Defend Democracy

Gleaning Facebook: What Would Ike Think?

Remember when Capital-R Republicans could also be small-r republicans?

He was patriotic. He supported social security and unions. He believed in big projects for the common good like the interstate highway system. He believed in public service. Which party would Ike have supported in 2020? You and I both know it would not have been the party of Mr. Trump or Jim Jordan, Marjorie Greene, Kelly Loeffler, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz. et al.

 Benjamin Amis

A lot of fake quotes get passed around social media. This isn't one of them. This quote is from Eisenhower's address to the Fourth Annual Republican Women's National Conference on March 6th, 1956. It seems that Eisenhower continually counselled the Republican Party on how to be, and from Nixon onward (his own Vice President, no less!), they spun around and walked the precise opposite way. I wish we still had Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower. You can read this full address here: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/.../remarks-fourth-annual...

Lindia Moore
Benjamin Amis thank you for providing the full address. you are correct that many false quotes as well as much misinformation is being shared through social media. It is satisfying to see something based in fact.

Dan Bolton
Benjamin Amis He really didn't belong to either party . Both wanted him to run on their ticket but the Republicans had the most money. No matter your how your believed he was pretty good for everyone. You know it was him and Al Gore Sr. that came up with the interstate system . Gore is the one that got it through the Senate for him.

Marc Sigoloff
Ike was the last decent Republican President.

Kimberly Hart Morgan

Buff Hartnett
I have always admired this man. The first and last Republican president I had faith in.

Drew Fountain
Buff Hartnett Ford was a good man , placed an awkward position, and he did well despite the unique circumstances . Despite the very close 2000 election, Dubya earned my respect by openly trying to terminate the use of "Southern Strategy" , he spoke about it twice during his time at 1600,

Jane Baird Lathem
Frankly, I don’t think you know what Eisenhower would have done. You are just speculating. The Republicans AND the Democrats are responsible for the mess this country is in. The sooner we ALL take responsibility and behave in the way our forefathers intended the better off we will be. There was a time when we voted our conscience and didn’t demonize our brothers who voted differently. But now, it seems if my opinion doesn’t jive with yours I’M the one that is wrong. It is time to stop this, turn to God, repent of all this anger and mean spirited talk and return to the country we were intended to be.

Terrell Shaw
Yes, Cuz -- prepare to be shocked -- you caught me: I was speculating. I was only imagining what a man DEAD for a half-century would think about current events. Shoot, maybe if Ike were to return he would don fur and horns, put on an Auschwitz T-shirt, paint his face, shout “Stop the Steal,” and rush the House chamber. We’ll never know.

Drew Fountain

You would cry too if it happened to you.

Joe Biden Buttons

 Y'all know I collect political items. My earliest items were from my work in the 1964 presidential campaign and the 1966 gubernatorial campaign. I first joined the American Political Items Collectors group in the 1970s. I'm a cheapskate so the few relatively valuable pins I have kinda fell into my lap in one way or another. But I have hundreds of pins dating from an 1840 William Henry Harrison metal "log cabin" clothing button (pretty common) to the Joe Biden buttons I added today.

My favorites are the ones I actually wore or collected during campaigns... LBJ, Ellis Arnall, RFK, Maynard Jackson, HHH, Carter, etc. and ones given me by great friends, neighbors, or family who worked campaigns or attended conventions like Mike Bock, Charles Graves, Audley Tucker, Mildred Knight, Joan Ledbetter, and Wendy Davis (I'll stop there -I'm leaving out bunches!)-- even one of my Republican sisters. And a couple of items I inherited from my grandfather who was a delegate to a Georgia Democratic Convention in the forties.

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I enjoy arranging and displaying the ordinary little evidences of the most essential of our national patriotic duties in our republic: politics. Even in the midst of the Civil War and World War II We the People held elections and debated politics. As an old civics teacher I am so disappointed to hear folks, many of whom get teary eyed to hear the Anthem, talk about "hating" politics. No! Politics is what a republic is all about. Hate bad leadership, hate greed and corruption, hate hatred and racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia, hate apathetic citizenship, but seize your franchise, claim your part in We the People, donate/work/vote for the good guys, make republican ideals work the way they should.

Here's my collection of Joe Biden 2020 pins so far. All are fairly common I think.

Y'all BOLO for pins and posters for me the next six months.

When to speak softly and when to speak out.

One of the things that has bothered me about the blogs of some of my favorite Republicans is that they have frequently decried what they perceive as an over-reaction among Democrats to misdeeds by Bush/Rumfeld/Cheney/American Troops etc and under-reaction to terrorist hacking-of-heads/bombings/mistreatment-of-minorities/hysteria-over-cartoons-of-Mohammed etc.

Let me address the second element first:

I assume terrorists will do what terrorists have done during all world history. They will kill. They will maim. Pitching verbal fits about them only furthers their terroristic aims. They will not be affected by what their enemies say and they attacked us because they want us het up. Their motivation for filming their OWN atrocities is obvious: they want those images spread far and wide to stoke terror. Every person who helps spread those images is doing the terrorists job for them. As regards terrorists the best approach is ol' Teddy's "Speak softly but carry a big stick." 

As to OUR reactions to the behaviors of OUR leaders and OUR troops: Here we do have a role. Never is it MORE important to hold to OUR principles than when the anti-republicans of the world are challenging those principles. Every time we stoop to the methods of the terrorists we are aiding their cause, not ours.