Would Today's Republicans Nominate Any of These Republican Past Presidents?
After witnessing Republican anti-Labor, anti-health care and anti-education actions in States under their control; watching for years their Congressional attacks on all functions of government designed to protect the American public from business mis-and mal-feasance, as well as their love affair with ever increasing military expenditures; listening to their debates filled with calls to war, anti-immigrant hatred, embrace of religious discrimination, their fealty to the dogma of pro-corporate anti-regulation, and their ritualistic attacks on taxes of any kind, is it possible to believe that this reincarnation of the Know-Nothings would ever nominate someone with the following views?
Abraham Lincoln:
1. "Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar."
2."It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large portion of the fruits."
3. "I hold that while man exists, it his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."
Theodore Roosevelt:
1. "The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them whenever the need for such control is shown."
2. "For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The constitution guarantees protection to property and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation".
3. "I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective---a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."
4. "...It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for the political process; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditure for political purposes.....have supplied one of the principle sources of corruption in our political affairs."
5. "It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of the man's fitness for citizenship...We cannot afford to consider whether he is a Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile.....what we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man."
6. "I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property and human welfare. Normally, and in the long run the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property."
7. "...there is absolutely nothing to be said for a government by plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with 'the money touch', but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers."
William Howard Taft'
1. "I prefer an income tax....I am going to push the constitutional amendment, which will admit an income tax without questions...."
2. "I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interest....I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times...."
3. "We have passed the time of the laissez-faire school which believes the government ought to do nothing but run a police force."
Dwight David Eisenhower:
1. "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that political party again in our political history."
2. Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence---economic, political, even spiritual---is felt in every city, in every Statehouse, every office of the Federal Government....we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
3. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed..... The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement, We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. That is....the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron....Is there no other way the world may live?
4. "We are a people born of many peoples. Our culture, our skills, our very aspirations have been shaped by immigrants....and their sons and daughters...Sam Gompers from England, Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, Albert Einstein from Germany---and Booker T. Washington and Al Smith--and Marconi and Caruso---men of all nations and races and estates---they have made us what we are."
You be the judge as to whether any of these past Republican Presidents bears any resemblance to today's Republican Presidential aspirants; or, for that matter, anyone in today's Republican Party.