9 Comments
User's avatar
тна Return to thread
Michael Green's avatar

It's good to see the reference to Ike being the political coward he really was. I also think of Herbert Hoover and other republicans doing everything they could in the 1930s to undermine FDR and the country. My, but republican treason is an oldie but a goodie.

Expand full comment
TCinLA's avatar

You need to get David Corn's "American Psychosis - A Historical Investigation Of How The Republican Party Went Crazy." Ike's part is prominent and early.

When I researched "Downtown," I found the story of the "bomber gap" pushed by the Air Force and aviation industry, that the U-2 program found to be non-existent. That and the realization of what he had done in 1952 was why Ike said what he did in his farewell address

Expand full comment
Michael Green's avatar

There's also Heather Richardson's history of the party where she really traces it to Goldwater, but I think, as Charlie Pierce would put it, they long since had eaten the monkey brains.

Expand full comment
TCinLA's avatar

Not to mention Rick Perlstein's trilogy on Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. Very good stuff.

Expand full comment
Michael Green's avatar

Agreed!

Expand full comment
David Levine's avatar

it was already gonna be next on my list.

Expand full comment
Allen Hingston's avatar

Thanks for the book recommendation. The Eisenhower Marshall thing was a shock to me and to my brother who also follows you closely. I read HCR's books and also Lyn Fenwick's Prairie Bachelor: The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement.

https://dablogfodder.blogspot.com/2021/05/prairie-bachelor-story-of-kansas.html

The Republican Party stopped being a party of the people a long long time ago. I do not think they are worried about the election because they have it fixed at the state level

Expand full comment
David Levine's avatar

this may sound extreme, but I think the Republicans started to do downhill in1878, with pulling federal troops out of the south and that foul-ball stolen Tilden/Hayes election. I say this also understanding that, until, say, my lifetime, a huge piece of the Democratic party were down south and hardly very "liberal." and TR's Progressivism, has always struck me as a tad too "elitist" (better word, anyone?), which you can hardly hold against him...

Expand full comment
TCinLA's avatar

The "southern Democrats" are today's far right Republican party in the south.

Expand full comment