SUPPORTING FISCAL CONSERVATISM

In case there are those that read my previous post (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/04/three-republicans-who-wont-get.html) that may have gotten the opinion that I hate conservatives, I do not hate conservatives and I do support a policy, for example, of balancing the Federal budget over a business cycle (but not annually).  I point out, however, that having a positive cash flow in our government is something we rarely have done.  No Republican has done even this loose balancing since Eisenhower (who had it twice), not Nixon, not Ford, not Reagan, not H.W. Bush, and not H.W. Bush.

In fact I was a Republican up until Barry Goldwater.  After he got the nomination I said to my fellow Republicans at a meeting that now we should all pull together and not just beat up on Rockefeller.  Someone replied that if I was such a Rocky lover, why didn't I become a Democrat?  So I did and have to admit that Democrats have more fun.  Later I was to break from the Democratic Party because I agreed with President Ford's pardoning of Nixon.  The Democrats were setting up to worry the Nixon issue to death, just like Republicans are doing with Benghazi now, and not do any work.

I think that Republicans putting the 1964 Civil Rights Act over the top was their finest hour.  The Act was much broader than just applying to Blacks but included sex, race, and religion as well as color.  Through the leadership of Republican Everett Dirkson, in the end 27 Republican Senators voted for the Senate version of the bill and only 6 against it.  Also 138 Republican Representatives voted for the House version and 34 against whereas 96 Democrats voted against it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964).  Can you imagine that happening today when a comprehensive immigration bill cannot even come to the House floor?

The same might be said for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when 30 Republican Senators voted for it and only 2 against, 112 Republican Representatives voted for the bill and 24 against (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965).

Of course these bills were in the days when the Solid South was in the Democratic Party and before the Southern Strategy when they switched to the Republican Party.  I consider Dirkson who shepherded both bills through the Senate to be a hero, though he was a supporter of Joe McCarthy and the Vietnam War..  Dirkson is also famous for saying, "A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there and pretty soon you are talking about real money." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Dirksen)