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NNN0LHI

(67,190 posts)
Tue Nov 6, 2012, 07:01 PM Nov 2012

"There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_presidential_campaign,_1968

<snip>When George Wallace ran for President in 1968, it was not as a Democrat – which he had done in the 1964 Democratic primaries and would again in the 1972 Democratic primaries – but as a candidate of the American Independent Party. The American Independent Party was formed by Wallace, whose pro-segregation policies had been rejected by the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Wallace's strategy was essentially the same as that of Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948 in that the campaign was run without any realistic chance of winning the election outright, but instead with the hope of receiving enough electoral votes to force the House of Representatives to decide the election, something many observers thought might happen. This would presumably give him the role of a power broker; Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts at desegregation.

Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to that of the Republican former Vice President, Richard Nixon, who was using his "Southern strategy". Nixon himself worried that Wallace might steal enough votes to give the election to the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Some Democrats feared Wallace's appeal to blue-collar workers and union members (who usually vote Democratic) would hurt Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan. snip

Curtis LeMay was an enthusiast for the use of nuclear weapons. Wallace's aides tried to persuade him to avoid questions relating to the topic, but when asked about it at his first interview, he attempted to dispel American "phobias about nuclear weapons" and discussed radioactive landcrabs at Bikini atoll. LeMay again embarrassed Wallace's campaign in the fall by suggesting that nuclear weapons could be used in the Vietnam War, which led Humphrey to dub Wallace and LeMay the "Bombsey Twins". The selection of LeMay proved a disastrous drag on the campaign and was dubbed the "LeMay fiasco" internally. snip

Wallace's campaign rhetoric became infamous, such as when he pledged "If any anarchists lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile they ever lie down in front of" and asserted that the only four letter words that hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to desegregate the South. Wallace proclaimed, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties," a line that he had first used in 1966, when his first wife, Lurleen Burns Wallace, ran successfully for governor against the Republican James D. Martin. The Wallace campaign in California and other states attracted the "Radical Right", including the John Birch Society.

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This line of crap has been promoted for a long time. First time I head it was in 1968. Some other third party candidates still use it today and some numb nuts actually believe it. Amazing, isn't it?

Don
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"There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties." (Original Post) NNN0LHI Nov 2012 OP
And in 2023, fools are still bleating that BS Montauk6 Jun 2023 #1

Montauk6

(8,079 posts)
1. And in 2023, fools are still bleating that BS
Fri Jun 16, 2023, 11:55 AM
Jun 2023

After what we've seen, post-COVID, post-Jan6, post-indictment, post-etc, anyone still claiming that there's no difference between the 2 parties is not just being naive, they're now suspect, IMHO.

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