I think Ike was a good president

[Monique1]

He was a republic but in a day when there were true republicans. He saw what was happening and warned us.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/12/11/20101211ike-farewelladdress1211.html

[marmar]

1. In some ways, he was to the left of any of our recent Democratic presidents.....

..... but I don't think he was a big civil rights advocate, though.

[WCGreen]

6. He ordered federal troops into Little Rock to protect the first desegregated

school in the deep south...

[Bigmack]

2. Shiiiiit.... I've been seeing things that make me...

long for Nixon! And I loved him like Hunter Thompson did.

That asshole... for one reason or other... did some good stuff. He'd never make it in the Repub party today.

Palin? O'Donnel? Bachmann? Look how far they've come.

[musette_sf]

4. Even Goldwater isn't looking so bad.

Of course having Stephanie Miller around to remind us of this on a contant basis helps.

Shit, aside from that idiotic drug law, Rocky doesn't seem that bad in retrospect either. (Although I do recall going camping, and dropping for the first time, as my own personal protest on the first weekend the law went into effect :-) )

And then there was John Lindsay, Republican, maybe the last of the Liberal Republicans.

I blame the destruction of civility and rationality in the Republican party (mostly) on Reagan (or, shall I say, his backers, handlers and minders) playing the race card in the South. From the day he gave his first post-nomination speech for the 1980 election in Philadelphia, MS, I knew we were lost as a nation.

[jwirr]

3. There were good things about him but let me tell you as a child in

a poor family back then - he was not good in that area of government. We damn near starved to death and there was little to no help available. We were the small farmers who went out of business under his policies.

[musette_sf]

5. My mom came from a farm family

and she was an avid Stevenson supporter. (In fact, one of my earliest memories is watching the 1956 Democratic Convention on TV with my parents.)

[jwirr]

8. That is when I became interested in politics also. In my little school

our votes were counted and there were only 4 out of 200 kids who voted against Ike. One of the things that happened to those of us on the small farms is that we suffered in silence. No one at the school ever asked why I washed dishes in the lunch room so I and my little brother could have lunches. We never thought of protesting what was going on. Maybe that is why we are on this board as activists today. Kind of ironic that those small farms may be some of the answer to todays climate and oil problems.

[Odin2005]

7. Tell that to the Iranians.