Campaign Donors, Political Supporters, Political Donations Quotes
He was summarizing a political principle that he observed Richard M. Nixon follow both in domestic politics and internationally.
Kennedy and Nixon served in the House together, and occasionally members would contribute to the campaigns of friends of the opposite party. There was, in those days, more comity between the parties.
In 1904, candidate Theodore Roosevelt solicited campaign funds from leading businessmen. After he was elected, he was viewed to have "turned" on them since he attempted to curtail monopolistic excess, instituted regulation, and made other business reforms. This is the original remark, but another, more sanitized version appeared in New York Times and other places as: “We bought him and he did not stay bought.”
The question has always been of adherents of this viewpoint, “How do we decide which side is the more civilized. The Nazi Germans thought they were the most civilized people in the world and killed more than 22 million people demonstrating their civilization which most others looked upon as savagery.
A century afterwards, the biggest change was that the price of the Senate seat had gone up and the Political Action Committees had joined the Party Treasuries as the recipients of the money In the early 21st century almost all the Senators were multi-millionaires.
The scandals of the past of CIA lies to Congress and the President, mistakes they had made, and a raft of illegal activities, had eroded support for the agency. The reason for the minimal funding was that, and not the lack of interests. We still had the NSA and the Military Intelligence Agencies which had not been involved in the CIA scandals
McGovern partisans were hostile to the Congressman in his own home district:
With a professionalized all volunteer military, most of whom came from just a few socio-economic strata of our society, wars at the time were fought and the risks and burdens borne by a small part of American society. The rest of society, unlike the Second World War did not experience any change in their style or standard of living.
That particular Libertarian platform called for the abolition / repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Federal election Commission and campaign finance laws. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
