Not So Civil, Definitely Not Right

This week is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.  Politico's Todd Purdum argues that the legislation would be blocked by Republicans today, causing no small amount of chest puffing among "principled" conservatives, but Doug Mataconis agrees with him:

There are really two issues at play in Purdum’s analysis, but they both tend to support his argument that it would be difficult if not impossible for any President to push through legislation like this Civil Rights Act today.

At the top of the list, of course, is the fact that the kind of bipartisanship that existed in 1964 when the Act was passed simply doesn’t exist in Congress today. Back then 80% of the Republicans in the House and 82% of Republicans in the Senate joined with their Democratic counterparts to pass the bill. Additionally, the bill likely would not have made it through Congress at all without the help of Republicans in the House like Kuchel and McCulloch and Senate Republicans such as Everett Dirksen, who worked across the aisle to reach a compromise that broke the 54 day filibuster against the bill that had been launched by Southern Democrats. Does anyone realistically see something like that happening in today’s day and age? Perhaps if it were the case that the issue involved were something of immediate importance brought on by crisis this would happen, and indeed it did happen in the wake of the September 11th attacks in the case of both the Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Terrorists and the PATRIOT Act. For almost any other type of legislation, it seems unlikely that the kind of cross-party and cross-chamber cooperation that Congress demonstrated half a century ago would be possible today.

In addition to the decline in bipartisanship, but certainly one of the reasons for it, is the way in which the Republican Party has changed over the past 50 years. The “moderate” Republicans like Dirksen who were behind the Civil Rights Act from the start barely exist anymore. While those moderates predominantly came from the Northeast and Midwest, today’s Republicans are largely a product of the South and the West. That geographic shift has also been accompanied by an ideological shift in the party that has made it far more conservative that it used to be. Indeed, it is beyond question that the Southern Democrats who were the primary opponents would, in most cases, likely be Republicans today. That’s not to say that every Republican would oppose something like the Civil Rights Act, but some would and, as we have seen when it comes to issues ranging from immigration to voting rights to such mundane issues as the budget, that small minority in the GOP is able to wield a lot of power over party leaders who obviously know better when it comes to issues like this. Senator Dirksen and Congressmen Kuchel and McCulloch never had to face that kind of opposition within their own party. If they had, things might have unfolded very differently.

Certainly the Rand Paul wing of the GOP would find it to be an intolerable assault on the rights of business owners to discriminate.  Today's GOP has no ability to govern, they simply lurch from one reactionary pogrom against whatever group they hate today (Latinos, African-Americans, LGBTQ Americans, non evangelical Christians, Muslims, poor people, etc) to another, screaming outrage all the while.

Of course they would lack the courage to pass the Civil Rights Act.  You have only to look towards their absolute refusal to vote on immigration reform of fixing the Voting Rights Act to see that...and the way they treat President Obama, the "Kenyan Usurper".

There are no moderate Republicans in America, only Tea Party nutjobs and the cowards who enable them.