If the 2012 choice were an Eisenhower Republican or a DLC Dem...

grasswire

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Mon Jan-25-10 06:24 PM
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If the 2012 choice were an Eisenhower Republican or a DLC Dem...

...who would you support?

Here's an example of the way Eisenhower thought in 1953, for the youngsters:

"Every gun that's 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 are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It's spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Our own DU Magistrate wrote this in 2006 about Ike:

"Opposed two elements in the Republican Party of his day.
He opposed the isolationists, represented by Sen. Taft of Ohio, popularly known at the time as "Mr. Republican" for his stature in the Party. This wing was so firm in its old-line views it was even somewhat reluctant to engage in the Cold War, as this required foreign entanglements and commitments beyond the shores of the U.S. itself, though it was firmly hostile to Communism.

He opposed the claque pressing for immediate war with the Soviet Union, and their propagandas of Soviet predominance in strategic weapons, typified best by Gen. LeMay, then chief of the Strategic Air Command. Ideologues of this claque included Phylis Schlafly, and are the real ancestors of the modern Reppublican Party.

Gen. Eisenhower came from a generation of resolutely a-political regular officers, many of whom took that ideal so seriously they refrained even from voting. Most of these men were, naturally enough, authoritarian and traditionalist in their personal views. His commitment to upholding the status quo included acceptance of New Deal measures, as these were already decades old and part of the national fabric. His personal views on racial questions were the normal genteel racism of the time, but he was willing to use force to uphold court decisions expanding civil rights. In economic matters he ceded policy to the usual suspects from business circles, with he result that his adminitration was plagued by several recessions.

His great contribution to the country, and the world, was keeping a rein on the war claque: it seems quite likely to me any other political figure in the U.S. at that time would have been stampeded into a nuclear war with the Soviets while we still had a decisive advantage in numver war-heads and efficiency of delivery systems. These things, while sufficient to ensure the Soviets would have been far more badly damaged, would not have sufficed to prevent the deaths of many millions in the U.S., had the event come to pass."

And of course he believed in the common good, in building infrastructure, and he was instrumental in advancing the Civil Rights movement. He desegregated the District of Columbia, he desegregated the Army, and he sent federal troops into Little Rock when it counted.

So what think ye? Could an old-time Republican attract the interest of Dems who are fed up with our current two corporatist parties?