Posted on 11/25/2009 5:45:39 PM PST by GOPGuide
Few people knew that he was thinking about it in the first place, but Theodore Roosevelt IV, a wealthy investment banker with serious credentials on environmental issues and in foreign policy — and of course, that famous name — now says he will not seek the Republican nomination for the Senate from New York in 2010.
Mr. Roosevelt, the great-grandson of the 26th president, worked at Lehman Brothers and is now a managing director at Barclays Capital. He said he began studying a run against Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat, over the summer and was encouraged by talks with Republicans including former Gov. George E. Pataki, Representative Cynthia M. Lummis of Wyoming and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the party’s senatorial campaign committee.
Calling himself a “liberal Republican,” Mr. Roosevelt, 66, a former chairman of the League of Conservation Voters who lives in Brooklyn Heights, spoke harshly on Tuesday about the party’s conservative national leadership and lamented that the state Republican organization was a “series of fiefdoms,” though he said he was confident that he could have won the nomination.
But the prospect of quitting his job, devoting himself to fund-raising, and, even if he won, having to wait “nine years” to gain enough seniority to wield much influence, all led him to abandon the idea, he said in a telephone interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Gay.
Teddy the 4th? Blech. I don’t care what he thinks or what Woodrow Wilson’s great-grandson thinks either.
Alton Parker in 1904 anyone?
Glenn Beck called McCain a “weird progressive” like TR. Weird progressive is a good term for TR. His 1912 campaign was to the left of ex-Bourbon democrat Wilson’s (who was in fact a leftist disaster in office, and he had less experience than Obama). And bizarrely religious in tenure. The religious left from WJ Bryan to TR’s Bull Moosers to the prohibition movement was thriving in the early 20th century. God demanded an income tax!
When asked last year who their favorite President of the other party from the 20th Century was all the Republican White House candidates to my disgust said Truman, not that he has much competition, I’d have thought they’d be in line with the popular meme and picked Kennedy. Or least joke and say Clinton cause he gave us Congress. I’d have said I’d have to go back to the 19th Century and Grover Cleveland.
Anyhow, all the democrats said TR.
I wish Al Smith in 1928 had beaten Hoover but without knowledge of the future there is no way I would have voted for him.
The last actual conservative the dems nominated was John Davis in 1924 but he was a segregationist and anti-suffragist and his opponent was the excellent conservative Republican Calvin Coolidge so forget Davis.
So Bourbon Alton Parker in 1904 was the last time the dem might have been better than the Republican. Allegedly many people at the time said the party labels could have been switched.
Lol @ RINO spawn.
The KKK was all over the 1924 rat convention.
Liberals today would have voted for that pinko sometimes Republican LaFollette.
They did have Stephen Cleveland, the grandson of President Grover Cleveland, interviewed on CSPAN during their "American Presidents" series a few years back (Stephen's not that old because both his father and grandfather had babies while in their 60s), and he reminded me quite a bit of his grandfather.
My mother's maiden name is Webster, they're directed related to the famous Daniel Webster (through his brother's family), but I only mention it at political functions as an interesting bit of trivia. Disturbingly, my father also tells me we're distance cousins of Crook County Chicago Machine Democrat/ State Comptroller Dan Hynes (now running against Quinn for Governor since he failed to be annointed over Obama for Senate in '04). Particularly interesting since I attended a fundraiser for his Republican opponent back in '06.
Anyway, back on topic... apparently there ARE some good conservative Republicans in Teddy's family, especially Teddy's son Archibald Roosevelt, who was a card-carrying John Bircher and described as "ultra right wing". In his introduction to Zygmund Dobbs's The Great Deceit: Social Pseudo-Sciences in 1964, Archie Roosevelt wrote: "Socialists have infiltrated our schools, our law courts, our government, our MEDIA OF COMMUNICATIONS. ... the Socialist movement is made up of a relatively small number of people who have developed the TECHNIQUE OF INFLUENCING large masses of people to a VERY HIGH DEGREE." Very eerie prophetic. That rings true today even more than it did when he wrote it.
Taft was the most conservative of the three major Presidential candidates in 1912 (though even there, we have a number of RINOs in the Taft family), but I would have far preferred a third Teddy Roosevelt term to what we got with scumbag blatantly racist/socialist/globalist Woody Wilson. Wilson did a good job hiding his true intentions on the campaign trail in 1912 but from his governing I think it was clear he was the most liberal of three candidates (especially since we got to three all perform the duties of President). The writing was on the wall when Wilson proposed a scheme to nationalize the railroad industry and both Taft AND Roosevelt denounced the proposal as "rank socialism". Obama's kind of a disturbing hybrid of the worst elements of Wilson and Carter, along with Bill Clinton redux as his administration staff.
I would agree Truman was the "best" Democrat President over the last 100 years, but given the competition that's not saying much. He gets the title by default simply because he didn't wreak the USA under his watch, usher in a new era of failed statist government agencies and programs, or disgrace the office with sleazy behavior and criminal actions. I find it interesting how he managed to simultaneously tick off the southern Dixiecrats AND the east coast "progressives" (the two biggest elements of the RAT party at the time), but won re-election anyway in a huge upset. Overall, his whole "fair deal" thing was basically the New Deal lite. I would have voted for Dewey in '48.
Have to agree with justiceseeker93's post #17 rebuttal as well. Certainly Ronald Reagan, Bob Taft, Ev Dirksen, and so on weren't "some flavor of progressive". There are alot of RINOs in the New England states (not so much in the rest of the northern states), but there's probably just as many RINOs in the central northern states as their are in the central southern states.
I know of this Joe Wiegand, you speak of... a champion for fiscal responsibility in the late, great (sorry, mostly south of I-80) state of IL. Joe’s not afraid to call a spade (rino) a spade (rino) if, my memory serves me correctly. You and I have likely crossed paths at some point in time.
Yes, I remember when they had Stephen Cleveland on. I think he was interviewed by Brian Lamb, and Lamb remarked how much he resembled his ancestor.
I agree completely. But you wouldn't have figured it if you listened to Wilson on the trail, opposing the minimum wage and saying he was against an activist government and shying away from organized labor fearing they would become as bad as the evil corporate monopolies (and so they did).
Lying rat. At least WJ Byran was honest about his intentions.
And without his "he kept us out of war" (till next year!) slogan in 1916, Hugues would have beat him.
That's hilarious how Cleveland's grandson is still alive and not ancient.
Frances Cleveland was the best looking first lady in my opinion. Of course it helped that she was very young at the time.
BTW, do you know of any audio of the real TR available on the Internet?
I’m now reading “T.R., the Last Romantic” and nearly finished. I see similarities between Wilsonian pacifism and our current administration. So, even though TR was a Progressive and had a somewhat daffy identification with “the people,” he was wonderfully militaristic. TR also had some good points in defending moderate vs. conservative, and one realizes the very same arguments and conflicts never go away. We may even be saying a redux of 1912 in the making before our very eyes now.
Actual Teddy Roosevelt 1912 campaign speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNwLzUcPYk
Actual Woodrow Wilson 1912 campaign speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgiOpATuxI&feature=related
Actual William Howard Taft speech - The Farmer And The Republican Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Wv2ByabL0
President Taft`s speech reenactment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-jYA8vw9vU
President Roosevelt speech reenactment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqyyyJxnH1c
William Howard Taft Mock Attack Ad 1912
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWdwxbKWBA&feature=related
I probably heard TR’s voice before, I always knew his sort of high-pitched, hoity-toity, upper-crust New Yorker accent and speech pattern never quite fit his “look” (which you expected to sound deeper and more western-y). TR’s accent I find to be rather grating, and pompous. Wilson’s, I was rather surprised at. I knew that given he was a Virginia native, he’d have a slight Southern affectation, which he does, but he sounds similar to the film actor Gary Cooper (and Cooper was from Montana). TR’s voice by comparison sounds like someone who’d spent a long time in sheltered academia or amongst elites (which you’d think Wilson’s ought to sound like, but doesn’t - it’s Wilson that sounds like he might’ve spent time out in the West). I can tell, though, that FDR also sounds somewhat similar to his relative (most of us are familiar with his voice).
Somebody commented on YouTube that Taft’s voice as sounding somewhat like Eisenhower’s, but it actually even sounds like a mix between Eisenhower and Truman, somewhat a more western sounding accent (although Truman outright sounded like a Southerner, although he grew up in that part of Missouri where Southern & (Mid)Western accents overlapped). Of course, Taft was from Cincinnati, and you could even detect just a faint hit of Southerner (and a lot of folks from Southern Ohio do have Southern accents similar to Kentucky). It’s interesting, though, as I said, how some of the faces don’t quite seem to match what you’d necessarily think they’d sound like.
I never heard TR’s voice before. I wouldn’t have guessed it.
Woodrow Wilson must have put people (and his students) to sleep.
Block of Woodrow Wilson.
Naah, Wilson had the best, most macho-sounding voice of the bunch. TR would’ve been lampooned today as effete with his voice. Of course, had I been around in 1912 to cast a vote, it would’ve been an easy choice. William Howard Taft.
They did have Stephen Cleveland, the grandson of President Grover Cleveland, interviewed on CSPAN during their "American Presidents" series a few years back (Stephen's not that old because both his father and grandfather had babies while in their 60s), and he reminded me quite a bit of his grandfather.
There's a guy in Virginia today who's John Tyler's grandson. The Tylers also bred late.
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