The more things change...

The Saturday Evening Post | 8/1/1959 | self

[Will not Live for another Man]

I found this in an old Saturday Evening Post... editorial entitled "Conservative Candidates Can't Win by Aping the Liberals" by John Chamberlain... "The Delaware facts, then, would seem to show that when Republicans run a "me-too" candidate they lose because their potential supporters stay at home."

Have we been this stupid for fifty years?!?!?

[Cicero]

Yes. Even Dwight Eisenhower was a RINO candidate, although he was a good man on the whole. The GOP establishment back then put him forward because they didn’t want William Howard Taft, who was too conservative for them.

The only real conservative since then was Reagan, and he ran and won despite the best efforts of the GOPe to derail him.

For that matter, Teddy Roosevelt was a self-labeled “Progressive,” not much better than the infamous Woodrow Wilson in that regard.

Republicans haven’t just been doing this kind of thing for 50 years, they’ve been doing it for nearly a century. In that way they’ve enabled such country wreckers as FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, Mr. Peanut, Clintbilly, and Mohammed Himself—I mean Barry Hussein.

[SeminoleCounty]

Someone should send Karl “Kommie” Rove a copy of that article

[fieldmarshaldj]

"The GOP establishment back then put him forward because they didn’t want William Howard Robert Taft"

Fixed it for you.

[Fiji Hill]

Yes. Even Dwight Eisenhower was a RINO candidate, although he was a good man on the whole. The GOP establishment back then put him forward because they didn’t want William Howard Taft, who was too conservative for them.

You mean Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), William Howard's son. Ike's supporters argued that "Taft can't win," which inspired Taft supporters to wear buttons reading, "win with Taft."

[BfloGuy]

Teddy Roosevelt was a self-labeled “Progressive,” not much better than the infamous Woodrow Wilson in that regard.

Yes. Cut from the same cloth.

The only reason Republicans have admired him since is his aggressive "talk softly and carry a big stick" military policy.

[Cicero]

I should have looked it up. I was going from memory, when I was young, and there was a lot of talk about both Tafts.

Anyway, the Establishment thought that Taft was too conservative to win, but figured that Eisenhower, as a five-star war hero, would be a shoe-in.

[fieldmarshaldj]

And as it turned out, Eisenhower was a disaster for the GOP after 1952, ending with the calamitous 1958 elections and the Kennedy “victory” in 1960. It would’ve been better had the ticket of Taft-MacArthur had won in 1952 (Taft would’ve died regardless in the Summer of ‘53, and a President MacArthur would’ve been more proactive in dealing with the Communist menace both abroad and domestically).

[Cicero]

Just so. Perhaps the worst thing Eisenhower did was to undermine and destroy Senator McCarthy, with the aid of the liberal establishment and TV news people. If Eisenhower had not weighed in, things might have gone quite differently.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Not to mention his “military-industrial complex” speech, which has fed a half-century of leftist moonbat paranoia.

[Windflier]

This article should have been posted on FR throughout the 2012 primary to drive home the point to conservatives that the politicians sold out traditional, patriotic Americans long ago.

Instead, we fell right into the same old pit again with Romney. Shame on us.