Republicans ain't what they used to be:

[Faryn Balyncd]

"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice."
- - - - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956

And from the 1912 Progressive Party platform upon which former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt ran in his 1912 Bull Moose candidacy, after the trust-busting TR's split from the pro-corporate conservatives led by William Howard Taft:




SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE


The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for:

Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurous effects incident to modern industry;

The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

The prohibition of child labor;

Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations;

The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons;

One day's rest in seven for all wage workers;

The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries;

The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners' earnings to the support of their dependent families;

Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products;

Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community;

The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools;

The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers;

We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.




DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

We pledge our party to establish a department of labor with a seat in the cabinet, and with wide jurisdiction over matters affecting the conditions of labor and living.



http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=607

It's been pretty obvious for some time that today's "Republican" Party would have no place in it for Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, or Eisenhower, (anymore than today's "GOP" would nominate a Chuck Hagel or a John Danforth).








:kick:

[gateley]

1. As Biden has said "This ain't your daddy's republican party." nt