Once Upon a Time in America We had Good, Honorable, Republican Leaders… By Lonna Gooden VanHorn, November 14, 2005
In “Where Have the Honorable Republicans Been?” Andrew Bard Schmookler mourns the fact that Republicans who many Democrats have regarded as worthy of respect have not spoken out about this administration that is ruining their party, as well as destroying America. He listed John McCain, Howard Baker, and Warren Rudman among those "honorable Republicans."
In “We’re Not in Lake Woebegone Any More,” Garrison Keillor wrote:
“Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican.”
A Vietnam veteran friend of mine wrote that if he saw John McCain hug G.W. Bush one more time, he was going to puke. McCain obviously both liked and respected John Kerry, and to his credit, he defended him against scurrilous attacks and asked that the president specifically denounce attacks by the Swift Boat Veterans. But, being the unprincipled “do whatever it takes to win” man that he is, Bush knew the ads were effective, and he did not specifically denounce them. As for McCain, have his own presidential ambitions superceded his conscience? Is that why he supported Bush in 2004? In return for promises of support in 2008?
Like Schmookler, I do not hate all Republicans. To the list of decent Republican leaders he named, I would add Chuck Hagel, Ron Paul, and Jim Leach, among others. And like Keillor, in my research over the past few years Dwight D. Eisenhower has become one of my heroes, for a number of reasons. Below I have condensed an article in which I quoted what he and other war heroes had said and compared it to what Bush/co said.
I have many of these quotations in large print on my “book on wheels.”
These quotes and the fact that under Ike the richest among us were taxed at 90% and corporations at 52% and against Republican pressure he refused to support lowering those rates are why I consider Ike a hero.
In his farewell address Ike warned that the interests of the military-industrial complex would come to determine policy. The rage a decent man like him – a man who cared about his soldiers -- would feel against a president and vice-president who stood to gain politically and/or financially from a war they fear-mongered and misled the country into largely to benefit their former companies and corporate campaign contributors would know no bounds!! I believe Ike would have considered Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rumsfeld among the “domestic enemies” he had sworn as a soldier to protect this country against!”
Read his words and weep!!
General and President Eisenhower:
“A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don’t believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked to me about such a thing.”
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”
“There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone.”
“Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it.” and
Bio: Lonna Gooden VanHorn was born and raised on a small farm in Minnesota. She is the mother of 6, a grandmother, and the wife of a Vietnam veteran.
Formerly a person who did not "get involved" in controversy, the constant lies and deceit of the Bush administration have motivated her to become a trouble maker in her old age.
Archives of some of her articles may be accessed "here""here" and "here"
Click here to view her "book on wheels"
If you would like transcripts of the entire contents of her information truck, e-mail jvanhorn@peoplepc.com and she will send you her truck file as an attachment.
Thanks Lonna my nickname is Ike, some call me Ikster. Goes to show real good men as Eisenhower are few in this world. I think Ike would support impeachment of Bush. I know I do.
Wish this Bush thing would go away forever, bring the troops home, and work to abolish War and the military complex.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Wednesday, November 16, 2005 at 7:11:49 AM
