Those were the days my friend - Remember when?

[packman]

[John1956PA]

1. I was born on the weekend near that convention. n/t

[2naSalit]

2. Ever notice how...

You rarely hear any R wax nostalgic about this guy?

[KPN]

20. Great observation. I never thought about that, but you are spot on! Too bad there aren't

many -- if any -- like Ike or his fellow Republican colleagues at the time these days.

[LakeVermilion]

3. Because the southern racists were still in the Democratic Party.

Hubert Humphrey helped to chase them out of the party with his speech targeting the “Dixiecrats” in 1948. Look what advancement they brought to the Republicans!

[hydrolastic]

4. Then the rich took over the GOP and they are where they are today.

This makes me wonder how are the Republicans going to survive in the future? We know what they do every time. Tax cuts for the rich Wars funded or started. Facist ideas permeate the party.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

9. Taxpayer money for war and the Rich....taxpayers are being fleeced, and made to enjoy

the ramming by a pablum feeding media.

Eat up! Go to sleep taxpayer…don’t march in the streets as in France to get fairness and reason for you unwashed masses…that’s a lot of work!

Let the anger go, wait for the trickle down from our unzipped designer jeans!

They just Laffer at your struggles for change.

[SouthernDem4ever]

10. They are trying to survive by being fascist

Suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, continually lie with the help of a few media outlets to your constituents by medicating them in hate, etc. It's been working pretty well.

[Goonch]

5. 👇👇👇

[liberalla]

6. Wow. That's a Republican I would vote for? It feels weird to say that.

[calimary]

19. He's the last Republican president for whom I have a positive impression.

I was too young to remember much about him, though. Wasn’t keeping track yet.

[liberalla]

24. I'd heard good things about him before, and I remember reading about his speech

where he warned of the "military industrial complex" becoming dangerous to our government. So I had a positive feeling for that, but to see the platform laid out like the OP meme shows was really a surprise.

He was before my time too. Both my parents were R, and both served in the Navy in WW2 (where they met), but politics was not really discussed when I was growing up. I didn't have a strong feeling about it, and I had no idea what the different parties stood for. That came much later for me.

[Meadowoak]

27. Ike was more progressive than Elizabeth Warren.

[OAITW r.2.0]

7. Compare with the 1952 platform and those from 1960 onward...

IKE had total control of the Party in 1956. And I believe his time as Commander of Allied forces fundamentally changed his perspective of what this country owed all Americans for their contribution to stop Fascism in WW2.

[tiredtoo]

8. Yep

And the John Birch Society called him a Communist.

[Demnation]

11. Yes. But this was also in the midst of the Joe McCarthy lunacy. R's ever and always.

[Raven123]

12. Interesting from the guy who added "one nation under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance

….. and we are now living the rest of the story

[MuseRider]

13. WE LIKE IKE!

I was only 3 in 1956 so I do not remember anything about him when he was president. BUT, being from Kansas we were pretty proud of him. I do remember his funeral. I was in High School and in Band class but we all had to gather around a TV and watch the coverage for most of the day.

[karin_sj]

14. Wow

The complete and utter opposite of their current platform.

[republianmushroom]

15. Yep, then they turn their back on their base and became what we see today.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Where I grew up in Southern Connecticut I remember billboards from 1956 . . . .

. . . . with the slogan "56 - the year to fix" referring to infrastructure including Ike's Interstate Highway System.

[MagickMuffin]

17. Well Ike was an Antifa President

But he was America’s Antifa!

[Warpy]

18. They couldn't get elected dog catcher unless they said this stuff

but reading Ayn Rand was already making them meaner, that's where Richard Nixon came from.

And once Reagan brought in the Jesus Jumpers, it was all over.

worship the rich, crush everybody else, and no compromise, ever.

That's what happened.

[philly_bob]

23. Thanks for pointing out the importance of Ayn Rand

in America's rightward movement.

[ificandream]

21. Can't say I remember this... I was only 4 though most of that year. :)

[Silent3]

22. Back in Ike's day, I can easily imagine myself having voted Republican sometimes, especially...

...if I lived in the south, home to so many racist "Dixiecrats" who later later migrated to the Republican party.

Republicans were generally still more business-friendly, and more labor hostile than Democrats back then, but the differences weren't always so stark and doctrinaire, and liberal and moderate Republicans actually existed.

[GeoWilliam750]

25. If one reads the 1956 Republican platform

And compares it to Bernie Sanders....

Who is further left?

[joshdawg]

26. Eisenhower, the last decent

republican President of the U.S.

Chances are there will never be another decent republican President. Well, there are two: slim and none. None has the inside track.

[GenThePerservering]

28. That was before the parties flipped, though

over civil rights due to the Southern Strategy.

The Dixiecrats "defected" with Strom Thurmond, segregationist, as their putative leader in the late 40s, but it was with the civil rights act that the rot really set in.

“I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come.” - LBJ