Sex and the GOP, circa 1963

Fascinating historical tidbit from Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters (which should be on your must-read list if it's not already). It describes theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's concern about the possible effect of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller's divorce on national politics:

"Your former choir boy, Barry Goldwater, is cutting a wide swath," [Niebuhr] wrote Bishop Will Scarlett. "Interesting how Rockefeller's lack of private morality has made him a dead duck and given Barry his chance." Niebuhr thought Rockefeller's spicy divorce and remarriage might have the political effect of turning the Republicans into "a reactionary party" built upon white voters in the South and West.

And of course that's exactly the Republican Party we have today, forty years later. Pretty shrewd prophecy, especially for 1963, when Democrats still ruled the "solid South" and it was a tossup as to which major party (if either) would be willing to actively support equal rights for "Negroes."