The ancient one of the Senate, 91-year-old Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former ardent segregationist and currently in bad health, made it back to his beloved chamber on Thursday to vote `yes’ for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Think about that one. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a senator who was so opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that he filibustered against the measure for 14 hours on the Senate floor, decides in 2009 to vote for someone named Sotomayor to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. This is truly a great country when someone like Byrd can make such a journey from once vowing never to serve with African-Americans in the military to now voting for someone who will become the first Hispanic to ever serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Byrd and every other Democrat present for the Senate vote on Sotomayor voted `yes’ for her confirmation. Ted Kennedy could not make the vote for health reasons but would have surely voted for the nominee. That made for 59 `yes’ votes for Sotomayor on the Democratic side, and it would have been 60 if Kennedy had been able to attend.

On the Republican side of the aisle, nine senators voted for Sotomayor. Republican senators from Maine and New Hampshire, down to Florida, and back up to Indiana and Ohio in the Midwest voted `yes’ for Sotomayor. One of those GOP senators, George Voinovich of Ohio said, “There is no significant finding against her. I will support her. I’ll be proud for her, the community she represents and the American dream she shows is possible.”

All told, the vote for Sotomayor was 68-31 to the affirmative, meaning 59 Democratic senators voted `yes,’ as did nine GOP senators, with 31 Republican senators voting `no.’  All the Dems voted for Sotomayor, even those of the more conservative persuasion such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana.

Midwest GOP traditional conservatives Dick Lugar of Indiana, Kit Bond of Missouri and Voinovich of Ohio voted `aye,’ so did Maine Republican senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, did the same, as did southern GOP senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Mel Martinez of  Florida.

From Montana through the Midwest up to the far Northeast and down South, plenty of `yeas’ for Sotomayor. And yet, given the sweep of support of Sotomayor in both parties, the two senators from Texas, both Republicans, voted `no.’

 Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Supreme Court nominee with more judicial experience than any high court nominee of the last 100 years. They couldn’t bring themselves to support a nominee who received the highest rating and recommendation from the American Bar Association. They couldn’t bring themselves to vote `yes’ for a nominee who has sided 95 percent of the time with her Republican-appointed colleagues/judges on the federal panel where she currently serves.

Why?  The roughly half-million Republicans who vote in Texas primaries - and the group of Texans these two senators care about most - wanted no part of a Supreme Court nominee named Sonia Sotomayor appointed by a president named Barack Obama. Nearly half of Texas Republicans, according to one poll, believe it’s a good idea for their state to consider seceding from the Union with Obama as the president. There’s little doubt that over 50 percent of Texas Republicans believe Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, or maybe Pakistan or Somalia. How about Haiti? Yea, maybe Obama was born in Haiti.

So, all that being the case, did anyone seriously doubt Cornyn and Hutchison would vote against Sotomayor given the core beliefs of their party’s base? Whether it’s immigration or any other hot button cultural issue, Cornyn and Hutchison do what their party’s base tells them to do, even in the face of state’s sweeping demographic changes that will propel Texas toward being a majority Hispanic state by 2050.

History was made in the U.S. Senate on Thursday. The first Hispanic - and only the third woman - to be ever confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court received the support of her nation. Hutchison and Cornyn were on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, the old former segregationist and ex-Klansman, ailing with the bad health of his 91 years, made it a point to be there to vote `yes’ for Sotomayor - and against the past sins of racial intolerance.

Meanwhile, the two Texas senators looked on, going against the fast-moving currents of a new day, and stuck in the yesterday of  fading cultural views that even Robert Byrd knows have no future in the America of the 21st Century.

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