Thom Hartmann: 1956 Republicans Show 2012 Republicans How to Win

[thomhartmann]

Eisenhower and his Party in 1956 understood that America is a center-left nation, and so they supported many of those positions. As President Eisenhower wrote to his brother, Edgar, in a 1954 letter: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. ((CHANGE)) Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." It looks like that negligible number of “stupid” people has taken over the Republican Party today, led by the Hunt brothers’ successors, the Koch brothers. The question for today, as the Republican Party infighting spills over onto the national stage, is whether they’ll go back to the center-left positions of Eisenhower and start winning elections again, or if they’ll double-down on stupid to satisfy the Kochs, Adelsons, Murdochs, and Limbaughs of their party…

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[Jack Rabbit]

1. Unfortunately, today's GOP resembles H. L. Hunt more than Ike

H. L. Hunt and Fred Koch, the father of Charles and David Koch, were both founding members of the John Birch Society. Robert Welch, a New England candy manufacturer, was the driving force behind the founding of the Birch Society. Mr. Welch charged that President Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy." While I am aware that some JBS members dissented from that view, I am unaware of whether Messrs. Hunt or Koch were among them. Welch saw conspiracies everywhere. The Birch Society held (and still holds) that the United Nations is a Communist institution and embraced the conspiracy theory that efforts to fluoridate drinking water were part of a Communist plot.

The Birch Society was famously sent to the political wilderness in the sixties by conservative newspaper columnist William Buckley, a one-time supporter of the Birch Society who came to fear that its "paranoid and idiotic" ideas would be conflated with mainstream conservatism. However, in more recent years the Birch Society has made a comeback in GOP circles and has maintained a booth at recent CPAC conventions.

This is the world view that is now dominant in the GOP of 2012. It's tells us where Michele Bachmann gets off demanding investigations of her fellow members of Congress for "anti-Americanism", where she gets her idea that Islamic terrorists have infiltrated the government and what justifies in Allen West's mind his statement that members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are "Communists." Mrs. Bachmann and Mr. West may or may not be members of the Birch Society, but they are demonstrably under the influence of the Birch Society's nonsense.

Of course, I doubt that many Republican Congressmen would call Eisenhower a Communist, but they still see conspiracies abroad and are more than willing tar innocent people with their broad brush of charge of anti-American subversion.