Dwight D. Eisenhower

[Aerows]

How is it that his ideas got lost to people that are the anti-thesis of the ideas he voted, championed, and fought for?

He was a Republican. He would be a commie, liberal thief just 48 years later. He had ideas like "limiting the power of the Military Industrial Complex, because it robs from children when we make bombs". I know, I'm paraphrasing, but there were once Republicans that believed in such ideas. They are great ideas, that respect women, children and a society that wants to live in peace and prosperity.

Speak those in public, and somehow, you are believing in communism, something Eisenhower fought all of his life, and you aren't worth a damn if you care for the least of our society.

Where in the HELL did we go wrong when discussion of poverty became communism, socialism and fascism instead of just working to solve social problems? Why is it an "ISM" to discuss such problems? ISM. You aren't Republican, and you work for the interests of a wide variety of people.

I Smell Money.

[Wait Wut]

1. Most people say the downfall of the Republican party began with Reagan.

I say Nixon. I told my son the other day that there were some great Republican presidents in our history that would be shunned by their own party today. We, as Democrats, will embrace them and not allow their memory to be tarnished by the horrendous words and actions of the current GOP.

If Romney can force his dead FIL to become a Mormon, I say Democrats should welcome good, dead Republicans into the Democratic Party.

[trof]

2. Ike would be a Democrat today.

[Aerows]

4. Staunch Democrat

I'm not sure whether I'm pleased or pissed that he can't see what his Republican party has turned into.

[FSogol]

33. Harry S. Truman tried to talk Ike into running as a Democrat in the 1952 election.

From David McCullough's book, "Truman."

[trof]

34. Read the book. Missed that.

[trof]

35. More at Wiki:

Wonder why he 'disdained' the Dems?

"President Truman, symbolizing a broad based desire for an Eisenhower candidacy for president, again in 1951 pressed him to run for the office as a Democrat. It was at this time that Eisenhower vocalized his disdain for the Democratic party and declared himself and his family to be Republicans.[85] A "Draft Eisenhower" movement in the Republican Party persuaded him to declare his candidacy in the 1952 presidential election to counter the candidacy of non-interventionist Senator Robert Taft.

The effort was a long struggle; Eisenhower had to be convinced that 1) the political circumstances in the country had created a genuine duty for him to offer himself as a candidate, and 2) that there was a mandate from the populace for him to be their President. Henry Cabot Lodge who served as his campaign manager and others succeeded in convincing him, and in June 1952 he resigned his command at NATO to campaign full time.[86]

Eisenhower defeated Taft for the nomination, having won critical delegate votes from Texas. Eisenhower's campaign was noted for the simple but effective slogan, "I Like Ike". It was essential to his success that Ike express his opposition to Roosevelt's policy at Yalta and against Truman's policies in Korea and China., matters in which he had once participated.[87][88]

In defeating Taft for the nomination, it became necessary for Eisenhower to appease the right wing Old Guard of the Republican Party; his selection of Richard M. Nixon as the Vice-President on the ticket was designed in part for that purpose. Nixon also provided a strong anti-communist presence as well as some youth to counter Ike's more advanced age."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Presidential_campaign_of_1952

[w8liftinglady]

3. we had this very discussion in The Dallas Morning News today...

Eisenhower would definitely be a Democrat.Moderates are not welcome in the Republican Party anymore.

[Aerows]

6. From what I can tell

They haven't been since Reagan. The Southern & Southwestern Republican arm of the party became the base, and they don't allow for anything other than what they consider "fundamentalism"

[trof]

36. Try 'since Nixon'.

The repugs have never gotten over Nixon's resignation one jump ahead of impeachment and never will.
It should have been a blot on the party forever and their willingness to do whatever it took, legal or not, to get their man in office.

As we have seen, it wasn't.

[Aerows]

37. It's a testament to what they will do

to gain money and power, and it's just as distasteful today as it was then.

[PoliticAverse]

5. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies ... a theft ...

"Every gun that is 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 is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric
power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay
for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than
8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true
sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?"

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

[ceile]

8. Had that on my fridge as a child.

My mother cried when Reagan was elected but thought the world of Eisenhower.

[Aerows]

10. Eisenhower was a good man

And unafraid to speak his mind.

This latest crop aren't afraid to speak their minds, and most of it consists of idiocy designed to make them popular with idiots.

[smokey nj]

13. You might enjoy this.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/embarrassed-republicans-admit-theyve-been-thinking,19248/

Embarrassed Republicans Admit They've Been Thinking Of Eisenhower Whole Time They've Been Praising Reagan

WASHINGTON—At a press conference Monday, visibly embarrassed leaders of the Republican National Committee acknowledged that their nonstop, effusive praise of Ronald Reagan has been wholly unintentional, admitting they somehow managed to confuse him with Dwight D. Eisenhower for years.

The GOP's humiliating blunder was discovered last weekend by RNC chairman Reince Priebus, who realized his party had been extolling "completely the wrong guy" after he watched the History Channel special Eisenhower: An American Portrait.

"When I heard about Eisenhower's presidential accomplishments—holding down the national debt, keeping inflation in check, and fighting for balanced budgets—it hit me that we'd clearly gotten their names mixed up at some point," Priebus told reporters. "I couldn't believe we'd been associating terms like 'visionary,' 'principled,' and 'bold' with President Reagan. That wasn't him at all—that was Ike."

"We deeply regret misattributing such a distinguished and patriotic legacy to Mr. Reagan," Priebus added. "We really screwed up."

[Aerows]

22. LMAO!

OMG that was priceless, thanks for the link, Smokey

[ceile]

31. LOL! n/t

[libinnyandia]

7. What I find so sad is that as extreme as the GOP is now they still have such a high percentage of

people who identify with them. In a halfway decent country, they would be a small fraction of the people. In my district a nut case like Steve King can win with comfortable margins of victory.

[Aerows]

9. It's like they are all crazy

with the idea of party purity and nationalism. We all know where that went, and it scares me that fellow Americans could ever even head that way.

We are ALL Americans, or at least, at some time we were. What the hell happened?

[Octafish]

11. THIS guy.

Prescott Sheldon Bush.

Here he is with President Eisenhower signing the legislation that created the Interstate Highway System.



Here he's straightening out Tricky Dick's hat:



In this shot, he's enjoying a moment with Baron de Rothschild.



As to the "Why" of it all: Know your BFEE: War and Oil are just two longtime Main Lines of Business

[Aerows]

12. His associations

Don't overshine his accomplishments. I detest the people who he may have hung with, but himself? He stayed upstanding. I refuse to hold a person as culpable, as everyone else they came in contact with when they made an honest effort to change things to be less culpable.

If a person puts down their gun legally, and advocates less shooting, do we judge that person because they at one time encountered the beltway shooter? It's stupid, and false equivalency.

[Octafish]

14. What accomplishments?

The eugenics thing?

Dealing with the NAZIs?

Trying to overthrow FDR?

As a forgiving person, I would like to know about what else he did.

[white_wolf]

15. I think Aerows is talking about Eisenhower...

when he replied to you, not Bush.

[Octafish]

17. I understand. And I explained what happened to the GOP since.

Sen. Prescott Bush begat President George Herbert Walker Bush who begat pretzeldent George Walker Bush. Three generations of moving the GOP from a party interested in moving America forward into something that moves America's power and wealth into the pockets of the privileged few.

[Aerows]

20. And I don't disagree

I also didn't bring up Prescott Bush though, since that unnecessarily clouds the waters of the cogent political point I was trying to make.

You are welcome to make that point, it just seemed odd in this thread that didn't have anything to do with Bush.

[Aerows]

18. Thank you

That's all I was trying to bring up. Not a bunch of things that got dragged into the thread that had nothing to do with the original point.

[Aerows]

16. I'm not even going there

Because much of that is CT.

Are you going to accuse me of being a Republican now?

Don't jump the pier Octa. I was just making a point that my daddy's Republican party is a far cry from mine. No need to read a bunch of shit into it.

[Octafish]

21. It's no Conspiracy Theory. It's no shit. Those are facts. And nowhere did I accuse you of anything.

You asked "Why?" aerows. I gave my thoughts on the subject of how the GOP strayed from what Ike was about. Sorry if what I posted doesn't mesh with what you think.





PS: Take your time. Have your friends check the links and posts out. Please let me know if you find something that's wrong.

[Aerows]

24. Well, thank you for making that more...

clear. I really do appreciate you weighing in on the topic. The topic is still not that we should despise Eisenhower. I think he was insightful as Republicans go, and would be a far left liberal in today's standards.

THAT was my point.

[Octafish]

27. I very much appreciate your OP and its rationale, Aerows.

The subject is one I've contemplated for decades, as a newspaper reporter and as a citizen. Thanks to the Internet, it's now possible to share the results I've found. That's why all the links. Please know that I am truly sorry if it came across that I wanted to hijack your thread or impugn what you had posted in the OP.

Authors like Russ Baker and Kevin Phillips have bravely brought these facts to the light of day, only to see their work ignored and their reputations besmirched. It's nothing against them -- both are highly regarded for their previous works -- it's just what they said to piss off this one GOP family.

I respect President Eisenhower and have stated so on DU. I've also brought up his lesser known side: A Cold Warrior who was unafraid to fight an atomic war.

[Aerows]

38. Thanks Octafish

You always tend to bring great points to any discussion, and I appreciate them. I didn't take it as impugning, I took it as in depth discussion. I learn something from everyone that brings new viewpoints into conversations

[Uncle Joe]

19. The growth of television steered the nation or at least the leadership of the political parties to

the extreme radical right, authoritarian quadrant of the political spectrum.

The McCarthy Era witch hunts were the canaries in the coal mine signaling the corruptive power of monopolized, one way, top down, authoritarian worshiping, mass communication and information dissemination.

This is not to say, there weren't rare exceptions of voices crying out in the wilderness of the televised corporate media universe against the authoritarian corporate supremacist rip tide, but the sheer rigid model of top down, one way, corporate owned mass communication could ultimately only lead in one direction.

I believe Eisenhower; who came of age before television, was correct in identifying and warning against the power of the military industrial complex but without the brain washing propaganda of the dysfunctional one way, top down televised corporate media model, the military industrial complex wouldn't have near the power that it currently does over American Society.

If the American People are given good information, they can make wise decisions but that's a major if which the one way, top down televised corporate media model couldn't bring itself to overcome.

Everything with the televised corporate media orbits around money, this myopic focus on capitalism as the be all of existence has all but smothered the free ranging exchange and promotion of the best ideas and information that a good, functioning democracy requires.

Capitalism trumps democracy in virtually every televised debate or inference as to what's important to or best for the nation as corporations; authoritarian by nature; something they have in common with the military, own the televised media.

Thus a government actually representing the best interests of "We the People" public good over private exploitation would almost always go against the corporate televised authoritarian, right wing grain.

Thanks for the thread, Aerows.

[Aerows]

25. I'm glad I could speak up here

It's rather disturbing the turn our nation has taken to the hard right, Uncle Joe.

[Kaleva]

23. George Romney was a Eisenhower Republican

George's successor as governor of Michigan, Bill Milliken, was also cut from the same cloth. The sane Repubs in Michigan are often referred to as being "Milliken Republicans".

[Aerows]

26. Sane Republicans

Oh, so fondly we remember that they existed. So rare they are today, and most of them now are Democratic Elected Officials because Republican has become the BatGuanoCrazy wing of the electorate.

[MicaelS]

28. Eisenhower was a warmonger of the first order...

The fascination of some people on the Left with Eisenhower, simply because of his anti MIC speech as he left office never ceases to amaze me. He presided over the enormous buildup of the US Nuclear Arsenal, and regularly contemplated Thermonuclear War with the USSR. Eisenhower was no Dove.

I can't copy and paste the entire article, it's far too long, but the 4 paragraphs below hits the highlights. I suggest you read the entire article.

http://hnn.us/articles/47326.html

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero who spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. The image of Eisenhower as the “man of peace” is so useful that I almost hate to burst the bubble. But if you look at the historical record there is no escaping the other Eisenhower: the Eisenhower who said “he would rather be atomized than communized,” who reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was and how easily political leaders can mask their intentions with benign images.


Early on, he noted in his diary what he later said in public: nuclear weapons would now be “treated just as another weapon in the arsenal.” “We have got to be in a position to use that weapon,” he insisted to Dulles. That became official policy in NSC 5810/1, which declared the U.S. intention to treat nuclear weapons “as conventional weapons; and to use them whenever required to achieve national objectives.” By early 1957, Eisenhower told the NSC that there could be no conventional battles any more: “The only sensible thing for us to do was to put all our resources into our SAC capability and into hydrogen bombs.” He found it “frustrating not to have plans to use nuclear weapons generally accepted.”

His whole reason for fighting was to prevent the communists from imposing a totalitarian state in America. He had long recognized the irony that nuclear war would lead to the very totalitarianism he abhorred. But he confessed to the Cabinet that he saw no way to avoid it: “He was coming more and more to the conclusion that … we would have to run this country as one big camp—severely regimented.” After reading plans for placing the nation under martial law, giving the president power to “requisition all of the nation’s resources–human and material,” he pronounced them “sound.”

It is hard to give up the “man of peace” that peace activists have come to admire. And perhaps it’s not fair to give him up. After all, we can never know what another person truly believes. But the record of the other Eisenhower is so consistent and so extensive (I’ve offered only a sampling here) that it is hard to ignore. More importantly, it is dangerous to ignore, because the other Eisenhower was the one who made actual policy. It was a policy that put anticommunist ideology above human life, made by a man who would “push whole stack of chips into the pot” and “hit ‘em … with everything in the bucket”; a man who would “shoot your enemy before he shoots you” and “hit the guy fast with all you’ve got”; a man who believed that the U.S. could “pick itself up from the floor” and win the war, even though “everybody is going crazy,” as long as only 25 or 30 American cities got “shellacked” and nobody got too “hysterical.”

[Kaleva]

29. Yes, it is a stretch to say Ike would be a Democrat today if he was still alive.

[Aerows]

39. Not every Democratic party member is a dove either

Many of us believe strongly in America and we believe that it should be defended. We just don't believe in starving its sons and daughters to do so when it isn't necessary.

[flamingdem]

30. I met Eisenhower

I don't normally admit this as it reveals my age but he petted my head at the New York Worlds Fair. It had been raining and he came through a pavillion and we happened to be on the edge of the crowd that he was parting. He said "your hair must be wet little girl" as he fluffed my hair. I was pretty young but I remember what he said! A cool guy. Nothing like the repukes we endure today.

[Kaleva]

32. A cool story!