Most of what we need to think about is stuff at is so obvious that it isn’t noticed. In the 1950s conservatives could have ruled America, but they sold out all principle for two words:
Republican and Democrat.
The conservative majority was forgotten at presidential nominations because they had thrown away their vote. The Solid South would vote for a Communist if he had the Democratic label and conservatives outside the South would vote for a NAMBLA candidate if he had a Republican label.
Only on The House Un-American Activities Committee did you see how America COULD have been governed. Party made no real difference. HUAC was run by Dixiecrats and Ashbrook conservatives.
But the rest of the government was run to appeal to those who actually VOTED, the big states who had no loyalty to either party.
I said this was criminal then and I say it was criminal now.
A ticket of Taft and Byrd could have ruled this country and everybody knew it. But all those glorious old Heroic Conservatives wouldn’t support it.
Northern conservatives agreed with Senator Byrd of Virginia on everything, with Tom Dewey on almost nothing. But when the salvation of their people came up against the word Republican, it was screw everything.
Exactly the same was true of conservative Democrats. The only people who thought only of policy were the liberals.
All the professional commentators said this showed “The vote is in the middle of the road.”
But then as today, the people who were really ELECTED to office were NOT middle of the road. The House and Senate, then as now, were solidly left or solidly right, with a very few ELECTED who were in between.
What is and was called “the middle” was a result of the fact that conservative voters would gladly sell their mothers into prostitution for the party label.
What stopped civil rights legislation for so long was that Southern senators filibustered and Northern Republicans would not vote for closure. The media screamed about this, but my brother put it into plain English: “The Eastern media is complaining because the National Will is being blocked by senators from the South, the West and the Middle West.”
In other words, everywhere outside the East, the party labels were allowed to rule over all else. Due to conservative Wordism, the East WAS the National Will.
We lost America to two words.
