Posted on 03/26/2016 4:37:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
So what's the difference between the leading contenders for the country's presidential nomination this sad election year? In the middle of still another rambling kumsitz billed as a "debate," something Huey P. Long once said came to mind. The senator, governor, incipient fascist and all-around demagogue out of Louisiana was the Donald Trump of his time, only with a homespun vocabulary and a lot more class. He didn't have The Donald's money but he was loaded with mother wit and folk knowledge, and he knew how to talk person-to-person instead of long distance at great staged rallies.
The Kingfish had it all figured out long ago. Back in his heyday, namely the 1930s, Senator/Governor/Humbug Long would tell a story about a traveling salesman who offered two varieties of a popular patent medicine: High Popalorum and Low Popahirum.
The first was taken from the bark of a tree from the top down. The other came from the bark of the same tree cut from the bottom up. Huey's conclusion: The only difference between the two types of politicians the country was producing at the time was that "one of them is skinning us from the toes up and the other from the ears down." OK, he was exaggerating, but his analysis of the political climate then wasn't much different from that of savvy types today. Especially now that we've lost the best hope of Republicans, Democrats and Independents -- Marco Rubio -- to make this year's campaign a respectable one.
Huey's cynical theory was -- and remains -- a common enough thought but nary so well expressed. It would apply just as well now to the supposedly crucial policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, her chief rival at the moment. The more things change, it seems, the more they remain the sad same -- even if our contemporary pols lack Huey Long's ability to sum things up in a single colorful phrase.
If the Kingfish was an aspiring tyrant with his eye always on the next rung up the political ladder, he was also a keen judge of his fellow politicians -- and their tricks.
More high popalorum and low popahirum is sure to come as the presidential election heads even further downhill -- like a mudslide.
To borrow another metaphor from Huey Long, the essential difference between the two Democrats fighting it out for a transient lead in the ever-shifting but equally meaningless polls is that one is a hoot owl and the other a scootch owl. What's the difference? Here's how he explained it:
"A hoot owl bangs into the nest and knocks the hen clean off and catches her while she's falling. But a scootch owl slips into the roost and scootches up to the hen and talks softly to her. And the hen just falls in love with him, and the next thing you know, there ain't no more hen!" Ol' Huey had both these pols figured out long ago.
Ruuubeee—ooah?
“BEST choice” for the RINOS?
Certainly the best choice for the Mehhickaans—not for Americans, though.
Trump?
Ugh!——He’s just not ONE OF US!
Townhall publishes unreadable tripe like this. It tries to be clever but says nothing.
And the establishment had Huey killed since he was a threat to become president.
The Kingfish also got assassinated, some believe at the direct urging of FDR himself. Huey Long was a very real contender in 1936, and his “fascist” appeal was just a logical extension of the “New Deal” offered by FDR. In fact, if careful parallels are drawn between the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the growth of the “Progressive” movement in the United States, the national sympathies of the United States at that time were probably closer to that of the Nationalist Socialist German Workingmen’s Party of 1936 than of the conservative outlook of the Republican party of Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
Certainly, the sensibilities of the New Deal were very much like those of Benito Mussolini of Italy, who “got the trains to run on time”. In the early 1930s, there was a mutual admiration society between the New Deal and the Italian Fascist party.
Look it up.
Oh? How am I to take any of this article seriously when the author calls Marco "Amnesty" Rubio the best hope?
Obviously, the people don't think the same way, or they would have voted for him. Looks like the people think Trump is the best hope.
Exactly right. For the last 8 years, we have been witness to a guy with great messiah-like oratory skills. And what has that gotten us? That and 2 bucks will buy you a cup of coffee.
I am tired of being lectured to by the Washington elites, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, etc. who all tell us how terrible Trump is while saying NOTHING about the truly dangerous insane Obama.
When Trump becomes president, there is going to be a great biblical gnashing of teeth. It will be the end of the world as we know it, and I will feel fine.
He didn’t mention Long’s greatest enemy: FDR.
Long was indeed a demagogue, but FDR redefined the word “ruthless”, especially to his political opponents. Standing against him, as Long intended to do, was a great way to end up either leaving the country, politically neutered, or dead.
When Long was assassinated, many people in the US just assumed that it had been brought about by FDR, since it was just one month prior to Long announcing his run for president against Roosevelt.
“What we were doing in this country were some of
the things that were being done in Russia and even
some of the things that were being done under
Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an
orderly way.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Greenberg equating Trump to Huey Long is a dangerous GOPe dog whistle. It is a despicable veiled attempt to excuse the assassination of Trump.
Here’s a true one on what kind of man Huey was.
As Governor of Louisiana when oil was being discovered in big deposits along the coast, he arranged his own oil company “The Win or Lose Oil Company” to possess lucrative oil and gas leases.
His family since that time has taken $273mm in royalties on those leases.
We need another Huey Long in power, right?
My thoughts exactly!
huey was a democrat.
I had been thinking about our American demagogues— William j. Bryan, George Wallace, Father Caughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith and Huey Long as comparisons to Donal Trump.
All of them were heads of ‘populist movements’ that espoused ideas of ‘making American great again’ in times of great despair for a large group of Americans. All of them were ‘nativists’ who pointed to scapegoats for the decline of America and promised simple solutions to answer the problms.
Trump has one big advantage in that he is rich enough to finance his own unusual campaign for President.
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