It was said of the Bourbon kings of France that they kept making the same mistakes because they never learned.
The same comment might be made about the Republican Party. If there is anyone subject Republicans ought to be expert on, it should be how to prevent a depression. Republicans were hung with the depression of the 1930s, and they have had 40 years to figure out what caused it and how to prevent another one. There could be no more important purpose on which to spend their campaign money.
Unfortunately, the election returns last week proved that the Republicans have again struck out on the issues of overriding import ance to all Americans – namely, inflation, high prices, tight money, jobs, and unemployment.
It is true that the previous Democratic Administrations initiated the policies of cheapening our dollar by taking away its gold backing and allowing foreigners to take our gold out of the country, gigantic foreign and domestic giveaways, and special-interest laws that caused U.S. factories and jobs to move to foreign countries.
But the Nixon and Ford Administrations continued and expanded those same costly programs with the largest peacetime Federal defi cits in history, bigger and more expensive giveaways of our food and industrial plants to Communist countries that don’t pay for them, and “a total lack of understanding of the economic issues bothering the American people.
A Republican Administration has been in the White House for six years, and you can’t blame the voters for blaming the Party in power. The voters want straight talk and solutions, not WIN buttons, buck passing, accusations that the people are to blame, and tax-increase proposals.
Republican fortunes were further aggravated by the way many Republican voters stayed away from the polls because of their belief that the Party has been captured at the top by Rockefeller liberals who were not elected by the people, and whose allegiance to each other, cemented by cash and favors, is stronger than their loyalty to the country or the Party.
The Republican Administration and National Committee chose to ignore the polls that show that, whereas only 24 percent of the voters classify themselves as Republicans, 38 percent of the voters currently consider themselves conservative (with a much larger percentage “undecided” than liberal). It would appear that the Rockefeller liberals would rather persist in their liberal and spending programs than either (a) win elections or (b) please the majority of voters.
The history of third parties in America is that they have gone nowhere fast. The one exception was the Republican Party which survived and grew because it came to grips with the big issue of the last century, namely, slavery.
Today the voters are hungry for the right kind of leadership. If that demand is not met by one of the-two major parties, we can expect one of them to be displaced by a new party – in1 the near future.
