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(114,904 posts)Jim Jeffords, Ed Brooks, Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Leach, George Aiken, Lowell Weiker, Robert Stafford
Schema Thing
(10,283 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)not even close. Those named were true liberals and progressives.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)and didn't cowtow to the evangelicals. Snowe left because the extremists had taken over their party.
progressoid
(49,827 posts)obamanut2012
(25,911 posts)Maineman
(854 posts)boss man McConnell.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)But they're both moderates and would compromise and speak like logical, reasonable human beings. They certainly don't side with the tea partiers.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)with them knowning it was against the best interest of the country. Personnally am kind of tired that we have parties. We should vote for the person who is going to help their citizens as a whole for the good of the country. Yes there are some things that each state needs and comprises should be done. But the majority of times these women voted even against womens issues.
winstars
(4,214 posts)get that once in a while vote equals so much wasted time for us. And then the frigging million times they screw us in the end and vote with the scum. Fuck them and all of their BullShit... Too many times we came away with zilch after almost giving away the store. They only seem moderate because of the other nut jobs but in the end they are/were essentially useless to us. Fuck them!!!
Mike Castle, didn't he have that song "Witchcraft" in the 50's??
mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,061 posts)Lincoln's father.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)of Oregon. He was probably the best environmental politician of all time. He created the land use laws of Oregon and the 1st bottle bill and lots more.
classof56
(5,376 posts)The day he left us was one of the saddest days of my life. Oregon lost its greatest friend and advocate. I worked on the Capitol Mall in Salem, walked over to see him lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, wept copious tears. Among his many accomplishments, Oregon's beaches remain open to the public--a hard-fought battle, but Tom prevailed. So far, no one has proved his equal, but I hold out hope!
lumpy
(13,704 posts)Quite fair and honest
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)political figures and along with TR and Abe he makes 3 Republicans on that list. What a brilliant man he was.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)pnwmom
(108,925 posts)Kokonoe
(2,485 posts)Please also, show me a better quote.
tomp
(9,512 posts)....you're part of the problem.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Nancy Landon Kassebaum, former KS senator, and current spouse of another admirable Republican former senator,
Howard Baker, from Tennessee, who figured prominently in the Senate Waterhate investigation. He is the one who came up with, "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Plus, another of my favorites, Edward Everette Dirkson, senator from IL, whose mellifluous voice I can still hear in my mind's ear.
All these were honorable people and Republicans. I voted for Senator Kassebaum twice because she was far more liberal than her Democratic opponents, who at any rate stood no chance against Nancy.
Thanks for the OP.
Freddie
(9,232 posts)Until he saw the light late in life.
lumpy
(13,704 posts)n
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Steven F. Hayward wrote: The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level .
No.
The single largest defect of modern conservatism is that it has ruined the nation.
Conservatives do not have ideas; they have interests.
Conservatives are not thinkers; they are rationalizers who give an intellectual gloss to their belief that an alliance of predatory businesspeople and religious extremists should rule the rest of us.
The wreckage caused by modern conservatism lies all around us, and speaks for itself: If conservatism isnt dead, it should be.
DANIEL ROSEN
Baltimore
10/9/2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
http://shoqvalue.com/bestLTEever
Which is what your article also shows. The same can be said of McCain, who has also been a conservative opportunist despite his public image.
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)A military "legacy" brat who skipped into my fair state and ingratiated himself to be in the Senate here. He should have gone down during the Keating Five investigations, but he shit on Dennis DeConcini and caused him to go down with it instead. He's a despicable opportunist.
''The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.''
~John Kenneth Galbraith
cali
(114,904 posts)Goldwater soon became most associated with labor-union reform and anti-communism; he was an active supporter of the conservative coalition in Congress. However, he rejected the wildest fringes of the anti-communist movement; in 1956, he sponsored the passage through the Senate of the final version of the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, despite vociferous opposition from opponents who claimed that the Act was a communist plot to establish concentration camps in Alaska. His work on labor issues led to Congress passing major anti-corruption reforms in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the AFL-CIO to defeat his 1958 reelection bid. He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, but he never actually charged any individual with being a communist/Soviet agent. Goldwater emphasized his strong opposition to the worldwide spread of communism in his 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative. The book became an important reference text in conservative political circles.
In 1964, Goldwater ran a conservative campaign that emphasized "states' rights".[16] Goldwater's 1964 campaign was a magnet for conservatives since he opposed interference by the federal government in state affairs. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation and had supported the original senate version of the bill, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do or not do business with whomever they chose.[17]
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of all of the Deep South states (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) since Reconstruction[18] (although Dwight Eisenhower did carry Louisiana in 1956). However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (besides Dixie, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964.
While Goldwater had been depicted by his opponents in the Republican primaries as a representative of a conservative philosophy that was extreme and alien, his voting records show that his positions were in harmony with those of his fellow Republicans in the Congress. What distinguished him from his predecessors was, according to Hans J. Morgenthau, his firmness of principle and determination, which did not allow him to be content with mere rhetoric.[19]
Goldwater fought in 1971 to stop US funding of the United Nations after the People's Republic of China was admitted to the organization. He said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater
RepublicansRZombies
(982 posts)He also warned us of the Military Industrial Complex.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Which was lower than the high of 94% in 1944 and '45, and only applied to incomes over $400K per annum (that's $3.3 million in current dollars, allowing for inflation).
Freddie
(9,232 posts)That religion has no place in politics. Unlike his protege St. Ronnie, who encouraged the alliance of the $$ Repugs and the Religious Right that is still destroying this country (although the election gives me hope).
"In your heart you know he's right...in your guts you know he's nuts!"
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)Goldwater...?
Really?
Genghis_Sean
(39 posts)Isn't he the one that wanted to nuke our enemies into oblivion?
quinnox
(20,600 posts)There is also a well known story about Goldwater's effort to look into the UFO issue, and he was flatly told he wasn't in a position to know and not to ask again.
fightthegoodfightnow
(7,042 posts)What Goldwater could not see in the 60's (civil rights laws to protect people of all races) he could in the 90's (civil rights laws to protect people of all sexual orientations).
While I applaud his actions in the 90's, I can't help but wonder whether his embrace of such laws then was penance for his earlier inactions on race.
NoGOPZone
(2,971 posts)Unfortunately, that likely qualifies as 'decent' by current Republican standards.
MessiahRp
(5,405 posts)Which says a LOT.
Bluestar
(1,400 posts)in a hotel hallway at the RNC in 1980 (I worked nearby).
Just another entitled, elitist a-hole if you ask me.
valerief
(53,235 posts)they're not Republicans.
ProudProgressiveNow
(6,129 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)greatauntoftriplets
(175,698 posts)Goldwater was the RW nutjob of his day.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)Goldwater was wrong on most of his ideas, but this is one that he got spot on correct. However, in hindsight, it may have had allot to do with his defeat. And the wingers never forgot it. Thus the rise of the Paul Wyrick's (sp?), Jerry Falwell's and his Moral Majority, etc., etc., etc. And here we are. I, for one, am staunch when it come to separation of Church and State. It's fine we have freedom of religion, part of the reason many of our ancestors came here to begin with. Those beginners in our country had a rough time of it surviving, to say the least. And their religious beliefs were the only hope they had. Heck, right up to my Mother who lost her first husband in WWII. Her religion is all she had to help her cope and face life with two little boys under age 3. And she relied on that religion right up to the day she died. She died in peace. I could go and on about Mom... she was a true Patriot and liberal as they come her whole life. I look at things somewhat differently, though. Because I could envision religious zealots in our government cramming their beliefs down our citizen's throats, legislating against our rights. And that's exactly what has happened. Just opining....
missingfink
(174 posts)who disappointed me only one time - when he stood by Clarence Thomas during his SC confirmation hearing. Other than that, he was as decent a Republican as there ever was.
ballaratocker
(126 posts)that the nation was way more liberal on certain measures then. These days if you don't march in lock step to the entire Republican platform, you are clearly liberal in their eyes.
still_one
(91,965 posts)And we would never have medicare
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)[font color=gray]Bary Goldwater in Indiana, 1964
Barry Goldwater campaigns in Indiana in October 1964. (AP)[/font]
By Lloyd Grove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 28, 1994; Page C01
*snip*
At 85, after a life in politics spanning five decades (he retired from the Senate in 1987), Mr. Conservative has found himself an unlikely new career: as a gay rights activist. While that's not his sole pursuit he returned to Capitol Hill yesterday to testify in favor of scenic overflights of the Grand Canyon in recent years he's championed homosexuals serving in the military and has worked locally to stop businesses in Phoenix from hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. This month he signed on as honorary co-chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against homosexuals. The effort, dubbed Americans Against Discrimination, is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the influential gay lobbying organization.
"The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they're gay," Goldwater asserts. "You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that's what brings me into it."
"He's the kind of spokesman who makes people focus on this issue through new eyes," says Goldwater's co-chair, Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, a Democrat who ardently opposed his candidacy in 1964. "He causes people to focus on the real issue: Should the country that celebrates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness allow discrimination for a group of Americans based on sexual preference?"
Gay rights aside, Goldwater is doing lots more to drive would-be disciples nuts. In 1992 he backed a Democrat for Congress over a Christian conservative Republican (his candidate, Karan English, won), and has been applying the full force of his cantankerous personality to frequent denunciations of the religious right and occasional defenses of Bill Clinton calling a press conference recently to urge Republican critics of Whitewater to "get off his back and let him be president."
Some of the faithful think he's lost his marbles.
"I am often asked by people inside Arizona, and outside of Arizona, about Barry," says Republican John McCain, Goldwater's successor in the Senate, in a tone that suggests he's apologizing for a crazy uncle in the attic. "I always say that Barry Goldwater has the right to say whatever he wants to. He has made his contribution which transformed the Republican Party from an Eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground for the election of Ronald Reagan." (Goldwater likes to remind McCain, a Vietnam-era Navy pilot who spent 5 ½ years in the "Hanoi Hilton," that if he'd been elected president in 1964, "you wouldn't have spent all those years in a Vietnamese prison camp." McCain's reply: "You're right, Barry. It would have been a Chinese prison camp."
MORE
K&R
AAO
(3,300 posts)GatorOrange
(63 posts)He was overly militaristic and loved to bring nuclear escalation into the equation. Add in the Southern strategy and bringing St. Ronnie into the national spotlight, he's not somebody we should look at as a decent Republican.
Charlie Crist was had some decent moments as FL governor. Chaffee knows how to reach across the aisle. Sadly its harder and harder to find Republicans willing to talk, compromise, or generally express their point of view in a way thats not rubberstamped by the conservative media echo chamber.
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)Dems are quoting Goldwater as a Sane Republican?
Wow...
frogmarch
(12,145 posts)Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) when he was senator, as well as an all-volunteer military and NASA research.
During WWII he was chief supply pilot in the China-Burma-India theater and when my mother died soon after I was born in India (my dad was in the U.S. Army), Goldwater flew in some American baby bottles and canned milk for me and an American baby doll and story books for my 2 1/2 year old sister. When I was in my twenties, on impulse while I was going through old family papers and photos, I wrote to him to say thank you from my sister and me. He remembered us and said we were very welcome, and that he was touched and delighted to have received my note.
Yes, he was a republican, but Im not going to diss him.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)Actually, he had many intelligent statements, but that did not make him reasonable. In fact, if you read much of what he thought, you will find many of the concepts we hear today from the far right conservatives.
Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)Theodore Roosevelt:
""A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."
After Roosevelt dismantled the Northern Security railroad trust in 1904, he eventually developed irreconcilable differences with the right wing of the Republican Party, left the GOP and ran as the candidate for the Progressive/Bull Moose Party in 1912.
From the 1912 platform of the Progressive Party on which former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt ran:
"Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
"From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."
Too bad statesmen are in short supply.
PennsylvaniaMatt
(966 posts)Former U.S. Senator from Wyoming. He is pro-choice, and has said that male legislators should not even vote on the issue, he was opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and has criticized homophobes in his party.
TheKentuckian
(24,949 posts)Decent folk don't call our seniors "worthless eaters".
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)even mittens dad was a decent republican
airplaneman
(1,237 posts)I thought they were both decent men with political views I could respect. Even Eisenhower fits the bill of a decent republican. No way Romney, Juliano, McCain, Ryan, Boehner, and you name it current republican in the news today gets no more from me but disgust. We need to vote these people into extinction. Todays republicans cant and wont compromise either and all of them seem to think they are on a God level pedestal and their words are gospel to the world.
-Airplane
mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)and off the cliff on most others.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Goldwater ALSO:
~~wanted he U.S. out of the U.N..
~~"called for substantial cuts in social programs, suggesting that Social Security become optional,
~~and suggested the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam if necessary."
~~"believed that the Tennessee Valley Authority should be sold into the private sector."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater_presidential_campaign,_1964#.27A_choice.2C_not_an_echo.27
~~"his extreme right wing ideology alienated the more moderate wing of the party."
http://www.kennesaw.edu/pols/3380/pres/1964.html
Raine
(30,540 posts)looks "decent" when compared to those today. I was just a kid then but I remember him.
Zambero
(8,954 posts)He was quite a right-wing firebrand up through the '64 election. In '74 he told Nixon in person that he needed to resign immediately or face impeachment and certain conviction. By that time he had parted company with the GOP on virtually all the social issues championed by the religious right, including abortion, church-state separation and gay rights. In local AZ politics he would occasionally endorse a Democrat over his own party's candidate. And he became much less of a hawk on military matters. As far as I can tell he remained staunchly conservative on fiscal policy. Never wishy-washy, his honesty was never questioned.
dlwickham
(3,316 posts)he walked the walk and I respect him for that
I would obviously disagree with many of his positions but one I would not would be his position on DADT
After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn't exactly nothing, but it's pretty damned close
Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They'll still be serving long after we're all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.
But most Americans should be shocked to know that while the country's economy is going down the tubes, the military has wasted half a billion dollars over the past decade chasing down gays and running them out of the armed services.
It's no great secret that military studies have proved again and again that there's no valid reason for keeping the ban on gays. Some thought gays were crasy, but then found that wasn't true. then they decided that gays were a security risk, but again the Department of Defense decided that wasn't so-in fact, one study by the Navy in 1956 that was never made public found gays to be good security risks. Even Larry Korb, President Reagan's man in charge of implementing the Pentagon ban on gays, now admits that it was a dumb idea. No wonder my friend Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under President Bush, called it "a bit of an old chestnut"
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/scotts/bulgarians/barry-goldwater.html