Posted on 09/20/2016 11:06:55 PM PDT by TBP
I saw little to nothing that would qualify either as "instinctively Conservative." Rhetoric, perhaps, but they governed both as liberal Republicans. They were content to manage Socialist government of their Democrat predecessors and expand upon them. The antithesis of Conservative instincts. Nixon himself may have been anti-Communist, but he promoted an agenda that moved us well to the left.
"No small part of their accomplishment though was to make it possible for conservatism to rise and come to power in the form of Ronald Reagan."
Reagan was a reaction to Democrats and inept governance by their liberal Republican counterparts. Ike and Nixon did not want a Reagan or an actual in-practice Conservative President (although Nixon played the good soldier for Goldwater, he knew he was not going to be elected. Absent JFK's death and his not seeking a rematch, Nixon likely would've ended up behind left-wingers Rockefeller or Scranton). There's a reason these guys were called "Establishment Republicans."
"It is quite possible that with GOP Congressional majorities — a luxury neither Eisenhower nor Nixon enjoyed — a Trump presidency may follow GOP conservatives in Congress on many issues."
But Eisenhower did have a majority in his first two years, which he let slip away. By 1958, the Democrats had a 2/3rds majority in Congress. An epic-level fiasco under his leadership that left the GOP unable to be competitive for majority status for 4 decades at the House level. If Ike had been a Democrat, he could not have inflicted that level of damage to the GOP. As for Trump "following" GOP Conservatives today, I wouldn't yield to a group that hasn't shown any sort of leadership under Zero in stopping his agenda. He's going to have to take the lead and decisively so.
Vote Trump!
Harding and Charles Martel are good suggestions.
I’ll throw in, Francisco Franco.
Ike is probably the best (least bad) post-Coolidge President aside from Reagan. Which is kinda like being the tallest Oopma Loopma.
Your definition of "meaningful" leaves a lot to be desired.
I am of the same persuasion. He had the Commies nailed dead to rights. He also had the American people with him. Only the lefty politicos were against him.
As for Trump “following” GOP Conservatives today, I wouldn’t yield to a group that hasn’t shown any sort of leadership under Zero in stopping his agenda. He’s going to have to take the lead and decisively so.
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I thoroughly agree. Trump has all the qualifications to whip the strays into order and drive home his objectives.
Agree with your other thoughts. The thing people don’t take into account is that Eisenhower was too much of a politician and not enough of a U.S. soldier in his dealings with the British, specifically Montgomery. In effect he became too Anglified. He ignored Patton’s warnings about Operation Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far), Deprived Patton of fuel needed for his advance and stopped Patton in order to supply Montgomery, gave Montgomery too much power, turned his back on Churchill (as did Roosevelt and indeed as did the British people)and favored his “Sunday-school teacher” Omar Bradley over Patton who was the one who taught Bradley all he knew and won the battles others couldn’t win. So Patton had a big mouth! So what! He was a brilliant winner and should have been president for the good of America and the Free World. We wouldn’t have been caught up in an interminable Cold War had Patton been president.
I visited the bike museum and library yesterday
A theme was the bike decades of the 40’s and 50’s
His home place was quite small for a family of 7
The museum was well done
I saw a real Enigma machine
Abilene ‘s was hot hot hot
He may have slowed it down as opposed to what Stevenson would have done. To use the late Howard Phillips's analogy (which I quote often), when Democrats are in charge, it's as if we're in a car going off a cliff at 100 miles per hour. At least Republicans drive the speed limit -- but you're still going off the cliff. What we need to do is turn the car around.
Now, really, the march began in the progressive era with Wilson (and before him, TR), and it continued, with short interruptions under Coolidge and somewhat under Reagan, to this very day.
My family was for Taft. My mother and grandmother were at the convention as Taft volunteers.
Eisenhower, or rather, his supporters, stole that nomination from Bob Taft.
America benefited greatly by Eisenhower. He recognized the Communist threat and became our first real defender. His brother, Edgar Newton lived near where I grew up. Edgar was known as an ultra-conservative. Ike would visit him, sometimes with great fanfare.
Ike did squat to deal with the domestic threat of Communism and 2 decades of full-scale infiltration of our government and threw McCarthy under the bus. America needed a strong, Conservative leader. It got a stand-pat Establishment liberal who handed it all off to LBJ and JFK without batting an eyelash.
Moreover, modern American conservatism was still in its formative phase during the Eisenhower administration. National Review was founded only in 1955; Milton Friedman first published Capitalism and Freedom in 1962 and A Monetary History of the United States in 1963; and Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative was published in 1960.
It is foolish to insist then that the good done by the Eisenhower administration should be ignored because it did not implement conservative political ideas and policies that were yet to be developed and advocated.
As for the Nixon administration, it suffered from having been elected on a narrow political base and needing to barter with obstructive Democrats in Congress for the support necessary to persevere with the war effort in Vietnam. As conservatives in the administration recognized at the time, Nixon’s private views were far more conservative than the policies that he adopted during “working hours.” A political realist, Nixon knew that if he was not careful, much of what he did could be undone by Congress and his freedom of action curtailed and other goals jeopardized.
To be sure, both Eisenhower and Nixon can at best be described as conservative only in a partial and highly qualified sense. Yet neither should their genuine merits and accomplishments be ignored.
Rock, you keep using that word, “Conservative.” This is not a word I would use to describe Ike in the least.
Eisenhower himself was raised by a father who was a Socialist. Not a liberal, not a moderate, not a right-winger, but a Socialist. In 1952, Taft was the reliable Conservative and Republican. Ike could’ve run as Truman’s protégé without having to alter much of his stances. Ike had to destroy a Conservative and biracial coalition that made up Taft’s supporters. The damage that did in the long run was immense, so much so that within a dozen years, there were virtually no Republican Blacks running, let alone winning, office. Taft would’ve brought these folks in a lot earlier and avoided a 90%+ Black Democrat party.
Eisenhower did not curtail spending or shrink the government. This modern American Conservatism you describe wasn’t new, it was tried and true before Hoover/FDR. He just needed to implement it, and he simply did not. I also dismiss the notion that WE won the Cold War. We beat the Soviet Union, but the Communist threat, infiltration of our nation and culture and its thorough and total undermining of us... the left won that decisively, and we live under its madness today. We’re now almost the polar reverse, with Putin ironically serving as the closest to the leader of the free world and Zero serving as a tyrant and threat to international stability.
As to addressing Nixon, and as I already stated, he was never a Conservative. He was a believer in using big government, despite rhetoric to the contrary. He didn’t dismantle Socialist programs, he doubled-down on them and pursued failed policies across the board. He was a Keynesian, which was utter disaster for our nation economically. I’d dare say Nixon, if anything, put himself to the left of both JFK and LBJ in that regard.
As for these strange claims they were “privately Conservative”, that doesn’t particularly wash. It’s as phony and worthless as politicians that claim to be “personally pro-life”, but commit to strong pro-infanticide laws. If you’re not publicly and on the record actively pursuing policies supporting Conservatism, you’re not a Conservative.
In conclusion, I say without hesitation that both Eisenhower and Nixon left us in far worse shape by the time both left office (in 1961 and 1974) than they did when they entered into office. That they passed off their offices to equally left-leaning politicians (JFK/LBJ/Ford/Carter) and left office with 2/3rds of Congress in firm control by the Democrats with a weak and ineffective Socialist/left RINO rump minority is testament to that epic-level failure.
Guarded in public comments, Eisenhower could be revealing in private. On one occasion, a 1954 letter to his brother Edgar (Document #1147; November 8, 1954 To Edgar Newton Eisenhower), Eisenhower revealed that he held conservative views, but that they were tempered by a deep sense of political caution and pragmatism.
As Eisenhower explained, he opposed "too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions" and that "in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one." Yet "the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon "moderation" in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."
I am sure that Taft would not have disagreed with that assessment. Even today, few conservative political leaders would dare to try to repeal the basic federal safety net that the public is so deeply attached to.
There was virtually no time Taft & Ike had to work together. Taft transferred duties as Majority Leader when he prepared to go to the hospital, this less than 5 months after Ike was sworn in (June 1953) and died the following month. Bill Knowland stepped into the job of Taft, but LBJ was running the show before long, so there was no “Conservative” agenda to speak of.
And, again, whatever Ike revealed in private demonstrates nothing if it doesn’t translate to a similar agenda, the abortion example I gave you. Ike had a premier opportunity to move the nation back to the right, to drastically cut tax rates for job creators (AKA the rich), to weed out the Communist and Communist sympathizers within the government and our public institutions (for which McCarthy was demonstrably proven to be right about, as the Soviet Venona Documents confirmed). Instead, the “pragmatism” kept in place everything a quarter-century of Socialist expansionism had wrought since Hoover’s tinkerings (himself a left-winger Progressive Wilsonian Democrat who switched to the GOP before the 1920 elections solely out of opportunism as he knew the Dems would be obliterated that year and he didn’t want to be on the losing side).
As with Ike, Nixon/Ford, Bush Sr. & Jr., they pissed away Conservative opportunities willfully so, clearing the way for far worse Socialist (or worse) policies from their successors.
With Ike’s failure to address these Socialist (so-called) “safety net” policies and their viability for the long run, he did the nation a grave disservice and paved the way for expansionism upon such policies that have driven us to such obscene levels of spending and debt. Real leadership at the time would’ve seen the enactment of a balanced budget amendment, for starters, to assure future spending sprees would be made a prohibitive venture.
All in all, the Democrats and the left ultimately lost little and gained everything under Ike’s “leadership” (ditto Nixon and the execrable Bush Dynasty).
Bravissimo!
Nixon should have stayed in China.
Eisenhower's brand of "Modern Republicanism" was a disgrace and has haunted the GOP ever since. Modern Republicanism consists of apologizing for breathing while not being a Democrat. And, of course, existing to service the investor class at the expense of everyone else.
The final disgrace was Eisenhower's dishonest ravings warning us against "the military industrial complex." The very industries that kept us sae from the soviets became Ike's new devil figure. That was the point at which Ike became McGovern. Every leftist hack "journalist" has lived on that speech ever since as the welfare state has exploded at the expense of military innovation and expenditures.
Spare us any more Eisenhowers AND any more Nixons.
Nixon???? Kowtowing to Chairman Mao, Chou en Lai, et al., 1960 "Sellout on Fifth Avenue" to Nelson Rockefeller, Kissinger as Secretary of State, SALT treaty with the soviets, status quo on steroids, wage and price controls, devaluing the dollar, despised Reagan and actual conservatives, enshrined Luddite envirowhackoism in the federal government to harass business and landowners ever more. WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS???????
Reagan put a stop to the soviets with the threat of High Frontier. He bankrupted them. Nixon and Eisenhower had NOTHING to do with our victory in the cold war. They were conscientious objectors to the elimination of the soviets. Bush the Elder was a passive spectator when the Wall fell along with the ussr.
"Exceptionally shrewd?????" Puhleeeeeeze!
Charles Martel would be a great role model for President Trump.
Yes, but your parents had more to do with that than Ike did.
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