Posted on 12/09/2011 6:44:58 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
So she was a real pacifist or something, or sympathetic to Germany?
Jeannette Rankin was the US Rep. from Montana and a total pacifist. She did not run for re-election in 1942 because her defeat had become a sure thing.
It was something of a fluke that she was even in the US House at all in 1941.
She had served only one term at the time of WWI and was defeated when she sought to move to the US Senate (since MT had only one rep. and two senators it was not as implausible as it might have been in some states to run statewide for Senator so soon after entering the House which was also a statewide race.... except that she was highly unpopular for her WWI pacifism).
Then she became a founding VP of the ACLU and spent 20 years as a lobbyist in DC for ‘progressive’ issues.
It happened that in 1940 she was able to get back to the US House seat from MT on a surge of isolationist sentiment. She was a credible candidate for a “keep us out of the war” platform, until the war came to us.... then her future political prospects were toast.
I’m not so sure that many people of that era in the USA would have been demoralized by the images — I think the effect would have been more steely resolve for victory.
Of course our resolve did rather well anyway.....
Okay, thats probably true. If it happened today, two weeks later the left would be holding massive anti-war rallies.
Wiki says she was an admirer of Hitler. A Republican, she was the first woman in Congress, a complete embarrassment, a feminist, and no doubt a lesbian (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
“admirer of Hitler” so were a lot of leftists in those days.
I believe she was from Montana.
So was Henry Ford.
It should be "a date that will live in infamy," I think, but the deed is done.
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