Friday, January 28, 2011

A significant headline, I think

Here it is:

In America Today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower Would Be Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate

The piece is by Rachel Maddow and this is how it gets started:

For the next hour, we begin with the president of the United States addressing the nation and calling for a massive investment in this country's infrastructure, rebuffing the idea of giant tax breaks for the richest Americans, and warning anyone who would dare touch Social Security to keep their hands off.

You want to talk about red meat for the base? Listen to some of the language the president used. "Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society." Wow.

How about this one? "Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice."

Listen to the way he goes after the right here. "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. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible and"--and the president says--"their number is negligible and they are stupid."

That is not what Barack Obama said [Tuesday] night. That is way to the left of any national Democrat at this point. That was all Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower. That was all the stuff he said when he was president.

And here's another snippet:

But the whole of American politics has shifted so far to the right in the last 50 years that what used to be thought of as conservative, what used to be thought of as a conservative position, is now considered to be off-the-charts lefty.

The rest is worth reading. Definitely.
~~~

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:17 PM

    Sounds like "Ike" was an "intelligent Republican"...something that appears to be sadly lacking in today's complex world, practically a contradiction in terms.

    annie c

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