Mike Malloy has recently had a change of heart in the 2012 election and will support the Democratic Party. This 180 degree decision did not come lightly and he described the last ten years or more of Democratic Party history as being a culture of cowardice. Agreed.
Mike’s critics say this is a betrayal of:
– Free Enterprise to Capitalism;
– Liberalism to centrist politics;
– Peace and pride to illegal war and blind patriotism;
– Truth and justice to greed and unbridled power;
– Environmental progress to rape and pillage by big oil and king coal; and
– Democracy to the rigged two-party system.
And this may be more true than I want to believe, but there is some value and sanity is voting for the Democratic Party in 2012. Does anyone remember how bad Republicans have been in our history of the nation. Especially when they perceive they are in total control. If you are not alarmed by the Tea Party thugs of 2010, then you are not paying attention—just think of: Karl Rove financially unleashed under Citizens United; Grover Norquist’s no tax pledge overriding the congressional oath to the U.S. Constitution; Rep. Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand cult worshiper, and the gutting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the billionaire Koch Brothers-financed Gov. Scott Walker and the war on Public Employee Unions; and the Gov. Kasich draconian budget cuts to destroy social programs.
So you the pissed-off listener, and rightly so—you should be pissed off—we all are, hence the 99% movement, but don’t take it out on Mike. So you say you are going to vote your conscious and vote for the Green Party, the independent, the Libertarian or the socialist. But a third party ALWAYS elects the 2nd party that people detest when they leave their first party—thus achieving the complete opposite of what they wanted to accomplish. Witness former Republican TR and the Bull Moose Party electing Wilson the Democrat; former Republican Ross Perot and the Reform Party electing Clinton the Democrat; Nader and the Green Party electing Bush in 2000—and hundreds of examples across the world.
Thom Hartmann counsels you to take over your local Democratic Party by attending a Ward Meeting; and there may be ways of having a progressive fusion party or caucus within the Demo Party. In New Mexico we tried a Green Demo Party but it didn’t work out that well after we changed to a caucus system when our incumbent governor wanted to run for President (Bill Richardson).
But let’s go back to my original premise about how bad Republicans can be and were in our history:
– Panic of 1893-94 occurs from Republican financial policies. Because it never resulted in a Depression the economy continues to have boom and bust cycles into the 1920’s. This is the Glided Age and the rise of the Robber Barons.
– In 1924, in Indiana, Ku Klux Klan leader David C. (“DC”) Stevenson orchestrated a campaign which elected Ed Jackson to the Governorship and over fifty other Republicans to the state legislature. For this he was made Grand Dragon. Another 100 Klan members were elected as local officials of the Republican Party, like the Mayor of Indianapolis. These candidates were secretly financed by the Ku Klux Klan, and then after election were threaten with being exposed if they didn’t tow the Klan line. To remove opposition many Democratic Party Officials who were Jewish, Catholic, Black or Latino were lynched. DC’s political machine elected legislators in 12 states (Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia), and boasted that the Ku Klux Klan had 6 million members, and was expected to be 8 million when David C. Stevenson was going to run for President in 1928. Some of the tactics used were the bombings of Klan rallies and the planting of evidence that suggested Catholic, Black and Jewish groups did it. This was able to sway public opinion toward the Klan. With the control of funding, the Klan embarked on highway projects and social service programs intended to endear them to the populace. Late in 1924, D.C. Stevenson was convicted of raping and murdering a young woman named Madge Oberholtz (who went to him to have her early education and reading program funds restored). She rebuked his romantic intentions so he drugged her and raped her on a train ride to Chicago. A trial was held and he was convicted of with holding medical attention from the woman for more than three days that resulted in her death. Some of the damaging evidence came as descriptions of the genital mutilation and numerous bite marks on the woman’s body. In his attempt to blackmail the Governor for a pardon, he released two large black metal boxes containing the names and amounts of hundreds of officials nationwide that were on the Klan’s payroll. These records destroyed the careers of thousands of Republicans in the Midwest (including some of future VP Dan Quayle’s relatives).
– Also a popular slogan and poster of 1925: Vote Republican Kandidate Kal Koolidge (the three words all starting with K’s instead of C’s which indicates the endorsement by the invisible empire, the Ku Klux Klan).
– 1929 Republican Great Depression occurs under Herbert Hoover.
– 1930’s—the Republicans were tired of being a minority party. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four victories as President and his subsequent successful administrations were putting their party out of business. They were desperate to get their way ! Republicans use to say that Roosevelt was in league with Joseph Stalin, the allied leader of the communist Soviet Union. Because Roosevelt was supported by unions, started the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration, they accused his of being a communist and opposed his programs in Congress. Some Republican extremists believed that the depression and resulting masses of poor people was more a case of “survival of the fittest.” If they had been more “competitive” they would not have become poor. Some took this thinking further: that if the poor were continued to be left alone by government programs would eventually die off. Government programs only allowed them to have more children and perpetuated them and their plight. They should be allowed only to live in the inner cities to supply cheap labor pools for growing corporations.
– In 1934 Marine Major General Smedley Butler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler) was involved in a controversy known as the “Business Plot” when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists had approached him to lead a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The individuals that were involved denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations. The final report of the committee stated that there was evidence that such a plot existed, but no charges were ever filed. The opinion of most historians is that while planning for a coup was not very advanced, wild schemes were discussed. Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s grandfather was one of the conspirators. In one of those acts of cowardice that Mike talks about, FDR refuses to prosecute. Butler later writes the book: “War is a Racket” exposing defense contractors in 1935.
– In 1942, Republican U.S. Senator Prescott Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather) had his assets seized under the Trading With the Enemy Act for financing the Nazi war machine.
– Republican Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy was elected in Wisconsin in 1946, 1952 and served till his death in 1957. In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a series of highly publicized investigations of suspected communists in the State Department. He utilized a 100,000 name list of California Democratic Party contributors to bring forward 60,000 people for investigation. McCarthy’s secret strategy was to cut the Democratic Party’s financial base and he would just walk into the Presidency in 1956 being the hero of stopping the Red Scare. Respected newsman Edward R. Murrow was able to show that McCarthy had little evidence to back up his claims that spies for the Soviet Union had infiltrated the country, and McCarthy eventually fell into disfavor. In 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy for abusing his authority.
– The 1964 disastrous loss of Republican Barry Goldwater for President. Cultural conservatives set out to take over America using a well-thought-out plan. The plan was put in place by the likes of Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell, William F. Buckley, Bill Kristol’s dad and Lee Atwater. People who would like to take us back to the Dark Ages or at least allow slavery.
– In 1968, former Vice President Richard Nixon used Madame Chiang Kai-Shek to negotiate a secret deal with the North Vietnamese not to make peace with LBJ. LBJ found out about it but did nothing. Nixon fearing the Democrats would use this against him in the 1972 campaign staged the Watergate Break-in and cover-up. Not to mention he implemented the “Southern Strategy.” In one of those acts of cowardice that Mike talks about, LBJ refuses to prosecute.
– The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the implementation defense spending and of supply-side economics and the trickle down theory which bankrupted the country in 2007. Ohhh plus the illegal Iran-Contra deal of arms for hostages in Iran and money from drugs from the Contras in Nicaragua which Reagan also claimed to forget.
Other Famous RepubliKLANS:
David Duke of Louisiana (failed US Senate and Gubernatorial candidate of Louisiana and former Klan Wizard; mentioned for Presidency as late as 2000)
Barry M. Goldwater
Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber of the Federal Building
Newt Gingrich
Former KKK members Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms
Do I need to add more to the balance sheet?
WHM
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williamhenrymee 