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Show Southern 'Bolt' Mostly Talk From time to time talk of a southern bolt from the Demo- ( cratic party crops up. j This leads some party members to say extreme things and j to suggest extreme remedies. Even the Democratic National Chairman Paul M. Butler has of late suggested that the southern (Continued on Page Four) j s i ! f I Southern 'Bolt' Mostly Talk (Continued from Page 1) Democrats go head and get out of the parry. In light of this it is interesting to note a dispatch from the deep south from the Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor reports from Mississippi that while some of the Souths representatives in Congress in both the house and the Senate breathe threats of a bolt, those southerners at the bedrock of the region's political strength, the county courthouse, are singularly unmoved. . c'j These county politicians come into more intimate contact with southern voters. Their political sensibilities are more sharply attuned to the overtones and undertones of the South. None report any serious or significant disaffection among the rank and file of the Southern Democratic wing at least in the old south. , This conclusion is based, the Monitor continues, on talks with local political leaders and the voters themselves in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and northern Louisiana. These states along with Georgia and South Carolina make up the hard core of the southern Democratic wing and is the area where the 1948 Dixie revolt started. Even the revolt against the candidacy of President Harry S. Truman was not unanimous in the south. Georgia stayed well within the Democratic fold and still has not voted anything but Democratic since the reconstruction. The current political panorama in the south is confused more than usual by the race problem. Desegregation and negro suffrage have intensified the southern feeling against the northern north-ern more liberal wing of the party. But southerners note that this hostility often finds more expression in Congress or in close proximity thereto than back home. 1 |