Dwight Eisenhower - The last good Republican?

[George_Bonanza]

Nixon was impeached. Reagan caused a lot of miseries in Latin America. Herbert Bush continued the Reagan economic downward spiral. And Walker Bush is Walker Bush.

I want to know more about this man. A great war hero who led the Allied invasion, a man who cared about the racial issues enough to send an army to Alabama, which was sure to infuriate those southerners. He was very adamant about guarding America against the upcoming military-industrial complex. Seems to me he was a great man, the last great Republican. I even read that he visited JFK at the White House at times to help him out with the SE Asia Communist crisis.

[laura888]

1. Excellent questions!

you're right - I also don't know much about this man... anyone?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. There is a crucial difference

And I am going to thank Coulter and McCarthy for this...

When people scream that somebody has commited treason and they
do not love their country, usually it is them who do not understand
the nature of the country. Ike loved his country before anything else.

He served many years in the Armed Forces adn if WW II had not come,
this staff officer may have ended his career as a Colonel, maybe a
one star... but make no mistake, HE LOVED his cuontry and the
institutions of his country.

His nemessis was McCarthy, who he confronted by asking him if he had
no shame, when he went after Ike's beloved Army. Today we have the Coulters of teh World running around telling tall tales, and taking
advantage of the system they despise and are willing to use, in order
to destroy it.

There are still republicans in the mold of Ike, but they no longer have power, as the GOP has been taken over by many mini-McCarthy's who do not understand the insitutions that have made this country an
example to the world. You can bet Ike is also doing summersaults, together with TR, and Lincoln, as well as Franklin and the rest of the founding fathers.

[PsN2Wind]

3. Remember

when we used to think of Barry Goldwater as right-wing?

[Clete]

11. Remember when we used to think of Pat Buchanan

as a wacko. Next to the ones out today, he seems almost reasonable.

[beanball]

4. Ike the last of the real republican presidents

Nixon sole out to the dixiecrats and turned the party of Lincoln into the party of the KKK.

[JackSwift]

5. Ike was a gutless moral coward

who sold out George C. Marshall and kept quiet about McCarthy

[CWebster]

6. As I recall, my parents were Democrats

and they never cared for him. His image has undergone some revision due to his final warnings about the military-industrial complex.

[Julien Sorel]

9. Perhaps his image was subject to revision by your parents,

but most people don't need to revise their image of him. His 8 years in office were actually pretty good, peace and prosperity of a kind the nation wouldn't see again until Clinton. Of course, both Ike and Clinton were centrists who kept the fringes of their parties firmly in check.

[CWebster]

12. No

the revison is recent.

My parents views were consistant, Billy.

[Julien Sorel]

14. You'll have to show me who did any 'revising' of their opinions of

Eisenhower, then. Because I don't know of a single educated person who thinks badly of him, and most of my friends are center-left Democrats. Eisenhower is, in fact, the only recent Repub president I personally like except TR, although I will admit to a certain shameful admiration for some of Nixon's better traits. Eisenhower's record is clear. He was a popular president when he took office, he was popular when he left, and he has a lot of respect from historians as a solid-to-above-average president.

[LTR]

7. Gerald Ford

Not a bad guy. He helped heal the nation. Was progressive on some issues, such as feminism. And he was a moderate, but fair and honorable.

Many say his downfall was pardoning Nixon. I have no problem with that, since I understand his rationale of a possible Nixon trial dredging up bad feelings and hostility when the nation needed to bounce back and move forward.

I cannot, however, forgive him for campaigning hard for Dubya.

[tom_paine]

8. Gerald Ford and Barry Goldwater

I like Ford for the reasons you laid out, though I think he was wrong to pardon Nixon, that was probably a condition for the job.

Goldwater wised up to the Busheviks at the end, and as I believe Vince Bugliosi cites him as having told the Busheviks (Gingrich, DeLay et al.), to leave his name off of any of their plans for they had damaged the Republican Party worse than the Democrats ever could.

Goldwater was right about that, of course.

He probably cost himself a monument in the Imperial Palace by the year 2100, in the "Hall of Fuhrers", with that comment.

[LTR]

16. Irony

What does it say about the neocons when we can say on DU that we actually like Barry Goldwater?

I for one like the guy. Sure, he was pretty hawkish, but he was very much for responisbel government spending, civil liberties, environmental causes and was very much against the religious right (especially despised Falwell).

He may have been uber-conservative, but he was an honest, upstanding guy who wasn't into the facist stuff. Just an old-fashioned conservative. They don't exist anymore.

Goldwater would probably be considered almost liberal nowadays.

[leftofthedial]

10. That is my opinion

after him, the GOP was coopted by first criminals and then neocon fascists

[BrotherBuzz]

13. Earl Warren should get credit for desegregation

and the story is that Eisenhower was pissed off that he had appointed Earl to the supreme court after his unanimous landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education and the "Warren Court" stream of civil rights decisions that followed. Ike was just the fireman.

[pasadenaboy]

15. Goldwater in the 80s

was really good. He was a psycho earlier in his career though.