George Romney

Republican Party History And Reputation Under Attack In Present Constitutional Crisis

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The Republican Party was founded in 1854 in opposition to the expansion of slavery, and included many abolitionists within its midst.

The Republican Party became the Party of the Union, and under Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, the Civil War was fought, and the Confederate States of America was defeated, and slavery was abolished.

The Republican Party then promoted citizenship and the right to vote for African Americans.

Then, the party lost its way and became the party of Big Business in the Gilded Age, and was engaged in widespread corruption.

But in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, under President Theodore Roosevelt, and Congressional leaders such as Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin and George Norris of Nebraska and many others, the party became one of reform oriented ideas.

Then, in the 1920s and through the years of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the party became one of opposition to progressive ideas, with a few exceptions of leaders in Congress and in the states.

With the coming of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the rise of the liberal wing of the modern GOP, under Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, and George Romney. and many US Senators, the battle was fought against a takeover of the party by the extreme right, headed by Senator Barry Goldwater, but despite his defeat for the Presidency in 1964, the coming of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ushered in conservative ideas, and the GOP became captive to the myth of Reagan.

The party became captive to a foreign policy of intervention in the Middle East, and promotion of massive tax cuts to the wealthy, and destruction of the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson and the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but were stopped in their quest by Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Now, however, the Republican Party has become more extremist under the most corrupt President in American history, much more than Richard Nixon.

Donald Trump is for the wealthy elite, and that is why the Republicans in Congress are overlooking the disaster occurring before our eyes daily.

The Republican Party history and reputation are under attack in the present constitutional crisis, while at the time of the Nixon constitutional crisis, many Republicans spoke up and led the struggle against the illegalities of the Watergate Scandal.

The future of the Republican Party is at stake, and this could be the time that we will look back on and realize that it led to the demise of the Republican Party as we know it!

Crazy Dream Of Many Republicans Who Initially Rejected Trump–That He Will Magically Transform From His Sins–He Won’t!

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It is amazing how many Republicans in office have caved in to Fascist Donald Trump’s candidacy, but it demonstrates their total delusional nature, that they think that he will magically transform from the sinner he is to a rational, mainstream human being.

By signing on with Trump, the Republicans in the US Senate will be massacred this fall, and we will see a massive repudation of Republican philosophy.

At the same time, intelligent conservatives at the National Review and The Weekly Standard are still holding back, as are the Bush Family and Mitt Romney and Christie Todd Whitman (former New Jersey Governor), and a small group of others who identify as Republicans.

But the Republican Party, which survived the disaster of 1912 with William Howard Taft challenged by Theodore Roosevelt; and 1964 with Barry Goldwater challenged by Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, George Romney and others; is no longer, as principle no longer matters for most Republicans and some conservatives.

So this is a transformative election that will go down in history!

George Romney Vs Barry Goldwater, 1964; Mitt Romney Vs Donald Trump, 2016: Is History Repeating Itself?

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Fifty two years ago in 1964, Michigan Governor George Romney led  a fight to try to deny the Republican Presidential nomination to Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, as too an extreme right wing candidate, outside the mainstream and tradition of the party.

Today, in 2016, his son, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP Presidential candidate, is leading a fight to try to deny the Republican Presidential nomination to billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump.

George Romney failed in his mission, and four years later, although for awhile the frontrunner for the 1968 nomination, failed to become the nominee.

Mitt Romney, in his second try for the nomination, won it in 2012, but failed to defeat Barack Obama.

And it seems clear that the Republican Party will end up nominating Trump, and that Mitt Romney, like his dad, will fail to prevent the implosion of the GOP again.

But this time, the Republican Party will, likely, never recover,  and a new political party name will rise from the ashes, hopefully a more mainstream conservative party, rather than the extremist right wing party that the GOP now is!

I write about the 52 year implosion of the Republican Party on History News Network this week, with my article the headline article of the week, soon to be shared under “Articles” on the right side of this blog.  I include the split in the GOP in 1912 between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.

The Presidency And “Natural Born” Citizenship—Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Barack Obama, YES! George Romney And Ted Cruz, NO!

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The question of “natural born” citizenship has arisen in recent years, with the cases of John McCain, Barack Obama, and now Ted Cruz running for President.

It also showed up when Barry Goldwater was running for President in 1964, and George Romney was planning a Presidential campaign in 1968.

It seems clear that the answer as to who of these individuals were or are eligible to run for President is as follows:

Barry Goldwater WAS eligible to run for President in 1964, as he was born in Arizona, which was a territory at the time of his birth in 1909, becoming a state in 1912!

George Romney never actually declared for President in 1968, but arguably, he was NOT eligible to be President, as he was born to Mormon parents in Mexico!

John McCain, when he ran for President in 2000 and again in 2008, WAS eligible to run for President, as he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was a US territory from the time of the Panama Canal treaty in 1903. until its turnover to Panama at the end of 1999. And the Canal Zone had a US Military base, which made it US territory!

Barack Obama, when he ran for President in 2008 and 2012, WAS eligible to run for President, as  he was born in the state of Hawaii, which had become a state in 1959, two years before Obama was born, but even if still a territory, Obama was perfectly eligible for the Presidency!

Finally, Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign for President is in dispute, as Cruz was born in Canada and lived there for four years, so despite his statements, he is technically NOT eligible to be President of the United States!

The answer is that IF you wish your son or daughter to run for President fifty or more years from now, make sure that your baby is born on a military base or diplomatic mission of the United States overseas, NOT on foreign soil not related to the United States!

It is ironic that all of the contested cases of natural born citizenship have been Republicans, with the exception of Obama, amazing when one thinks how the Republican Party in modern times is uptight about citizenship and immigration!

The Inevitability Of Hillary Clinton Is No Longer Active! Doubts Are Rising!

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It has been pointed out that any candidate for President who is ahead in public opinion polls in the second year of a Presidential term has never been elected President, since the age of polling became active after World War II.

If it was, Thomas E. Dewey, Robert Taft, George Romney, Edmund Muskie, Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton would have served in the Presidency after elections in 1948, 1952, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1992, 2000, and 2008.

Instead, we had Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama!

So now it is clear that the inevitability of Hillary Clinton as our 45th President is far from certain, due to various factors!

Hillary Clinton is seen as too close to Wall Street billionaires and millionaires, and too close friendships with major corporations, while mouthing the support of overcoming income inequities.

Hillary Clinton is seen as a “hawk” in foreign policy, even a neoconservative to many, having backed the Iraq War and coming across as much more hardline than many Democrats on recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Hillary Clinton has supported the Patriot Act and National Security Agency surveillance and spying.

Hillary Clinton has not been a strong supporter on environmental issues, particularly in supporting fracking.

Hillary Clinton has come across as secretive, and now has the new scandal of having all emails being private, rather than on government emails while Secretary of State for four years.

Hillary Clinton has also allowed foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, including Arab countries in the Middle East, not a wise or thoughtful idea.

Hillary Clinton has the history of earlier questioning of her ethics, both as First Lady and as Senator and Secretary of State, and many see her marriage to Bill Clinton as a sham, designed to promote her insatiable desire to be the first woman President of the United States.

The Top 30 Presidential Cabinet Officers In American History

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Presidents do not accomplish their goals and policies on their own, but rather depend on the best advice and counsel of their cabinet members.

Since the Presidential Cabinet idea was formulated by George Washington and the first Congress under the Constitution, we have had the creation over time of 15 Cabinet agencies, and some of those who have held Cabinet posts under Presidents have had a dramatic impact on their times.

Below is a list of what the author believes are those 30 Cabinet officers who have had the greatest effect on American history, without ranking them in any order:

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington

Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State under James Monroe

William Seward, Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson

Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant

Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior under Rutherford B. Hayes

John Hay, Secretary of State under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt

James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture under William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft

Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior under Woodrow Wilson

Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge

Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge

Cordell Hull, Secretary of State under Franklin D. Roosevelt

Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman

Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture under Franklin D. Roosevelt

Henry Morgenthau, Jr, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt

Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt

George C. Marshall, Secretary of State under Harry Truman

Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under Harry Truman

Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson

Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson

W. Willard Wirtz, Secretary of Labor under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson

Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford

George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Richard Nixon

Cecil Andrus, Secretary of the Interior under Jimmy Carter

Elizabeth Dole, Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton

Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton

Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior under Bill Clinton

Richard Riley, Secretary of Education under Bill Clinton

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and Barack Obama

Note that 25 Presidents and 12 of the 15 Cabinet Departments are included in this list. Nine Secretaries of State; three Secretaries of the Treasury; one Secretary of Defense; one Attorney General; six Secretaries of the Interior; two Secretaries of Agriculture; one Secretary of Commerce; three Secretaries of Labor; one Secretary of Health and Human Services; one Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; one Secretary of Transportation; and one Secretary of Education make up the list.

Also note that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had five cabinet members who made the list; Bill Clinton had four; and Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson had three each!

“Natural Born Citizens” And The Issue of George Romney, John McCain, And Ted Cruz

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With Texas Senator Ted Cruz angling to run for President, showing up in Iowa this past weekend, the question arises as to whether he is a “natural born citizen” and eligible to be our President.

The thought of Cruz being the nominee of the Republican Party, and a possible occupant of the White House, is literally horrifying, as the Texas Senator is like a bull in a china shop, out to antagonize and confront Democrats, progressives, the news media, and anyone who is not a believer, as he is, in the Tea Party Movement.

So Cruz has been criticized by John McCain and other Senate Republicans, as well as the Republican “Establishment”, as he represents a radical right wing extremism, who has no problem in making enemies, and showing a level of arrogance and hubris rare in a first term, first year Senator.

In many ways, Cruz would be worse than Barry Goldwater represented in his right wing views in the Presidential Election of 1964, showing just how far right the GOP has gone in recent years.

It seems clear to most observers that Cruz could not unite the GOP, and would be likely to be an electoral disaster against Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or any other Democrat, but one can never be too confident or too cocky to believe that the world could not turn inside out and upside down in a time of difficult economic conditions.

This author will spend a lot of time on Cruz as we get closer to the 2016 primaries and caucuses, as he is certainly going to be an important factor in the Presidential campaign of 2016.

But right now, the question is whether Cruz, born in Canada of a US citizen mother and a Cuban immigrant father, is even eligible to run for President in the first place.

This will be the third time this issue has arisen, as Michigan Governor George Romney, a likely candidate in the Presidential Election of 1968, was born in Mexico of American Mormon parents, and John McCain, who was the GOP nominee in the Presidential Election of 2008, was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Romney never got that close to the nomination, and not much was made of his Mexican birth at the time, while McCain had little challenge on his birth, as he was born to a military family in what was then US territory in the Panama Canal Zone.

While one might wish that Cruz was ineligible to run for President, there is unlikely to be a serious challenge to his candidacy for the Presidential Election of 2016.

It is also ironic that these three cases all involve Republicans, and yet a person born in Hawaii, Barack Obama, two years after it became the 50th state, still faces challenges from “Birthers” who contend he was born in Kenya! This would be unlikely to be an issue were Obama not a Democrat, but rather a Republican, and of course, if he was white, instead of African American! What a sad state of affairs!

159th Anniversary Of Founding Of Republican Party: Not A Celebration!

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The Republican Party, which gave us Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, William Seward in the years of the 1850s and 1860s; which gave us Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Sr, George Norris, William Borah, Hiram Johnson in the 1900s-1940s; which gave us Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr,, George Romney in the 1950s-1960s; and which gave us Mark Hatfield, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford in the 1970s–1990s, reached its 159th birthday today.

The Republican Party began as an anti slavery expansion party, with elements of abolitionism also present when the party began on this day in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.

It became the party of civil rights legislation, three civil rights constitutional amendments, progressive legislation, and supportive of much bipartisan legislation with Democrats in the New Deal and Great Society eras.

Of course, they had their evil elements, including McCarthyism, nativism, and tying themselves to organized religious influences that wished to take America backward, but until the past few years, they always had redeeming values in many ways, and would often denounce the extremists in their midst.

But now the Republican Party has become a party dominated by Tea Party radicals, who promote racism, misogyny, nativism, concern only to promote the welfare of the wealthy, and willingness to engage in foreign wars that have cost us dearly in treasure and loss of life and limb!

The Republican Party is no longer, in any way, reflective of its past, and in fact, insults its honorable, respectable history, sullying the names of its heroes and champions over a century and a half!

This is a tragedy of massive proportions, and the name “Republican” should be co-opted by the true moderates who are sitting by, watching the destruction going on, and holding their heads in their hands, ashamed that the name has been so damaged by reckless, anarchistic haters of the federal government! The party which fought the Civil War to uphold the Union is now more like the secessionist Democrats of that era!

The Failure Of Two Romneys Seeking The Presidency

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So now two Romneys, father and son, have failed in their goal to become President of the United States.

George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father, was a competitor for the GOP nomination in 1968, but self destructed, when after a trip to Vietnam, he said he felt he had been “brainwashed”. At the same time, he had been very transparent about his finances and tax returns, and had been openly willing to be specific on what he believed. He was an honest, competent man, who had been Governor of Michigan for six years, was proud to be a moderate, and later served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, tried for the GOP nomination for President in 2008, and then ran and won the nomination this year. But Mitt only had one term as Governor of Massachusetts, and his record in office was far from successful, while his dad had accomplished a great deal in Michigan.

Additionally, Mitt came across as a man of no principles, no guts, no beliefs, who refused to be transparent about his tax returns or anything else. He stayed away from the news media, which George catered to, and allowed himself to become a captive of the right wing of his party, while George condemned and fought against the right wing and Barry Goldwater in 1964.

And Mitt became an incessant liar, which his dad would have been shocked by!

George Romney was an admirable figure in many ways, while Mitt Romney was far from admirable, and not many political observers will miss him, and it seems certain in the long run of history, George will be seen as far better than his son Mitt!

Another example of a son not being the match of his dad, sadly!

Mitt Romney And The Three Words Beginning With “M”: Off Limits!

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential nominee, has problems with three words beginning with the letter M!

He does not wish to talk about his years as Massachusetts Governor, when he was a moderate Republican.

He does not like to talk at all about his Mormon faith, and is just as secretive about it as the Mormon Church is toward investigation and analysis of itself.

And he certainly has no desire to talk about his money, being far less transparent than his own dad was in 1968, when he was running for the GOP Presidential nomination.

This is not the kind of person we want governing us, when he refuses to be accountable about his past in any form!