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To: JohnGalt
Bulls*** it and you probably know it.

The Republican Party attacked the New Deal since it's inception. They pledged year after year to stop it if they returned to power. The big split in the party was over FDR's FOREIGN policy-- the isolationist wing of the party wanted to bash FDR over that, whereas most of the party's nominees supported FDRs actions to actively support the Allied caused during the war.

The Dixiecrats meanwhile, had no objection to the New Deal at all. FDR won 90% of the vote or more in most southern states. FDR was a segregationist who supported Japanese internment, opposed cracking down on lynching, and kept the poll tax and the status quo. After Truman became President, he enacted the Fair Deal (a milder version of the New Deal), the Dixiecrats finally decided to break with him due to Truman desegregating the armed forces and succeeding in getting a civil rights plank in the '48 Democrat platform (which was missing from the previous platforms under FDR)

"For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions and flagrantly betrayed the pledges upon which the Democratic Party sought and received public support. The powers of Congress have been usurped by the President.The integrity and authority of the Supreme Court have been flouted. The rights and liberties of American citizens have been violated. Regulated monopoly has displaced free enterprise. The New Deal Administration constantly seeks to usurp the rights reserved to the States and to the people. It has insisted on the passage of laws contrary to the Constitution. It has intimidated witnesses and interfered with the right of petition. It has dishonored our country by repudiating its most sacred obligations. It has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, using public funds for partisan political purposes. It has promoted investigations to harass and intimidate American citizens, at the same time denying investigations into its own improper expenditures. It has created a vast multitude of new offices, filled them with its favorites, set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people. It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression. It secretly has made tariff agreements with our foreign competitors, flooding our markets with foreign commodities. It has coerced and intimidated voters by withholding relief to those opposing its tyrannical policies. It has destroyed the morale of our people and made them dependent upon government. Appeals to passion and class prejudice have replaced reason and tolerance. To a free people, these actions are insufferable. This campaign cannot be waged on the traditional differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. The responsibility of this election transcends all previous political divisions. We invite all Americans, irrespective of party, to join us in defense of American institutions."
--1936 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"Wholly ignoring these great objectives, as solemnly declared by the people of the United States the New Deal Administration has for seven long years whirled in a turmoil of shifting, contradictory and overlapping administrations and policies. Confusion has reigned supreme. The only steady undeviating characteristic has been the relentless expansion of the power of the Federal government over the everyday life of the farmer, the industrial worker and the business man. The emergency demands organization, not confusion. It demands free and intelligent cooperation, not incompetent domination. It demands a change. The New Deal Administration has failed America. It has failed by seducing our people to become continuously dependent upon government, thus weakening their morale and quenching the traditional American spirit. It has failed by viciously attacking our industrial system and sapping its strength and vigor. It has failed by attempting to send our Congress home during the world's most tragic hour, so that we might be eased into the war by word of deed during the absence of our elected representatives from Washington. It has failed by disclosing military details of our equipment to foreign powers over protests by the heads of our armed defense. It has failed by ignoring the lessons of fact concerning modern, mechanized, armed defense. In these and countless other ways the New Deal Administration has either deliberately deceived the American people or proved itself incompetent any longer to handle the affairs of our government.The zero hour is here. America must prepare at once to defend our shores, our homes, our lives and our most cherished ideals. To establish a first line of defense we must place in official positions men of faith who put America first and who are determined that her governmental and economic system be kept unimpaired. Our national defense must be so strong that no unfriendly power shall ever set foot on American soil. To assure this strength our national economy, the true basis of America's defense, must be free of unwarranted government interference."
--1940 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the president, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen, and this country could remain a republic only in name. No problem exists which cannot be solved by American methods. We have no need of either the communistic or fascist technique....The essential question at trial in this nation is whether men can organize together in a highly industrialized society, succeed, and still be free. That is the essential question at trial throughout the world today. In this time of confusion and strife, when moral values are being crushed on every side, we pledge ourselves to uphold the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the law of the land. We so pledge ourselves that the American tradition."
--1944 REPUBLICAN Party Platform


"We shall waste few words on the tragic lack of foresight and general inadequacy of those now in charge of the Executive Branch of the National Government; they have lost the confidence of citizens of all parties. Present cruelly high prices are due in large part to the fact that the government has not effectively used the powers it possesses to combat inflation, but has deliberately encouraged higher prices...In the past eighteen months, the Republican Congress, in the face of frequent obstruction from the Executive Branch, made a record of solid achievement. Here are some of the accomplishments of this Republican Congress: The long trend of extravagant and ill-advised Executive action reversed; the budget balanced; taxes reduced; limitation of Presidential tenure to two terms passed; elimination of the poll tax as a requisite to soldier voting;unification of the armed services launched...the maintenance of Federal finances in a healthy condition and continuation of the efforts so well started by the Republican Congress to reduce the enormous burden of taxation in order to provide incentives for the creation of new industries and new jobs, and to bring relief from inflation. We favor intelligent integration of Federal-State taxing and spending policies designed to eliminate wasteful duplication, and in order that the State and local governments may be able to assume their separate responsibilities, the Federal government shall as soon as practicable withdraw or reduce those taxes which can be best administered by local governments, with particular consideration of excise and inheritance tax...we shall say what we mean and mean what we say. In all of these things we shall primarily consult the national security and welfare of our United States. In all of these things we shall welcome the world's cooperation. But in none of these things shall we surrender our ideals or our free institutions."
--1948 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"This election comes down to a critical choice between the American system of rugged individualism and the doctrines of paternalism and state socialism that is popular in Europe and espoused by Mr. Roosevelt and other Democrats"
--1932 Republican Party nominee Herbert Hooever

"Waste, inefficiency, and an antibusiness policy are impeding recovery...President Roosevelt's New Deal contains many dangerous elements...this is a battle to save the American system of government"
--1936 Republican Party nominee Alf Landon

"I used to be a Democrat when Democrats believed in states rights. Now the New Deal is nothing more but a bloated federal bureaucracy. We need to privatize many of these programs and return others to state control...the Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, is a grievance example of flagrant violation of local interests"
--1940 Republican Party nominee Wendell Wilkie

"These tired old men have been conducting the nations affairs for twelve years. While we can build on some policies such as social security, much of it has been the most wasteful, extravegant, and incompetent administration in the nation's history."
--1944 & 1948 Republican Party nominee Thomas Dewey

37 posted on 12/13/2002 11:16:12 PM PST by BillyBoy
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To: BillyBoy
From http://www.lib.rochester.edu/rbk/Harken.htm where you can also see original sources of MSsr. Dewey. He was a Northeast big government Republican. Using party platforms to suggest that the figurehead represents the platform is laughable considering the 2000 GOP platform includes the abolishing of the Department of Education at the same time their nominee, Bush, bragged of wanting to expand the DOE.

"Dewey waged a campaign which was a model of consensus liberalism. Endorsing most of the New Deal's social legislation, and supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy - including participation in post-war international organizations - Dewey centered his criticisms almost entirely on the management of the New Deal and of the wartime economy.7 Rather than mounting a fundamental critique of New Deal liberalism, Dewey played firmly within the confines of the game - as delineated by Roosevelt and other New Deal liberals. Indeed, Dewey's acceptance of consensus liberalism in the '44 campaign was mirrored by his contributions to it during the course of his governorship.

Dewey's governorship, which spanned three four-year terms (1943-1955), was an exercise in consensus liberalism. Dewey's administration doubled state aid to education, built the Thruway, raised salaries for state employees, enacted rent-control laws, and passed the first state law in the nation to ban racial discrimination in employment.8 The governor's consensus liberalism was endorsed by New York voters, who returned him to office in 1946 by the largest margin in the state's history.9 Moreover, Dewey coupled a domestic policy of consensus liberalism with a foreign policy scarcely different from that of his Democratic opponents. While Dewey criticized Democratic foreign policy in the 1948 campaign, the criticisms were almost always rhetorical slaps at supposed Communist influence, rather than deep ideological criticisms of the policy. Indeed, Dewey and Truman agreed on the importance of a strong national defense, and the correctness of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the recognition of Israel.10"
38 posted on 12/14/2002 7:01:12 AM PST by JohnGalt
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