Posted on 05/19/2005 11:00:40 AM PDT by MikeEdwards
Very few people now living will remember John Bricker, but his most memorable claim to fame was the highly controversial Bricker Amendment of 1953. Had it passed, our nation would be a much safer place to live today.
John Bricker was born in Ohio in 1893 and admitted to the bar in 1917. After serving as an Army officer in World War I, Bricker entered Ohio politics as a conservative. He was elected governor in 1938 and re-elected twice more. In 1946, Bricker was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served alongside another staunch Ohio conservative, Sen. Robert Taft, the son of former President William Howard Taft.
Taft, who was widely known as "Mr. Republican," unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for President in both 1948 and 1952. The Draft Eisenhower forces, who successfully challenged the credentials of Taft’s southern delegation, engineered his bitter last-minute defeat at the Chicago convention in July 1952, which Taft had entered as the clear front-runner. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Taft’s defeat by Eisenhower "was indicative of the defeat of isolationism by the internationalist wing of the party." At least the identification of Eisenhower as an internationalist is dead on target.
Anti-communist sentiment was running high in 1952. That’s why Ike chose Richard Nixon, who had strong anti-communist credentials, as his running mate. The Republican Platform blasted Truman for his "appeasement of Communism at home and abroad." It also criticized the "hordes of loafers" and "incompetents" at the State Department--which was widely perceived as an agency infiltrated by Communists and catering to their demands in the United Nations. . . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
A little late, isn't it? Though now might still be better than never. I think the Bricker Amendment was maybe a little extreme, but there should be something to provide that all treaties are inferior to the Constitution, since otherwise it becomes possible to amend the Constitution by the action of the President and a 2/3 vote of the Senate, without the House or the states having anything to do with it.
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