General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen I liked the Republican Party......
Today's Republicans; Genetically incapable of voting their conscience.
Trump: Kompromat: We knew this in 2015, it was posted here. We all should acknowledge this. We knew Trump was Kompromised before the election. No big surprise.
But pay attention to the Trump Fluffers. There are many, but take out the Jim Jordans and Devin Nune's....they've got nothing.
No Republican was elected for their legislative skills or ethical clarity. You wanna see the last great Republican Women in the US Senate? Read this: . They were elected because, they were weak, compromised, and subject to a Party line. That's the way Republican's roll.....
But lets remember a better Republican Party. Eisenhowser got it....he saw the middle class dead in WW2. he got it. He was the most socialistic supporter coming out of WW2.
Then You had Margaret Chase Smith-
Here is a great Republican....back in 1950s-
A Declaration of Conscience
June 1, 1950
Photo of Margaret Chase Smith
As Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine boarded the Senate subway, she encountered the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy. Margaret, you look very serious, he said. Are you going to make a speech? Without hesitation, Smith replied: Yes, and you will not like it! The date was June 1, 1950, and Smith was about to deliver the most memorable speech of her long career.
Four months earlier, McCarthy had rocketed to national attention. In a well-publicized speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he claimed to possess the names of 205 card-carrying communists in the State Department. Smith, like many of her colleagues, shared McCarthy's concerns about communist subversion, but she grew skeptical when he repeatedly ignored her requests for evidence to back-up his accusations. It was then, she recalled, that I began to wonder about the validity... and fairness of Joseph McCarthys charges.
At first, Smith hesitated to speak. I was a freshman Senator, she explained, and in those days, freshman Senators were to be seen and not heard. She hoped a senior member would take the lead. This great psychological fear...spread to the Senate, she noted, where a considerable amount of mental paralysis and muteness set in for fear of offending McCarthy. As the weeks passed, Smith grew increasingly angry with McCarthys attacks and his defamation of individuals she considered above suspicion. Bowing to Senate rules on comity, Smith chose not to attack McCarthy, but to denounce the tactics that were becoming known as McCarthyism.
"Mr. President," she began, "I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition.... The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body.... But recently that deliberative character has...been debased to...a forum of hate and character assassination." In her 15-minute address, delivered as McCarthy looked on, Smith endorsed every Americans right to criticize, to protest, and to hold unpopular beliefs. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America, she complained. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. She asked her fellow Republicans not to ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of CalumnyFear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. As she concluded, Smith introduced a statement signed by herself and six other Republican senatorsher Declaration of Conscience."
Her speech triggered a public explosion of support and criticism. This cool breeze of honesty from Maine can blow the whole miasma out of the nations soul, commented the Hartford Courant. By one act of political courage, [Smith has] justified a lifetime in politics, commented another. Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled Senator Smith: A Woman Vice President? Critics called her Moscow-loving, and much worse. McCarthy dismissed her and her supporters as Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.
Smiths Declaration of Conscience did not end McCarthys reign of power, but she was one of the first senators to take such a stand. She continued to oppose him, at great personal cost, for the next four years. Finally, in December of 1954, the Senate belatedly concurred with the lady from Maine and censured McCarthy for conduct contrary to senatorial traditions. McCarthys career was over. Margaret Chase Smiths career was just beginning.
Shanti Mama
(1,288 posts)I do not automatically think all Rs are terrible people lacking any integrity. This is the trap that continues to divide us.
Not all Democrats are good people either. My parents were both Rs well into the 70s. The "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" mantra was OK with me if acted upon.
The amount of hating that goes on has to stop. I'm more than OK with bringing your hate onto some of the current R members of congress, though I don't actually hate most of them. It's too destructive to me.
OK, haters, now go ahead and hate on me.
Joe941
(2,848 posts)Shanti Mama
(1,288 posts)Two of my siblings are Rs. One did not vote in 2016, one voted for Clinton. They remain registered Rs. Both are wildly concerned about what's going on.
When we hate on EVERYONE we invite them to do the same. People are individuals.
I agree that many of today's R leaders are anti-American. I think they're rich white supremacist christianists who want climate change to wipe out much of the world's population leaving only the rich behind.
Kid Berwyn
(14,909 posts)Guy flew a B-24 in World War 2.
After a successful career in business, went into politics.
Used the power of office to make Michigan a better place for ALL its residents.
Link to tweet