Reply #44: If nothing has changed, then a Yes vote on IWR isn't sin qua non of...

[AP]

...a shameful career.

Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening were the only two senators dissenting. In the Senate in 1964 were the following people:

BAYH, Birch Evans
BOGGS, Thomas Hale, Sr.
BYRD, Robert Carlyle
CHURCH, Frank Forrester
DODD, Thomas Joseph
ERVIN, Samuel James, Jr.
FULBRIGHT, James William
GORE, Albert Arnold
GRUENING, Ernest
HUMPHREY, Hubert Horatio, Jr.
INOUYE, Daniel Ken
KEFAUVER, Carey Estes
KENNEDY, Edward Moore
LONG, Russell Billiu
MANSFIELD, Michael Joseph (Mike)
McCARTHY, Eugene Joseph
McGOVERN, George Stanley
MONDALE, Walter Frederick
MUSKIE, Edmund Sixtus
PROXMIRE, William
RIBICOFF, Abraham Alexander
RUSSELL, Richard Brevard, Jr.
SALINGER, Pierre Emil George
STENNIS, John Cornelius
TALMADGE, Herman Eugene

So, you tell me. Was the Tonking Gulf Resolution the defining moment of these politicians' careers? Not even McCarthy dissented, and he ran as an anti-Vietnam candidate!!!!

Humphrey, Kennedy, McCarthy, McGovern, Mondale -- how many people refused to even consider them for President when they ran because of their vote on the TGR? And if they did, would that have made sense?

As for RFK, he may have had an opening vs LBJ becaue of Vietnam, but his campaign avoided the issue of Vietnam, which is why the students didn't support him. Now, anybody who thinks RFK would have lost had he been nominated needs to think about this. And you would also need to think about the fact that we did run an anti-war candidate who did lose.