Obamacans, And Whatever Happened To Dwight Eisenhower?

John wrote last week and wondered when, and why, Republicans stopped respecting the memory of Dwight Eisenhower, and also refers to this article regarding 'Obamacans' - Republicans who like Obama.

I just finished watching the last half of the Republican debate. It was hard for me to keep an open mind about the candidates as I watched McCain and Romney smirk and roll their eyes each time Ron Paul would address issues (that they were afraid to tackle) in a manner that a true conservative from only a generation ago would find completely appropriate. Mike Huckabee at least came across as a good and reasonable person who genuinely listens to others and respects their opinions.

But what struck me as simply bizarre about this debate was the unfettered worshipping of Ronald Reagan, ending the debate with Romney, McCain and Ron Paul all solemnly assuring viewers that Reagan would support their candidacies if he were still alive (again, Huckabee showed some reasonable humility and did not make such unfounded speculations). Clearly, the candidates were acting in this manner because they were in the Reagan Library but was it was also a dramatic reflection of what Bill Maher calls the puzzling deification of Reagan. And it made me wonder: isn't there another republican who they could cite as a great leader?

There are certainly choices out there. Nixon would be too controversial, although his administration did engage in negotiations with nations regarded as less than friendly to the US. And he did some good controlling federal spending. Ford was a good caretaker president who had stong ethics and values. Goldwater was a very principled conservative who, while viewed as an extremist at the time he ran for the presidency, remained true to his conservative principles as real extremists attempted to pander to religious fanatics by eroding the separation of church and state. Of course, everyone wants to claim Lincoln as their own but he is an icon from generations ago when the world was very different--and no living person has any memory of him.

But what about Eisenhower? Here is a man highly respected by virtually everyone in our parent's generation. A man who was a true military hero whose planning and actions were crucial to the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. A man who presided over the booming US economy of the 1950's. A man who envisioned and built the interstate highway system, linking the nation in a way that was scarcely imaginable a generation before. A man who, though conflicted about the civil rights struggles beginning in the US, still saw that sending federal troops to enforce a federal court decision integrating schools in Arkansas was the right thing to do. A man who ended on the best possible terms the disastrous war in Korea. A man who controlled the expansionist aims of the Soviet Union with reasonable but not excessive force. And a man who warned in his farewell speech of the dangers of the military industrial complex. He was a president of whom we can all be proud, but it seems that the republicans now have no memory of him.

Contrast Eisenhower with Reagan. Reagan moved the US from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation. He retreated from an ill advised military adventure in Lebanon in the face of heavy losses, thus emboldening Islamic terrorists for at least a generation. In his hatred for the Soviet Union and to settle the score of our loss in Vietnam he gave anti-aircraft missiles to Islamic terrorists, thus creating a breeding ground for later, larger terrorist movements. He discarded the conservative value of fiscal responsibility by cutting taxes and increasing federal spending, leading to a federal deficit four times larger than that left by his predecessor whom he demonized in the presidential campaign for his fiscal recklessness. He authorized the sale of military hardware to a terrorist state and the funds from that sale were used to support a band of outlaws who committed atrocities in Nicaragua. He fantasized about "Libyan hit squads" which never existed. He stood in front of the Israeli Knesset and spoke of his imaginary military service as a wartime photographer during the liberation of the death camps--while such claims were known by the entire world to be completely false.

So I look at the Republican party and just have to ask why in the world do they ignore Eisenhower and worship Reagan. Have they lost all sense of reason so that they see honorable service as somehow quaint and dated while fiscal irresponsibility and the eroding of American economic strength are honorable? Do they see a movie actor as a greater example of leadership than a general who lead the greatest military force in history and later oversaw stability and economic prosperity to our nation?

If this is the true philosophy of Republicans--and it may be, with the purge of virtually all moderates and true conservatives from the party starting in 1980--then they will surely lose the White House and their strength in Congress this year, deservedly so. They may need a few "years in the wilderness" to contemplate the values and leaders that made the republican party great. But are there any voices left within their ranks to tell them the truth? I wonder...

Dwight Eisenhower saw too clearly what would happen to America, I think. He tried, but failed to curtail the growing power of McCarthyite and John Birch conservatives in the Republican Party. He even saw what would happen with the Pentagon - his famous and badly-misunderstood 'Military-Industrial Complex' speech.

I think that conservatives saw Ike as a stumbling block and decided to effectively erase him from Republican Party history. They succeeded. It is up to a new generation of Republican moderates, should they ever appear, to restore the memory of Ike. The Republican Party is now lost, and won't really recover again until it understands its own history, and looks anew to the example of Dwight Eisenhower.