SPEAKER RYAN - PLEASE CUT THE HYPOCRISY

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday delivered a scathing rebuke of  Donald Trump, warning that the GOP presidential front-runner cannot engage in "evasion" or "games" when it comes to rejecting white supremacy groups.*

Well, wasn't that the goal of the Southern Strategy - to win over the white supremacists to enable Republicans to win elections?  Of course you are not supposed to admit it out loud, but a big slug of the Republican Party ARE White Supremacists.  There just are not enough wealthy people to win elections, especially the Presidency. Who is Ryan kidding?  I'm sorry to say that Trump is with the base of the Republican Party.  He is a follower not a leader.

The Republican from Louisiana, Representative Steve Scalise, is the House majority whip, and he finally admitted yesterday that he did appear at an international white supremacist conference in 2002 as an “honored guest and speaker.” The organization is the brainchild of avowed white supremacist David Duke with an innocent-sounding name European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO). Prior to adopting the name EURO, Duke’s white supremacist organization was called the National Organization for European American Rights (NOFEAR), and was proudly touted as a “civil rights” organization fighting the alleged “massive discrimination” faced by whites from the nation’s growing population of minorities.**

I object to Republicans saying they are the party of Lincoln.  They used to be but no longer.  I was a Republican before Goldwater and was proud to be a Republican because we voted overwhelmingly for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.***  Can you imaging the Republican Party doing anything like that today?  Today Republicans spend their time thinking of ways to get around the Voting Rights Act and, instead, find ways to decrease the number of minority voters.

*  http://thehill.com/homenews/house/271267-ryan-denounces-trump-over-kkk-controversy-there-can-be-no-evasion-and-no-games
As for 112-24
** http://www.politicususa.com/2014/12/30/gop-house-leader-honored-guest-speaker-white-supremacist-conference.html
*** In the House, Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 138 for  and only 34 no.   The Senate Republicans voted for the Act 27 for and only 6 against: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
As for the Voting Rights Act of 1965,  Republicans voted 112 for and  24 against in the House and Senate voted 30 for and only 1 against: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

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)

REPUBLICANS RESIGNED TO BEING MINORITY PARTY?

The core of the Republican Party are the wealthy and business people.  These people are not numerous enough to win elections so the core undertook a Southern Strategy to incorporate a large conservative group that had been the Solid South of the Democratic Party.  This move changed both the Republican and Democratic Parties in many ways, but the Democratic Party became more socially liberal and the Republican Party became more socially conservative.  For example, it was Republicans that put the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the top (Republicans voted 27 for and 6 against in the Senate; 136 to 35 for the House).*  Even in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill (30 to 1 in the Senate and 111 to 20 in the House for the conference Report).**  This change also brought the religious right or so-called Evangelicals into the Republican Party, a group that had a lot of religious fervor.  The Republican Party also attracted many white working class people who viewed initiatives for Blacks, women, and other minorities as being unfair.  This coalition is big but seemingly not large enough to win national elections.

Perhaps the last straw was President Obama not only winning the electoral vote for his second term but the numerical vote as well.  Republicans were primed to fight the election because they were sure that Mitt Romney would win the numerical vote which would seem to be a move to the popular vote rather than electoral votes.  Thus the Republican Party seems to be resigned to being the minority party  and have abandoned a move to the popular vote endeavor.  So what can they do to win major elections?  They already had mastered the art of Gerrymandering congressional (redrawing congressional districts to favor one party) districts to win a sizable majority in the national House of Representatives even though the Democrats received more popular votes.  The Gerrymandering story with the state Senate and Houses have had even more success, if anything.  There was an original move to Gerrymander presidential electoral votes by district rather than state-wide voting, but this attempt has so far been abandoned, for now, by all except Pennsylvania (as of the date of this writing).

Perhaps Republicans can take some solace in that even though there are more Blue States than Red States (20 to 12 in 2012),*** there are 30 Republican governors and only 22 Democratic governors.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 (The vote among the South Representatives was 7 for and 97 against in the original House version.  The South here is the 11 states in the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.)
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act
888 http://www.gallup.com/poll/160175/blue-states-outnumber-red-states.aspx