the Senate was about to pass his watered-down bill, Democrat Johnson arose to attack Nixon for leading "a concerted propaganda campaign" against it. And last week, after the final vote on the civil rights bill had been taken, Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, the most influential Southerner of them all, paid Nixon a bitter sort of tribute. Said Russell: the civil rights bill will be enforced by "political-minded" Attorney General Herbert Brownell who, in turn, will be "constantly pressed by the Vice President of the U.S. to apply the great powers of the law to the Southern states at such places and in such time and manner as the N.A.A.C.P., of which the Vice President is the most distinguished member, may demand."

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