And as we've seen in the past 8 years and in the 12 years before Clinton, modern conservatives don't do a good job of running things. How can they if their goal is to do away with government? Wealthy conservatives don't need government because they can pay to have the things government does done by private business. And in fact they hate government because it takes their money in the form of taxes. That's why when they get in power the first thing they want to do is to cut taxes on themselves, their benefactors, and the businesses they own.
It wasn't always that way with Republicans though and there have been some good Republican Presidents, although there has never ever been a Republican led Congress that did anything much good for all of the people of this country. Since the birth of the Republican party there have been two good Republican Presidents and they are:
Teddy Roosevelt
and Abe Lincoln.Teddy was a great President because he saw the threat we faced as a nation from out of control corporations and he broke up some of the biggest of them while he was President. Unlike his modern Republican peers, he was committed to peace, at least while he was President, and his brokering of a peace deal between Japan and Russia won him a Nobel Peace prize. I'm not crazy about his love of shooting large animals for sport but hell, no one was perfect. It's important to note that Teddy left the Republican party and that he'd not be welcome in that party today is he tried to run for office due to his anti corporate views.
Abe Lincoln would not be welcome in the Republican party today either. His policy of working with people he disagreed with would not find a home in the 'our way or fuck off' Republican party of today. They would also have problems with him because he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the modern Republican party is perhaps the most racist institution around, and yes that's true even though they elected a token black man to be their leader, he's the exception that proves the rule.
If there was a Republican who was the same caliber of man that Teddy and Abe was I'd have no qualms or reservations about voting for one for President. Unfortunately the best they can offer is the drunken failure George W. Bush, the Mormon flip flopping hair do Mitt Romney, and the doddering old John McCain who would do and say anything to get elected because he felt like he was entitled to the office after all the years of his and his family's military service. It's said that the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt can only produce leaders who want to serve only themselves and their pals in big business and not the rest of us.
8 comments:
I think Ike deserves to be viewed at least as a decent President. He did build the highways and he warned about the military industrial complex. Maybe he would have been better if he had, I don't know, STOPPED IT!
You've just named two of my favorite three presidents (the other being FDR). Excellent points. I remember saying something similar to a coworker after Katrina: "this is what happens when you take people who avowedly hate government, hate the idea of government, and then put them in charge of it."
There's an excellent quote by G.K. Chesterton:
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
And Teddy was an accident. He got the vice president's slot because the moneyed interests wanted him out of the governor's office in New York. VP seemed like a good place to stick him where he'd be powerless and basically out of sight for at least 4 years. Then McKinley got shot, and Progressives suddenly had an ally in the White House.
Excellent points, Dr. MVM. There is no attempt to compromise anymore. At least not on the part of Republicans.
Agreed 100%.
I would think the rich would want the rank and file Americans healthy and happy so we could buy their crap, eat in their restaurants, fly around on their planes, and attend their pro sports franchises. We can't do that if we're sick and hungry.
I saw an excellent PBS (or was it the History Channel?) documentary on TR not long ago. Freaky history fact? A very young Teddy Roosevelt watched Lincoln's funeral procession from the upstairs window of his grandfather's NY home.
I'm with Station Agent. Ike was a decent man and I count him as one of the best presidents of my lifetime. He inherited a war we weren't going to win outright and ended it. Obama could learn a thing or two about how Ike handled Korea.
If whichever newscasters I was watching on Jan 20th are to be believed, TR was the only president not sworn in on a bible. He used a law book. Now that is separation of church and State.
I love how the republican's tried not running him, so he ran against them as an Independent and won the presidency :-)
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