I keep thinking: What would Dwight Eisenhower say about any of this?

[thucythucy]

About his party fostering a treasonous ex-president.

About his party attacking the FBI and the Justice Department.

About his party attacking educators from Kindergarten teachers to college professors.

Of course, he ignored and thus enabled the McCarthy witch hunts until "Tail Gunner Joe" attacked the army.

And he did authorize the overthrow of democracies in Iran and Guatemala, and gave us Richard Nixon as a national figure--though to his credit he actively disliked Tricky Dick.

But Ike always struck me as a basically decent man and certainly a dedicated patriot.

I keep thinking how appalled he would be at the current state of his party.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Not much, IMHO.

Eisenhower was basically impotent against Senator Joe McCarthy in the Fifties.

[Celerity]

4. McCarthy was publicly ruined by Dec 1954, less than 2 years into Eisenhower's 8 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

snip

On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to "condemn" McCarthy on both counts by a vote of 67 to 22. The Democrats present unanimously favored condemnation and the Republicans were split evenly. The only senator not on record was John F. Kennedy, who was hospitalized for back surgery; Kennedy never indicated how he would have voted. Immediately after the vote, Senator H. Styles Bridges, a McCarthy supporter, argued that the resolution was "not a censure resolution" because the word "condemn" rather than "censure" was used in the final draft. The word "censure" was then removed from the title of the resolution, though it is generally regarded and referred to as a censure of McCarthy, both by historians and in Senate documents. McCarthy himself said, "I wouldn't exactly call it a vote of confidence." He added, "I don't feel I've been lynched." Indiana Senator William E. Jenner, one of McCarthy's friends and fellow Republicans likened McCarthy's conduct, however, to that of "the kid who came to the party and peed in the lemonade."

Final years

After his condemnation and censure, Joseph McCarthy continued to perform his senatorial duties for another two and a half years. His career as a major public figure, however, had been ruined. His colleagues in the Senate avoided him; his speeches on the Senate floor were delivered to a near-empty chamber or they were received with intentional and conspicuous displays of inattention. The press that had once recorded his every public statement now ignored him, and outside speaking engagements dwindled almost to nothing. Eisenhower, finally freed of McCarthy's political intimidation, quipped to his Cabinet that McCarthyism was now "McCarthywasm".

[gibraltar72]

2. The last honorable major Republican.

[Raven123]

3. You mean the guy who added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and

……made “In God We Trust” our national motto?

I don’t know what he would think, but he certainly helped lay the foundation for Christofacism.

[thucythucy]

5. I didn't know about that.

Certainly not points in his favor.

[Raven123]

7. As a man of his time, he was understandably anti-Communist.

However, he like many conflated (and still do!) religion with government and sought at some level to associate Christianity with freedom, as if they were interdependent.

[thucythucy]

10. Didn't he call his memoir of World War II

"Crusade in Europe"? So the religious imagery was a deep part of him.

[CTyankee]

12. I never saw him that way, but I was a kid during his presidency.

I do remember the fanatics, like Joe McCarthy, and how Ike was a fatherly figure and highly regarded for his WW2 service, undoubtedly a true leader of the democratic world. Republicans today would throw him out of the party. I never got the religious vibe from him. If anything his leadership was calming and without the crazies. Joe McCarthy was one of the crazies.

I had family members who fought in WW2 so that memory was strong. Eisenhower had great stature with them.

[thucythucy]

14. I also have WWII veterans as family.

Eisenhower was a great man in their estimation. I can see the flaws, but compared to what we have now he was a giant. Also, Ike was a great admirer of FDR. You won't find a contemporary Republican willing to say the same.

[Hekate]

11. And integrated Southern schools

He got that started. He called up the state national guard to do so. — I remember.

[JHB]

6. He was appalled at the current state of some of his party even back then.

Remember, this sort of conspiratorial wingnuttery existed back then too, including those who considered the New Deal "socialist" and in 1952 were looking forward to the opportunity to roll it back or demolish it.

They'd engineered the rules of the '52 nomination g convention to favor their guy Taft, but were outmaneuvered by eastern liberal Republicans like Dewey, undoing their rule-engineering so that Ike would be the nominee.

Ike was popular enough that they were kept in check, but they started getting full-on eliminationist when they lost the 1960 and 1964 elections under circumstances they regarded as "stolen".

[BlueIdaho]

8. ANTIFA Ike

Would be pissed.

[yellowdogintexas]

9. Any tremors near his grave? He must be spinning like a top in there

He would hate this so much! I have thought about this for 6 years.
Imagine the reaction of the #1 ANTIFA to all of this.

From another viewpoint:

More than likely his reaction could not be quoted due to the long string of forbidden language. No one can top the military for exceptional and inventive profanity.

[liberaltrucker]

13. I think he'd assemble a firing squad