Conservatives Determined to Win the White House — in 1964

Seriously.  Take a look at the parallels between today and 1964.

In 1964, GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater campaigned on the Constitutional right of restaurant owners to refuse service to Nigras and other undesirables.  He was also in favor of right-to-work laws and other union-busting tactics.  And he thought the very concept of Medicare was just appalling, un-American.  Medicare, according to Goldwater, was the equivalent of giving old people “free vacation resorts and a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink.”

Fast-forward fifty years.  Rand Paul has won the CPAC/teatard straw poll for 2016 presidential candidate.  And Rand Paul's views on today's issues are...[see previous paragraph]

Aside from the parallels between Rand Paul and Barry Goldwater, today's Republicans are re-fighting the same intra-party civil war that they were fighting fifty years ago.  Goldwater slammed President Eisenhower over the New Deal, even though the New Deal had been established by FDR twenty years earlier.  Goldwater's main theme was that Republicans should stand on their principles, stand up for what's “right” instead of compromising.  (Sound familiar?)

Goldwater's most famous campaign slogan was “In your heart you know he's right,” which got parodied into “In your heart you know he's White.”

And here's another parallel between then (going back a little further) and now.  In the years immediately before and after the 1930s Great Depression, the Supreme Court was a gang of corporate hacks, rubberstamping the Big Business agenda.  In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court overturned laws guaranteeing a minimum wage, protecting workers' rights to organize, and laws banning child labor.  Plus ca change...

Since there are so many parallels between today and 50-80 years ago, maybe the GOP presidential candidate in 2016 will go the way of their 1964 candidate.

One can hope.