The GOP's Specter of Oblivion

Right Democrat has this, from New England Cable News:

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey says "the state has changed substantially over the past couple of years."

"It's a change in the right direction in the sense that we now have more people that are going to be supportive of the kind of change that President Obama has not only promised, but begun to deliver on," said Casey.

Longtime Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter says he's switching parties. The Republican National Committee chairman says the decision is motivated by "personal political interests," because Specter would likely lose in the next GOP primary. He's up for re-election in 2010.

President Barack Obama says the Democratic Party is "thrilled" to have Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter.

"We're happy about this news for the Democratic Senate and for the American people and for the president's agenda. I'm not going to get into 2010 discussions. I think it's premature today," said Casey.

"It appears now we have 60 votes for a lot of important issues," said Casey.

Specter is a bit liberal socially, but the totally pro-life Bob Casey is pleased, so he must be all right really.

To those who say “good riddance”, was Teddy Roosevelt “a real Republican”? See here for how, in his autobiography, he wrote:

“I hold that a corporation does ill if it seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors, or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly. It is, in fact, a conspiracy against the public welfare which the Government should use all its powers to suppress.

“If, on the other hand, a corporation seeks profit solely by increasing its products through eliminating waste, improving its processes, utilizing its by-products, installing better machines, raising wages in the effort to secure more efficient help, introducing the principle of cooperation and mutual benefit, dealing fairly with labor unions, setting its face against the underpayment of women and the employment of children; in a word, treating the public fairly and its rivals fairly: then such a corporation is behaving well. It is an instrumentality of civilization operating to promote abundance by cheapening the cost of living so as to improve conditions everywhere throughout the whole community.”

I have been hoping for years to read a proper study of the two Presidents Roosevelt in terms of their similarities, preferably leading to a synthesis of their thought as applicable in the present age. If anyone knows of such a work, then do please let me know - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

The rural and Western half of the Republican Party supported the New Deal. Congressional Republicans (not all, but some) cast the votes that passed Civil Rights in the face of Dixiecrat resistance. Their party historically and rightly viewed the wider world in strictly realistic terms, “not seeking for monsters to destroy”. Republicans called for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War, an outcome (also advocated by Pope Benedict XV) which would have precluded both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Theirs was the party of Eisenhower, with his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, and with his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. The party of Nixon, who ended the Vietnam War as President Obama will end the Iraq War, and who began détente with China as President Obama is beginning détente with Iran, Cuba and beyond. And the party of opposition to Clinton’s unpatriotic job-exportation, unpatriotic sweatshop-importation, and unpatriotic global trigger-happiness, all continued and expanded by the unpatriotic Bush Administration (except for when it came to protecting Pennsylvanian steel, the ingrates...).

But where is it now?

Much like the Tories, in fact.