Posts Tagged Theodore Roosevelt
Post Presidential Friendships Of Former Competitors
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on March 13, 2013
An interesting phenomenon is the history of post Presidential friendships of former competitors for the Presidency.
Most of the time when candidates, whether in the Presidency or working toward it, compete against each other, there is such “bad blood” that it never dissipates after both of them have left the Presidency.
Examples of “bad blood” remaining are John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson; William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt; and Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
The only exceptions to this reality had been John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; and Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, with both relationships being well known friendships AFTER the White House years.
But now we can add the developing, strong friendship of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which was further revealed recently with the publication of letters the elder Bush wrote in praise of Clinton, with the two men becoming very close in their work after the Asian tsunami in 2004. Clinton is clearly seen by Bush as like another son, a part of the Bush family, and the two men have developed a powerful friendship that now can be added to the other two examples of a post Presidential friendship of former competitors.
So the score is now 4-3, still a case of rivalry and distaste by four sets of former Presidential competitors, but now demonstrating three examples of warm relationships when the heat and fire of a campaign wears down, and leads over time to a sense of shared experiences that bring two Presidents close together!
100 Years Ago Sunday, The Woman Suffrage Parade In Washington, DC Took Place, A Day Before The Inauguration Of President Woodrow Wilson!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on March 1, 2013
The woman suffrage movement, which had begun with the Equal Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, used the occasion of the upcoming Presidential Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson to conduct a massive parade in Washington DC, the day before the inauguration, which is 100 years ago on March 3, with Wilson inaugurated the following day.
Alice Paul led the march of about 8,000 women, who were mobbed by tens of thousands of spectators, majority being men, who injured, shoved, and tripped many of the marchers, and in so doing, created a scandal and motivated the further push toward a constitutional amendment, which came about finally in 1920, despite President Wilson’s opposition, and his order of arrest of suffragettes on Pennsylvania Avenue, who regularly marched and demonstrated for the amendment.
The battle of women for equal protection and equal rights was at fever pitch then, as sadly it is now, as Republicans work at weakening the rights of women in all spheres of public life, including their rights to their own bodies, and to their right to avoid assault that cannot be prosecuted, something that happened too often in American history, and still goes on today!
Ironically, the sponsor of the 19th Amendment for woman suffrage was the first woman to serve in either house of Congress, Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a Republican, at a time when former President Theodore Roosevelt was advocating woman suffrage, as he did in his Progressive Party Presidential campaign the previous year, 1912!
159th Anniversary Of Founding Of Republican Party: Not A Celebration!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 28, 2013
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!
Republicans Seem To Be Suicidal In Reluctance To Change Course
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 21, 2013
The Republican Party is in its death throes more and more each week.
The country is no longer interested in their agenda, in their candidates, in their goals, and in their promotion of fear and hate!
The GOP has lost five of the last six popular vote totals for President, despite spending inordinate amounts of money, the most ever in 2012, due to the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court in 2010.
But they have elements that are destroying them from within like a cancer!
These destructive elements include:
The right wing conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, who are making massive amounts of money promoting hate, fear and division, and until the GOP tells Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and their ilk to go somewhere, they will be going down the road to destruction!
The power of the National Rifle Association and Wayne La Pierre, and its campaign to defeat any candidate who wants any reasonable gun regulations, is going to cause the defeat of Senators and Congressmen, who are unwilling to sell their souls to this powerful pressure group!
The Tea Party Movement, which wants to wipe out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and is furious at Republican Governors, including the latest convert on ObamaCare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, making it a total of seven Republican Governors who have decided to accept that program, has plans to run candidates against anyone who does not wish to support their desire to go back to the 19th century and wipe out all aspects of the welfare state, so Maine Senator Susan Collins is on a hit list, as is even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for not being conservative enough! Do not forget that the Koch Brothers and other wealthy billionaires are the brains behind this movement, which is lower class populism gone wild, but they have the ability to harm the Republican Party establishment! And Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the lead elements in this Tea Party uprising, who might cause the Republican Party to go down to defeat in many races, because of their loony libertarianism!
The right wing evangelical Christian movement, which will fight any move toward acceptance of gay rights and gay marriage, abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun regulation, as well as their desire to promote religion in the education curriculum, rejecting science and history, and promotion of a theocracy in states that have large numbers of their believers.
The “NeoCons”, Neoconservatives, who want more money spent on defense, advocate overseas military interventions, and glorify wars in the name of American capitalism and profits! They had power under George W. Bush, but are now trying to defeat Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary.
And finally, the no tax increase crowd, led by Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, a group which is starting to see some Republicans abandon them, but not enough, and willing to back corporate loopholes and the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor, these two groups failing to understand that this elite has no concerns, except to back the establishment on Wall Street and in the corporate world, even at a time when corporate profits are soaring, and the stock market has doubled under Barack Obama!
These are the destructive elements in the Republican Party, and will cause its total dissolution very soon if the direction of the party is not changed to appeal to the moderate center, the tradition of the party under Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and YES, even in the time of Ronald Reagan, when moderates were still a major part of the party success, and Reagan a conservative but not an extremist, as these various elements of the party are in 2013!