The Civil Rights Act became law 50 years ago this week.

Every American should be grateful it did and every American should wonder whether it could be enacted today. The Politico story attached here suggests it couldn’t. I tend to agree.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/why-the-civil-rights-act-couldnt-pass-today-108496.html

Look at the picture included on the link above and you’ll notice something we little of these days. You see Democratic and Republican lawmakers standing next to the president as he signs the landmark bill into law. These days? It’s politicians of one party or the other standing in front of the cameras.

Indeed, President Johnson knew as he signed the bill that he was committing an act that would change the political landscape — possibly forever.

LBJ was a rangy Texan who became president in a moment of extreme national heartache. He then vowed to carry forward the slain president’s agenda, which included passage of civil rights legislation.

He succeeded. President Johnson was well aware the cost politically that would fall on his Democratic Party, which had been based solidly in the South, where many Democratic senators and House members opposed the Civil Rights Act. That didn’t matter to LBJ. He knew he had to push Congress to enact a bill that guaranteed every American, regardless of race, the full rights of citizenship.

LBJ reportedly said as he signed the bill that it would “cost us the South.” It did. His Dixiecrat friends in the Senate warned him it would as he lobbied them to enact the bill.

It mattered only to LBJ that the country grant full civil rights to every American.

And think also that the president himself was from a state that once seceded from the Union to fight a civil war against the government over whether states had the inherent right to allow slavery to exist.

The Civil Rights Act changed the political landscape all right. It had to happen.