History Nerds: Who's the last Republican you could've voted for?

[RooseveltTruman]

I'd like to stress that it who you COULD'VE voted for, not necessarily that you WOULD have voted for. And this applies to both presidents who won as well as nominees who lost.

...For me, it'd probably be Eisenhower. I'd have been pretty pissed about the Korean War in '52, and the economy was booming in '56 (not to mention I highly respect his leadership and relative integrity). It's important to note that the business community expected that Eisenhower would be a Reagan-like figure who'd repudiate the New Deal and fight tenaciously for corporate interests. Instead (though he didn't fight for any new programs), he preserved the New Deal, and sought a "middle ground"/compromise between business and labor interests that drove corporate execs crazy. Ike could've fought to be a Reagan type--in '52, Repubs had control of both houses of Congress--but instead, he took the middle ground. Read Robert Griffith's "Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth." ( http://www.jstor.org/stable/1863309 ) to see how Ike governed from the middle.

Gotta leave you with this classic Eisenhower gem: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."


What about you guys?

[Amy6627]

1. Teddy Roosevelt. n/t

[ixion]

4. my answer as well. n;t

[orpupilofnature57]

11. Teddy for sure ,did what he could for us and against the new world order.

[DrunkenBoat]

81. huh? teddy of san juan hill?

i really don't get where people are coming from.

[orpupilofnature57]

138. A Little thing called History ,look it up.Who gave us more national parks,

stopped the Morgans and Vanderbilt's from enslaving us ,that Right Teddy of San Juan!!!!

[MatthewStLouis]

16. Teddy Roosevelt. He wasn't a fake and he actually cared about things/people other than himself. n/t

[newspeak]

152. even though Teddy had his macho "carry a big stick"

he also fought the robber barons and wall street. Saved some of our beautiful public lands from those greedy robber barons. I would have voted for TR.

[GoCubsGo]

88. Me, too.

But then, even he left the GOP. That, right there, says a lot in itself.

[Javaman]

126. +1 nt

[Brickbat]

2. Arne Carlson, governor of Minnesota.

[trotsky]

99. Coincidentally, that is the last Repub I could have AND did vote for.

In 1990.

[hifiguy]

117. Yep. Arne was the last of a now extinct breed.

He (and former Repub Gov Elmer L. Anderson) both endorsed Kerry in '04. Arne has made it loudly clear that he is now a registered independent. He was a very good governor - liberal on social issues and moderately conservative fiscally, intellectually honest and a straight shooter. The religulously insane hated him and the feeling was very mutual.

For President, Ike.

[LNM]

124. Arnie got my first and only Republican vote.

[newfie11]

3. Ike. n/ t

[orpupilofnature57]

13. A great leader who had enough love and courage to warn us of the very..

industry that made him a hero!!!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

[YellowRubberDuckie]

5. It's not a good question.

Back in the day, the Democrats were what the Republicans are now. Both parties have basically done 180s since the Civil War. They aren't even what they were back in the 50s anymore. Sorry. I just think your question is flawed.

[RooseveltTruman]

Oh, I'm aware...

...If this were 1860 (and we all somehow had internet), we'd all probably be on a Republican forum, whereas this site would have people posting starting bids for their slaves.

My point in asking was more or less to see just how far people had to go back to find a Republican nominee or Republican president that they could have voted for. For a lot of people, you have to go back pretty damn far--at least 1960--to find a presidential contender who wasn't either squarely in the pocket of big business or completely corrupt.

[RooseveltTruman]

12. Accidental duplicate.

[Hippo_Tron]

63. Yes and no, they were probably closest during the Grover Cleveland era

But other than during that brief period, the business elites almost always leaned towards the Whigs or the Republicans. As far as regressive social agendas were concerned, though, the Democrats definitely were big on that back in the day.

[efhmc]

104. True. Actually in Texas, the more progressive folks were

Republican until after the civil rights acts was signed, when they flooded and completely changed the Rep. party.

[Pab Sungenis]

6. By "could've," do you mean in our adult lives?

If so, no one.

If you mean ever, Gerald Ford in 1976. He was he last sane Republican nominee.

Before him I'd have to go all the way back to Teddy.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

7. I'd have to go with Eisenhower

The only other good Republican president in the 20th Century was Teddy Roosevelt. Every other one was an idiot or a criminal or both.

[orpupilofnature57]

15. I agree with both ,but mostly all the others.

[sarge43]

21. +1

Hoover wasn't an idiot or a criminal. However, he couldn't or wouldn't free his mind and think boldly.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

22. Maybe not, but I still wouldn't have voted for him

n/t

[rug]

8. Lincoln

[melissaf]

10. me too

[fortyfeetunder]

71. I third that!

:hi:

[stevedeshazer]

9. I voted for Sen. Mark Hatfield.

In 1990.

[FarLeftFist]

14. Eisenhower.

[krabigirl]

64. 2nd.

[Wwagsthedog]

17. Robert Taft

[muntrv]

18. Eisenhower.

[Bozita]

19. Bill Milliken, former MI governor who endorsed Obama in '08

[MannyGoldstein]

20. Ike

An astonishing fellow.

[lordcommander]

23. Ike n/t

[Nevernose]

24. "No one in this family has voted for a Republican since the Civil War,"

"No one in this family has voted for a Republican since the Civil War," my father once told me. "Don't be the first."

Kind of a heavy burden, but he gave me an out: "If you can't bring yourself to vote for the Democrqt, there are plenty of viable alternatives. You can vote Green, vote Socialist, vote Communist. Just don't vote Republican, because if you do I will no longer have a son. You will be dead tone if you vote Republican."

Of course, he used to drink a lot, too. It's an absolute miracle that I don't need intensive psychotherapy.

[CloakedClock]

30. Wow, that's really intense...

...No fan of Republicans, but I can't imagine disowning my son if he voted Repub. Seems very...tribalistic. Good on ya for coming out of it sane!

[Nevernose]

60. I said I wasn't in therapy...

...I never claimed to be sane!

[a la izquierda]

42. Jesus...

I wish my family would just vote for Democrats consistently.
Of course, my family begs me to vote Repuke. I'm the first blood relative on my mom's side to vote for a Democrat. It's a travesty to them.

[moondust]

25. Voted for one Republican in 40 years. Twice.

At the time he was rated the most liberal representative in the House. He had seniority and a good committee assignment and there wasn't a compelling reason to send in a freshman to start at the bottom.

Then he voted to impeach Bill Clinton and poof! No more votes for you!

[CloakedClock]

37. Who was it? n/t

[moondust]

47. I'd rather not say. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

133. Reagan.

It was Reagan, wasn't it? Ah, admit it.

Unless it was W. Please, don't say it was W.

[moondust]

137. Nope.

If you had read my post you'd have seen that it was somebody in the House of Representatives.

:hi:

[Warren DeMontague]

143. Oh. My bad, sorry.

I thought the topic was limited to Presidential races, too.

[cascadiance]

26. I voted John Anderson for pres. Technically he was an independent then...

Don't remember when I voted for a registered Republican, if I did at all.

[DrunkenBoat]

79. carter's nader

[WCGreen]

27. Ike!

[jmowreader]

28. Harold Stassen, believe it or not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Stassen

Any Repuke who would march with Martin Luther King is all right by me.

[Kennah]

29. Hoover

:evilgrin:

Heh, he paved the way for FDR.

:hide:

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Ike

[cordelia]

32. Eisenhower

[tsuki]

33. My father was a yellow dog democrat, but he was also Navy. He

would never admit it, or ever tell us, but I think the first election he ever voted in...He Liked Ike. And that would be the only Republican I would ever vote for.

[SixthSense]

34. Obama

Wait, does it need to be registered Republican or just act like one?

[Fumesucker]

35. ...

:spank:

:rofl:

:hi:

[salvorhardin]

36. Sherwood Boehlert -- voted for him many times

He was a moderate Republican, an environmentalist, a strong supporter of science and technology, and he tried to do his best for his district. He currently serves on the board of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which Al Gore chairs. If you're restricting it to Presidents, then Eisenhower although I may have gone for Nixon if I was of voting age at the time. Nixon was in many ways our last liberal President.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Boehlert

[WinkyDink]

90. Nixon had the EPA, for sure. But try looking at his illegal ventures, too.

THERE'S A REASON HE RESIGNED.

[salvorhardin]

114. Absolutely

But would I have known what crimes he'd commit in 1968? Nixon did a lot more than just the EPA too -- he'd be considered far left today. I don't excuse his paranoia and crimes, but he was a complicated man who did a lot of good, oft times for the wrong reasons.

[Rex]

38. IKE

[demosincebirth]

39. I LIKE IKE

[janet118]

40. Eisenhower n/t

[BrentWil]

41. I COULD vote for Jon Huntsman...

I am a Democratic not because I am as liberal as most of you. Hell, I am not. However, today the Democratic party is the only party that represents sanity. If Jon Huntsman got the GOP nomination, I would look at voting for him. I am not saying I would, but I would at least look at it. However, that isn't gong to happen. The GOP is bat shit crazy. The Democratic party is the only party for the sane people of America.

[BzaDem]

43. Jon Huntsman enthusiastically supports the Ryan plan. The truth is that even if a GOP president

wanted to be moderate, the demands of the establishment would ultimately tilt the administration heavily to the right. Huntsman would sign basically whatever a Republican Congress sent him. He would appoint justices from a select list of extreme conservatives that could affect the country (and the constitutionality of progressive legislation) for decades. His executive branch appointees would also largely be very conservative.

[Warren Stupidity]

51. Huntsman is full of shit, he just isn't full out loon full of shit.

Abortion: nope. You bad women you.
Affirmative action: nope. White Power!
Death penalty: hang 'em. hang 'em all.
School vouchers: kill public ed. too.
Drugs: hang them too.
Flat tax idiocy: you bet.
Free trade: yes please execute what remains of domestic manufacturing too. Why not?

Can't vote for that piece of shit.

Source: http://www.ontheissues.org/Jon_Huntsman_VoteMatch.htm

[WinkyDink]

91. Wrong website.

[TwilightGardener]

110. I couldn't. That asshole wants to tax military housing allowance and combat pay.

He's dead to me. (edit to add: all the Repub candidates are dead to me, but I have a special disdain for Huntsman).

[JVS]

44. Coolidge. Because fuck John W. Davis.

[Hippo_Tron]

66. I would've voted for La Follette

Coolidge's policies largely got us into the great depression. Davis was awful on racial issues.

[JVS]

68. Davis was just plain awful.

Pro child labor.
Pro poll tax
Anti New Deal later in life
Anti Women's suffrage

[unblock]

45. for president, teddy roosevelt. in actuality, my one and only was weld for governor of massachsetts.

that was the first and last time i ever voted for a republican.
i did it because the democrats for some reason put up john silber, president of boston university, who was just to the right of attila the hun while weld was an old-fashioned new england republican (i.e., left-leaning by national standards at the time).

while i couldn't stand the thought of silber as governor, i hated the fact that weld, of course, surrounded himself with republicans, appointed republicans, and so on. i learned then that it often has very little to do with the candidate, it's the whole package, and party is a BIG part of the package.

so i don't see myself voting for a republican unless i live long enough to see the parties flip (back) and they start running candidates like teddy roosevelt again.

[Mudoria]

46. Pat McCrory in the NC 2008 Governor's race

[WinkyDink]

48. Lincoln.

[bluestate10]

49. My second voting season. I voted for a female republican politician

to lead my state's utility commission. Never voted for a republican again, and never will.

[gordianot]

50. John Danforth the only and last one time Republican.

Republican John Danforth's opponent was Democrat Warren E Hearnes a reprobate of the first order. When Democrat Gerry Litton won the U.S. Senate Primary he was killed in a plane crash the crank shaft which may have severed. Claims were made unproven in court Hearnes may have been involved. Litton was a rising star perhaps the last great populist liberal Democrat from Missouri. Even without involvement in murder Hearnes was still a crook of the first order. Hearnes offered in later years to defend Spiro Agnew pro bono.

Besides John Danforth I have never again voted for a Republican on the National ticket.

[stlsaxman]

92. Same here- only i never voted for Danforth, but "could have"? Sure.

[NorthCarolina]

52. Lincoln. nt

[Joe Fields]

53. Ike

If for no other reason than the Interstate highway system, which was sorely needed at the time.

[donco]

54. I like Ike nt

[Generic Brad]

55. None of them

I grew up listening to my grandfather explain how their crazy policies caused the Great Depression, how they opposed the New Deal, and how they whipped up the Red Scare. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the family who understood what he was talking about.

[fadedrose]

56. John Kennedy was my first vote, and I think he ran against Nixon......

It was 1960 and I was 22 years old...

Can't remember who Nixon's running mate was - don't think it was Agnew the first time he ran...

[RooseveltTruman]

57. It was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. n/t

[WinkyDink]

82. You THINK he ran against Nixon?? THINK?

Good grief.
Google Before Embarrassment.

[Warren DeMontague]

134. Something happened to Kennedy, didn't it?

Didn't he get run over by a bus, or something?

[fadedrose]

149. Ya, the driver was some dumb guy named warren something

:)

[Warren DeMontague]

151. You mean Warren Commission?

I remember him. He was always making up ludicrous stories.

[fadedrose]

150. Subject should have been completed...

as "I think he ran against Nixon and ?" and here I drew a blank. Couldn't remember the veep until RooseveltTruman posted "Lodge." Couldn't place Rockefeller's position in the Veep line, and it was with Ford.

[Blue_In_AK]

58. I sctually did vote for Gerald Ford,

but only because I loved his wife so much. That's the last Republican I've voted for for president.

I cast a vote for Republican Jay Hammond for Alaska governor in 1978, and I would do it again many times. He was the architect behind the Alaska Permanent Fund, so I guess that would make him a Republican Socialist. :shrug: In any event, a good man and someone we all respected a great deal up here.

[Axrendale]

59. I'm wondering if progressives don't tend to lionize Eisenhower these days

simply because he seems like such a compelling figure in comparison with the kind of Republicans that we have had to deal with for the last three decades.

While it is certainly true that he eschewed the conservative wing of the GOP to govern from the center, my feeling is that this was more out of calculation than real conviction. Eisenhower was not a right-wing ideologue, but he was a thoroughly conservative man who both entered and left office with the conviction that one of his most pressing tasks was to slow down the growth of the New Deal/Fair Deal programs that his predecessors had bequeathed to him. After his presidency, he would cite his failure to do so appreciably as being one of his "biggest regrets" - along with appointing Earl Warren to the Supreme Court, which he considered to have been the "greatest mistake" of his career. Even his attempts to keep down Defence spending and his famous warning against the influence of the Military-Industrial-Complex, which is so often citted as a point in his favor by liberals, was actually driven by little more than his deeply ingrained fiscal conservatism (he spent much of his retirement railing in public against the Keynesian economic policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations).

Eisenhower was essentially a conservative but politically shrewd figure who understood that he owed his career as a politician to his immense personal popularity - not to any real public support for the agenda of his party. If he had tried to go against the grain of the times and govern from the right, it would have been the politican equivalent of jumping in front of a train, and he knew it. For the bulk of his presidency (from 1955 onwards) he was generally considered not even to be the most influential figure in domestic politics and policy-making - that honor went to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn - who between them so dominated Congress that Eisenhower had no real choice but to let them take the lead in setting the domestic agenda for the country. Even when progressive initiatives did come out of the Eisenhower administration, the President himself was usually a passive figure content to allow his more activist subordinates to take the lead in shaping policy - somewhat similar in style to the management style of President Obama, which has driven many progressives to distraction. Thus it was that Nelson Rockefeller was the central figure in pushing for the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Richard Nixon took the lead (largely unsuccessfully) on attempting to move the Republican party to the left on the issue of Civil Rights. Eisenhower's domestic legacy is further blackened for me by the shortcomings of his approach to dealing with sickening activity of Joseph McCarthy. Ike's approach of simply waiting for the demagogic Wisconsin Senator to self-destruct while quietly disparaging him behind closed doors may have been the most politically expedient solution, but it's not one that I find to have covered the 34th POTUS in glory. His failure to speak out in public even in defense of his mentor and one-time patron George Marshall was nothing short of appalling.

Eisenhower's greatest influence as President was in the realm of foreign policy, and while in this part of his legacy he can for the most part be rightfully praised as a steady hand who resolved most of the crises that confronted him handily and helped to consolidate the US' position vis a vis the rest of the world, it can hardly be said that he had a perfect track record. He allowed ardent Cold Warriors like John Foster Dulles to wield an immense level of influence, and this showed through particularly in the administrations general posture to regions in the Third World. Latin America was a case in point - Eisenhower neven objected to the kind of hardline anti-communist policies that over the long run have helped to poison intra-hemispheric relations. When VP Nixon toured the region in 1958 on behalf of the administration, there was a reason that he was almost lynched by a mob. Perhaps an even greater failing of the Eisenhower administration's diplomacy was that despite presiding over a period of dramatic cooling in the tensions of the Cold War, he failed repeatedly to accomplish any real breakthroughs in relations with the USSR, bequeathing his successor an international climate that was rapidly heating back up to crisis levels.

On the whole I regard Eisenhower as having been an exceptionally capable Chief Executive who performed well in stewarding the US through a transitional period of the Cold War. I regard his presidential leadership however has having been of lesser quality both his immediate predecessors and successors, and had I been able to vote at the time, would certainly have gone for Stevenson. That said, in the spirit of this thread I will concede that I could have voted for him at a pinch.

In terms of other prominent Republican figures who could have potentially recieved my vote from the 20th Century, Theodore Roosevelt must of course be at the top of the list. The record that the 26th POTUS left behind of energetically and dextrously pursuing most of the foreign and domestic issues of his day has generally been judged sufficient to establish him as one of the five greatest presidents in American history, and I have absolutely no objections to that assessment. TR would have recieved my vote in a heartbeat.

My response to whether or not I could ever have voted for Richard Nixon is decidedly complicated. On the one hand, my perverse fascination with the man's brilliance as an architect of foreign policy strategy compells me to at least give him some consideration, and yet on the other hand the degree to which he turned the domestic scene of his presidency into one great matter of keeping the political plates spinning in the name of maintaining his own power (culminating in the infamous corruption of Watergate) leads me to recoil from the very idea. I suppose that Tricky Dick can be marked up as a "mabye".

I have a certain basic respect for Gerald Ford as a highly decent man whose presidency was not without some success (eg. the Helsinki Accords), but allowing himself to be duped into offering Nixon a blanket pardon and presiding over what was basically two years of gridlock on the domestic scene does not exactly recommend him for me. Another mabye. The same basically applies to George Bush Sr. - an experienced hand who ran the foreign policy of his presidency smoothly and without flair in a period of great developments on the international stage (collapse of the USSR, turmoil in the Middle East, etc) but who called it exactly right when he noted that he lacked "the vision thing" in terms of his domestic leadership. That he was a genuinely conservative Republican in an age when his party was rapidly being taken over by its radical wing gives his presidency a kind of tragic feel that can lead one to nostalgia.

The Republican who I would have been most interested in potentially voting for never made it to the Presidency (although he did make Vice President) - Nelson A. Rockefeller, who was certainly one of the most interesting political personalities that the GOP has ever produced (ranking alongside TR in this regard). That coupled with the extraordinary record that he compiled as a policy-maker in a stunning variety of fields working in the Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower administrations, and finally as the Governor of New York, make the question of how he might have done if he had achieved his ultimate ambition - the Presidency - an eternally fascinating one for me. That he was willing to publicly give hecklers the finger was he was VP, and urged the Republican party to "repudiate" Barry Goldwater and his fellow right-wing extremists, is just a bonus.

[RooseveltTruman]

62. Wow...

Wonderful and thoughtful response. Loved it!

It's definitely true that privately, Eisenhower was a fairly conservative man, and--in his governance--it's certainly true that he didn't pursue anything that could be considered "activist." But similarly, FDR was a man who privately was fiscally conservative (hell, publicly, when he attempted to balance the budget in '37) and--prior to taking office--seemed to repudiate the idea of greater government interference (indeed, he urged the "tightening of the belt") yet how he publicly governed was vastly different. I have to apply the same standard to Ike.

I tend to feel rather conflicted about Joseph McCarthy. I think, going by historical accounts that we now have available to us, that Ike's decision not to engage McCarthy was born out of a genuinely positive impulse, even if it was perhaps not the best decision. I truly believe he didn't want to dignify/elevate "that man" through a dialogue with the President of the United States. If it were me, I probably would have pursued the same plan of attack *in the beginning*, but once he got truly out of control, I feel a public repudiation would have been in order. (He was also privately fuming at McCarthy's assault on Marshall)

I love Teddy, he's probably my second favorite president next to FDR.

I think I may feel the inverse about Nixon. His domestic policy looks liberal by today's standards--affirmative action, the EPA, fighting for national health insurance--but it's his foreign policy that splits me. His courting of China was brilliant, but prolonging Vietnam and expanding the war into Cambodia and Laos is an atrocity to me. And of course, his power-mad attitude toward his opposition is a huge deal-breaker too. I suppose it's possible I could have supported him in '68, given how long it took Humphrey to come out against Vietnam, but he was known to be a trickster even then; I think I probably wouldn't have gone with him.

[Axrendale]

113. Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

And thank you in turn for starting up this thread :) - there is far too little real discussion of political history these days.

I'm also a definite fan of TR - for me, he's probably my third favorite POTUS after FDR and JFK, and I'd fix him as #4 in the list of the greatest presidents of American history (FDR, Lincoln, and Washington eat up the first three spots).

**********

In comparing Eisenhower with Franklin Roosevelt in terms of political expediency and personal ideology and the ways in which these impacted upon (and were impacted by) their governing styles and policies as President, I would disagree with you that they should be judged as having adhered to a similar standard. The divergence between them in my view comes through most basically in that FDR was an unabashedly activist President in both the way that he envisioned the office he held and his uses of it to effect his political agenda. Eisenhower by contrast was more passive. I don't think that it is entirely accurate to describe Roosevelt as having been a fiscal conservative per se, anymore than it can be said that he adhered at heart to anything that can really be described as an ideology. He was, rather, in my view a dedicated experimentalist and political operator who was prepared to accomodate a high degree of variety in his policies for the sake of pursuing a vision of more powerful and activist government that was both willing and able to work towards developing society along more progressive lines. That his rhetoric often shifted reflects in my view less his personal feelings than his status as the leader of a very diverse coalition, many of whose members had a well-developed sense of wariness about both him, and where he wanted to take them.

It is a testament to FDR's near-legendary political ability, that over the course of his presidency he was not only able to cement the "New Deal coalition" into the dominant feature of American political culture, but also to lead that coalition further and further along liberal and internationalist lines. Even his occaisonal backtrackings in advancing the liberal cause usually served in the long run to aid that very cause. Thus the series of conservative appointments and policy gestures that he made at about the half-way mark of his first term turned out to only be a prelude (meant to shore-up wavering elements of his support in the political establishment) to his introduction of a series of some of the strongest initiatives of his presidency - the centerpiece of which was Social Security. Even the budget-balancing episode that played out over 1937 - 1938 was in my view less an expression of personal economic convictions on Roosevelt's half than it was a practical response to the requirements of coalition management. He had been promising many of the fiscally conservative power-brokers amongst Congressional Democrats that he was balance the budget since the beginning of his presidency, and many of them had only voted for his initiatives on the understanding that he would repay them, quid pro quo, by coming through on that promise. He gave them what they wanted - then sat back and waited until support for fiscal conservatism in Congress had been sufficiently eroded by the relapse into recession that resulted before he stepped back into the fray and forced a massive appropriations bill through the legislature that was openly acknowledged as a deliberate attempt to use deficit spending to spur economic activity - for the first time in his presidency. Although the entire affair had been painful, and contributed to the losses that Democrats suffered in the 1938 midterms, it utterly discredited fiscal conservatism as a viable strategy for responding to the Depression, and strengthened support for the intervention of the federal government along proto-keynesian lines.

Although FDR was often willing to say (and if necessary do) things in both public and private that contradicted his own agenda on the matter at hand (it is worth recalling that this was the same man who declared "Your boys will not be sent into any foreign wars!" at the same time that he was scheming to involve the US in WWII), he regarded political expediency as a necessary sacrific for moving both the public and his party to accept in increasing measure his vision of a mass-middle-class state developed and supported by a welfare state - the goals and values of which he was sincerely committed to. For Eisenhower by contrast, political expediency meant responding to the directions in which the political winds of his presidency were blowing, and having his political positions determined by them, rather than employing his own positions to try and determine them. Ike allowed activist figures - from Lyndon Johnson to Sam Rayburn on down - to set the tone of the agenda to which the government would adhere, and was content to swing his influence behind the consensus. FDR by contrast was dead-set for the entirety of his presidency upon using every resource at his disposal to bend the great figures of the day to his will, and to color the tone of the agenda in accordance with his vision. It is telling that whereas Eisenhower looked back upon much of the domestic activity of his presidency with regret, Roosevelt seemed almost entirely devoid of such sentiments - regarding even the failures of his presidency as having been productive experiments in the style of government that he wished to develop for the country. The difference between them was the divergence between a genuinely transformative figure and a steward, and it is thus that I rate them as being of an entirely different order as domestic statesmen - FDR belongs to a similar category as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, whereas Eisenhower's place is more with Grover Cleveland or Bill Clinton in my view.

**********

You do make a good point about the motivations behind Eisenhower's handling of McCarthy, but as much as such motivations might have reflected credibly on the President, I continue to believe that the actions which they led him to take were precisely the wrong ones. Truman had also found reasons not to directly respond to McCarthy that arose out of a "positive impulse" - positive - and negative - impulses led to many, many people during that sad time to avoid taking a public stance against McCarthy. No doubt most were sincere, but that does not reduce the degree to which they were tragically mistaken. It was the very lack of consistent voices of opposition to his activities that allowed the demagogue to amass so much of his power before he finally self-destructed. Had he been challenged by someone of genuine stature earlier on, his fall might have been hastened. As it was, Eisenhower's response to this dark episode in American history remains in my view one of the most serious failings of his presidency.

**********

In regards to the presidency of Richard Nixon, I view it as being subject to a great and tragic split: the brilliance of the initiatives in international relations that his foreign policy revolved around (the means that he employed in pursuit of them however, occaisonally had tragic consequences) and the corrupt amorality of his pursuit of personal power that his domestic presidency revolved around (out of which however, emerged a number of positive developments on the policy front). His primary focus as President was always upon foreign policy - it is probable that no other Chief Executive in American history has ever obsessed so much over the fine points of geopolitics - and although much of what he did in this regard was hideously lacking in basic morality (many of his policies in regards to Indochina bordered on the genocidal) - that was in fact the precise point. He was determined to develop a foreign policy that eschewed moralistic considerations in favor of effectiveness, and while the short-term consequences of this may repel us, it cannot be denied that this approach to international affairs was accompanied by a degree of perceptiveness that is rare amongst prominent political figures.

Nixon intimately understood the ways in which the international scene of his day was evolving - most critical of which was the relative decline of the level of power that the United States was capable of wielding in its foreign affairs - and was determined to reorientate the approach of the country in an attempt to effect a sea-change in the dynamic of the Cold War itself. On the one hand he sought to prop up American worldly influence through measures such as effecting a bloody but ultimately successful extraction from the morass in Vietnam while aiming to consolidate the US' base of power in its existing bastions around the globe. More ambitiously, he aimed to cut the country loose from its strict adherence to the traditional structure of alliances that had defined the Cold War up to that point, and instead work on developing (seperate) novel relationships with Russia and China that would allow for the bipolar tensions of the Cold War to be gradually superseded by a stabilizing balance of power between the nations capable of maintaining and concentrating sufficiently high levels of international influence - a stability that would be maintained through the active cooperation between the great powers to address arising issues and crises within the bounds of their own interests.

It was a startling and powerful vision that Nixon had for world affairs, and had he succeeded in effecting the bulk of it the potential ramifications for the subsequent development of the international scene might have been enormous. As it was, his aborted presidency meant that he only ever achieved the beginning stages of his full ambitions for reshaping the world - though even these limited successes were enough to lay the foundations for enduring diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and China, and to permanently alter the tempo of the US-USSR confrontation, as the Cold War shifted from what historians identify as the "High Cold War" period shifted to a new phase in which the two superpowers were largely backed into a corner of trying to find ways to manage their relationship (there was never another offensive arms build-up carried out by either country for the rest of the Cold War - even Ronald Reagan's efforts in the early 1980s consisted almost entirely of defensive weaponry) and the two entities would eventually find their way into active cooperation on the issue of (partial) nuclear disarmament. This would eventually result in an easing of tensions sufficient for a period of active domestic reform to eventuate in Russia, which would lead directly to the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

Such positive aspects of Richard Nixon's foreign policy accomplishments as these cannot in conscience be said to cancel out the enormous suffering and death that he brought to people in many parts of the globe - not just Indochina - but they must at least be taken into consideration.

As far as his domestic presidency goes, he deserves credit for signing off on (or at least refusing to stand in the way of) considerable policy-based progress - in particular through developing social, environmental, and civil rights policies. However, it is generally agreed by historians that Nixon personally had no real interest in domestic policy beyond maintaining a stable base for the conduct of his foreign policy - indeed he saw the entire domestic policy-making process as being little more than an extension of the political process, through which his primary aim was to maximize his own power, for the purposes of effecting his global designs. The pursuit of this power did lead him on occaison to play an activist role in shepherding important policy breakthroughs into being on a variety of issues that establish him, some argue, to have been in substantive terms a "liberal" president. Eventually however, this attitude towards the domestic political scene was what brought about his downfall through the Watergate scandal, and thus prevented him from bringing about the foreign policy ambitions that he had hoped would form the key part of establishing his legacy as a great president. In some ways I think of Nixon as having been a kind of American Bismarck - an ultimate figure of controversy, yet indisputably critical to the development of history as it played out.

[RooseveltTruman]

154. Again, awesome reply that I just devoured!

You've got to be one of my favorite DU posters that I've encountered.

Anyhow, I think you slightly missed what I was going for in comparing Eisenhower to FDR (though I'm glad you did actually, because we got a post rife with information because of it!). I wasn't suggesting that their leadership temperments or worldviews were the same; what I meant was that Eisenhower's personal expressions of conservatism shouldn't detract from his decidedly moderate public record (or dissuade someone from not voting for him), the same way FDR's private beliefs shouldn't detract his public actions. After all, there was nothing in Roosevelt's four years as New York governor to suggest he would be capable of "bold, persistent experimentation," yet he proved himself highly capable of it.

That said, I don't think we should ignore private sentiments either--they help give a clearer picture of both these individuals and the environment they found themselves in.

Also, I have to ask: what is your occupation? Are you a historian or a professor? Your knowledge of this history is impressively deep and thorough.

[hifiguy]

119. Spot on.

I've read a couple of Ike biographies, and there was little doubt that he loathed McCarthy on a personal level and didn't want to dignify him. He thought McCarthy would burn himself out and was advised not to take him on publicly. Unfortunately McCarthy managed to stick around longer than anyone thought until Joseph Welch finally destroyed him.

[DrunkenBoat]

80. bush? rockefeller of attica? ford of the warren commission? really?

nobody that gets to the commanding heights is "fundamentally decent". imo. by the time you get there you've already compromised -- at the very least -- too much.

[Axrendale]

116. Tell that to

Geoge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Jack, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy, and many, many others.

They compromised, did deals, cut corners, decieved, manipulated, possessed driving ambition and acted ruthlessly - to a man. And it was precisely these things that allowed them - to a man - to leave American society in far better condition than they found it, thanks to their efforts. They understood the realities of working within a democracy - but they never let that stand in their way of pursuing agendas for the betterment not merely of their personal positions, but of society as a whole.

In regards to Rockefeller and the Attica Prison Riot, that was indeed a dark stain on his public record - but it is not enough, in my view, to outweigh the monumental good that the man did over much of the rest of the public life. For years he was the single most important figure in running the Roosevelt administration's Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America. He played a vital role in the formation process of the United Nations. He was the architect of the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and was primarily responsible for many of the most progressive social policy initiatives of the Eisenhower administration (including a massive expansion of Social Security). He was an early and forceful advocate of the use of foreign aid to help develop the societies and economies of third world nations. And all this was before he was 50 years old. As Governor of New York he used the apparatus of the state government to intervene on a massive scale to improve the education, welfare, social policy, civil rights, housing, infrastructure, and environmental protections and conservation of the state - to say nothing of his incredible patronage of the arts - and in the process he had a positive impact on the lives of millions. To the very end of his life he was a forceful adovate of moderate/liberal Republicanism, and he decried the growing influence of radical conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan within the GOP.

No public figure should ever be evaluated by anything less than their full record - the good and the bad. Nelson Rockefeller lived an amazing life, and over the course of it he did far more good than bad. That, along with his incredible personality, makes him a thoroughly admirable figure in my view.

[WinkyDink]

83. Ford was no "dupe." Read how he treated Jack Ruby. Bush41 was and is Evil Incarnate. We made this

son of a Nazi the CIA Chief; think there's no connection?

[AnnieBW]

61. John Heinz

A wonderful man, a dedicated environmentalist, and a great Senator - even if he was a Republican.

[NCarolinawoman]

147. I voted for John Heinz when I was a student in Philadelphia.

Like you said, he was a great environmentalist.

His sudden death was so tragic.:-(

[Concordia]

65. Eisenhower

Ike was by all accounts a reasonable man who did a lot of good for this country during his time in office (with the exception of the Korean War). Of anyone, he's who the Republican party SHOULD glorify - not Ronnie.

[Hippo_Tron]

67. Could've Eisenhower, Would've Taft

Bryan was a regressive fucking lunatic as demonstrated by the scopes trial and Taft was actually downright progressive compared to today's Republicans.

As god awful was Wilson was on racial issues, some of his foreign policy was actually very progressive and that would be reason to vote for him. He fired the US Ambassador to Mexico for backing a military coup against the democratically elected government there.

In 1920 and 1924 I probably would've voted for Debs and then La Follette. Probably would've just stayed home in 1928. Couldn't bring myself to actually vote for Hoover but lord knows I'm glad Al Smith wasn't President.

[Wounded Bear]

69. I actually voted for Nixon in 72. I forget who ran against him....

Largely, I think it was because he had just finagled a large raise for the Military as the initial steps to go all volunteer. Being a young Marine at the time, I was impressionable.

I haven't voted for an R since. Of course, Nixon was probably as far left as Clinton was when you consider it. He was far too liberal for the Modern Post-Reagan Repub party.

[ellisonz]

77. George McGovern.

McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into World War II and as a B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions over German-occupied Europe. Among the medals awarded him was a Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his damaged plane and saving his crew. After the war he gained degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a Ph.D, and was a history professor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958. After a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, he was elected to there in 1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern

[WinkyDink]

84. DA*N, what's with posters "forgetting" elections?? GOOGLE, FGS, IF YOU HAVE TO.

[JH19059]

70. Eisenhower!!!

And wake me up when the "republican" party gets back to those roots.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

72. Nixon.

Much more liberal domestically than Obama.

[tblue37]

73. John Anderson. I switched my registration from Dem to Republican in

1980 to vote for him in the Republican primary, because I felt that if he were the Republican candidate, it would not be a disaster even if the Dem lost, though of course I voted Dem in the general and would have even if Anderson had been the Republican nominee.

Reagan was the Repub nominee that year, and he did defeat the Dem--and, of course, disaster did ensue.

Anderson was a very sane, intelligent, and decent man. He should have been a Dem, actually.

[bklyncowgirl]

76. Liked him too. Before that Ike or Teddy R. Then of course there's Lincoln. nt

[WinkyDink]

87. I think most of us here know who won in 1980. And that Jimmy Carter was "the Dem," as you put it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

74. I don't know if I would have voted for him - but in 1968 Rocky might have won the Republican

nomination had he entered the race earlier. That would have meant that the liberals would have dominated the Republican Party. Given the grave dissatisfaction with the Johnson Administration at that time because of the Vietnam war and the whole social upheaval at work throughout the country - it is quite probable that he would defeated Hubert Humphrey in November and been elected President. I wonder how different history would have played out had the then very significant liberal wing of the Republican Party had come to dominate the party instead of the right-wing being able to cease the opportunity to incubate during the Nixon Administration in order to thrive and win control a decade or so later?

[WinkyDink]

89. As if! The US was clearly NOT in any "Liberal" mood in November 1968.

[Douglas Carpenter]

93. well Rockefeller was extremely popular at the time and rapidly mounted a serious challenge to Nixon

It was said by almost all pundits at the time that Rocky might likely have won the GOP nomination had he entered the race earlier. He probably did not enter the race earlier because he did not want the possibility of running against Bobby in the general election. Although most likely Humphrey would have won the nomination anyway. Presidential nominations within both parties were very different in those days. Primaries played a far less significant role while in both parties while in the Democratic Party the backroom deals of big city bosses, southern moguls and labor union leaders had a far greater role. Clearly HHH was their first and last choice.

So the scenario could very well have been Humphrey versus Rockefeller - both liberals. Nixon did not win because he was seen as conservative. He won because of domestic social disarray and frustration over Vietnam. Had Rocky been the nominee all indications are that he would have won by a larger margin than Nixon's razor thin margin. Modern conservatism barely existed at the time and were at that point considered to have been a marginalized fringe group within the GOP following the 1964 Goldwater landslide defeat. Liberals although bitterly divided over the Vietnam War were in their zenith of influence within both political parties in 1968. There were no serious contenders for the Democratic Party nomination who were not clearly identifiable liberals in 1968. While within the GOP both Romney the elder and later Nelson Rockefeller were carrying the liberal banner and enjoyed wide support from minority communities, labor unions and other traditional liberal constituency groups.



" public opinion polls that showed him (Rockefeller) doing better among voters than either Nixon or Reagan against Democrat Hubert Humphrey"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Rockefeller

[hifiguy]

121. Perceptive and well said.

And I am old enough to remember those days.

The mouth breathing troglodytes who were the ancestors of the teabaggers voted for Wallace in 1968, not Nixon. And I think you may well be right about Rockefeller. Though his divorce was still in the near-past at that time and the right wingers never really forgave him for that.

Though had he not been killed, I think RFK might well have won the nomination and the presidency.

[Raine]

75. Ford was the last Republican I ever voted for

after that I never voted Repub again.

[ellisonz]

78. Lincoln.

[mmonk]

85. The one who was president when I came into the world. Eisenhower.

[WinkyDink]

86. As opposed to the brilliant Adlai Stevenson? Why?

[mmonk]

97. Not as opposed to anyone.

The question concerned which last Republican in our past could you vote for.

[Warren DeMontague]

136. Adlai Stevenson would have made a fine President IMHO.

But, see, the anti-intellectualism of the GOP was alive and well even then.

[TBF]

94. Eisenhower - he expanded the number of folks eligible for social security. nt

[LeftishBrit]

95. Oddly enough, I am able to answer that, despite being a long way away

Senator Weicker, 1988, against Joe Lieberman.

I was following the presidential election closely, as I really wanted Dukakis to win and detested Bush Sr. There was a lot about it in British papers and on the BBC; and some of the Senate and governor elections came up too. I remember becoming aware that Weicker was being challenged from the *Right*, and I did want him to beat Lieberman. Judging from how Lieberman turned out, I was probably right.

[AngryAmish]

96. Brutus

[Odin2005]

101. You mean one of the Aristocratic A-holes who murdered Rome's popular populist leader?

[AngryAmish]

105. He killed a guy who was making himself king.

Julius had it coming.

[Odin2005]

106. Caesar actually refused to become a king.

The senatorial elites did not like his populist reforms, so they killed him. A previous dictator, Sulla, helped the senatorial elites and kept his head.

[AngryAmish]

109. Because Sulla was a Dictator

He did not want to be king. Ceasar was king in everything but name. He meant it to be permanent and hereditary.

[Axrendale]

115. Actually,

although Caesar's acceptance of the title Dictator Perpetuus makes it introvertible that he intended for his personal autocracy to last for duration of his lifetime, there is no indication that he had any intention of making the position that he had come to occupy within the Roman political system hereditary - on the contrary, such an action would have been contrary to much of Caesar's own career up to that point in which he had repeatedly expressed the value that he placed in the principles of merit as a basis for the conferring of power/authority - something highly evident in the way that he ran both his government and his army. There are no real indications as to what intentions that he had for the political system that would govern the Empire after his own death - whether it would have been some kind of institutionalized autocracy, a reformed version of the Republic, or an entirely novel system altogether. It is quite possible he was still forming his plans at the time of his assassination by a group of self-serving aristocrats who had little desire to see him dismantle a social order of which they had up until that point been the primary beneficiaries.

[Odin2005]

141. If if he was trying to start a dynasty why did he make an 18yo kid his heir?

Caesar obviously thought that Octavian would slowly rise in the ranks in the normal fashion.

[ladjf]

98. William Cohen, Sec. of Defense under Clinton always struck me

as being reasonable and honorable. nt

[Odin2005]

100. Teddy Roosevelt.

[GreenPartyVoter]

102. The last one I _did_ vote for was Olympia Snowe, several years ago.

[ThomWV]

103. I probably could have voted for Ike, except he ran againt Stevenson - a great Democrat

and I might have been able to vote for Gerald Ford too. But of course I didn't.

[lumberjack_jeff]

107. Dan Evans, Governor of WA. n/t

[grantcart]

111. +1

I have some reason to believe that Evans voted for McGovern, or atleast was severly disinclined to vote for Nixon.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

108. Do local elections count?

I voted for the Republican challenger to my Democratic county commissioner because my Democratic County Commissioner is something of a corrupt douchebag.

Other than that, I don't recall ever voting for a Republican. I did vote for Charlie Crist in the US Senate race in 2010 because I thought he had more of a chance of beating Marco Rubio than Kendrick Meek, but that probably turned out to be a wasted vote either way. And Crist had already turned Independent by the time I voted for him, so he doesn't count.

[TwilightGardener]

112. Chuck Hagel...he was pretty good Senator (and responsive when I contacted his office--good staff).

Edit to add: Also John Heinz, I had a good impression of him--he died when I was in college.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

118. Nixon.

He was a freak, but Ihave to say I liked a lot of what he did. If it had to be a GOPer, it would be him.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

120. U.S. Grant. Considering the candidate the Democrats ran.

[Critters2]

122. Maybe Eisenhower. Certainly TR. nt

[bikebloke]

123. Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, then Eisenhower.

[ScreamingMeemie]

125. Lincoln Chafee. He's not a Republican anymore, but I would have voted for

him, without blinking an eye, if I had lived in his state. He's more liberal than most Dems.

[librechik]

127. Eisenhower

[NeedleCast]

128. Ike, probably

[boomerbust]

129. Let's see

<<<<<<<<<<<

[Skidmore]

130. In my lifetime, I have never voted for a Republican.

[RatinaCage]

131. Besides Obama?

[Warren DeMontague]

132. Lincoln. A lot of bad shit transpired while Ike was playing golf.

Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, the groundwork for the bay of pigs, not to mention our involvement in a little place called Vietnam..

And Ike proved himself to be remarkably non-forward thinking when it came to the potential of space exploration. Notwithstanding the propaganda value of something like Sputnik, which caught him completely off guard, he couldn't understand what possible value to humanity having little metal balls whizzing around the planet might hold. He was wrong.

I don't think he was a bad guy, but I do think he was a bit guilty of being asleep at the switch, allowing other bad actors to work on some bad stuff. Remember who his Veep was, after all.

[hedgehog]

135. Lincoln. Teddy was an imperialistic war nut.

[orpupilofnature57]

139. War nut,Wahhh?

[watercolors]

140. My first election, it was Eisenhower, proud of it !!

He was a good man!

[blkmusclmachine]

142. Obama (who I voted for):

And I won't make that mistake again.

[femmocrat]

144. Senator John Heinz.

I did vote for him when he was our Congressman.

[Sisaruus]

145. 1988: Senator Lowell Weicker (CT)

who lost to Joe Lieberman. Later I voted for Weicker when he successfully ran for Governor as an independent candidate.

[musette_sf]

146. John Lindsay

[Puregonzo1188]

148. Robert LaFollete

[Blasphemer]

153. I agree: Eisenhower

Political discourse in this country changed significantly in the 60s and 70s. The GOP has not been the same since Eisenhower. Even a liberal Republican is tied to a party platform that has become extreme and detrimental to the success of the country.