No. of Recommendations: 7
Erm, there were more democrats in both chambers of Congress.
As I pointed out in my post. The GOP voted for it in higher percentages, but Democrats voted for it in higher numbers. It's hard to remember, looking back from modern ideological monoliths, that back in the day the political parties contained far more divergent factions than they do know. Democrats were simultaneously the biggest drivers for the CRA and also had a sizable faction against the CRA. Both things were true. A larger percentage of the GOP - to their credit - made the right choice. But the Democrats were the driving force behind the CRA being enacted and contained the biggest obstacle to it being adopted.
Oooo, nice try. Goldwater wasn't a racist, but statements like this purport to indicate that he was.
You're responding to someone else's argument - not mine.
For my point, it doesn't matter whether Goldwater was personally a racist - or whether there were parts of the CRA he would have supported if they were standing alone. Rather, it's that the GOP was willing to choose him as the nominee despite his opposition to the CRA. It's a pretty clear signal about where the two parties were institutionally in response to the passage of the CRA - the GOP was very clear that it would not reject the people who opposed the CRA.
It's worth pointing out for a moment that Goldwater's position was still bad. He was no Bull Connor (or James Eastland, if you prefer), and we might very well decide that he didn't have the individualized animosity towards black people that motivated those avowed racists. But he still decided that the Civil Rights Act shouldn't keep people from having segregated lunch counters or firing people just because they were black. He still decided that because the CRA did to that, it was bad enough that he couldn't support the bill at all. That prohibiting people from refusing to let black folks in their stores, or from refusing to hire them, was so insupportable that it warranted tanking the CRA altogether. Whether you think it's racist, it's still a position that disdains vast swatches of what we consider to be basic human rights. His support for civil rights might have been non-zero - but it was so diminished and crabbed as to be morally reprehensible, even if he wasn't as horrible as the Stennises and Maddoxes of the era.
That's a terrible position. Goldwater was criticized for taking it, and he deserved that criticism. And to his credit, he regretted that position later in his life. He took a terrible stand, which he later recognized - but the GOP made him the nominee anyway. Which tells you something important about where the parties were at that time.
