Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter:
Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter:
[T]he partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency-and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers-is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says she could vote Democratic in 2008, but she's still intent on saving her party. "I made a pact with a number of people," she tells NEWSWEEK. "I said, 'Please don't leave the party without calling me first.' For a while, there weren't too many calls. And then suddenly, there was a flurry of them. I found myself watching them slip away one by one."
Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment banker, is unhappy with Bush's inattention to global warming, and John McCain's pandering to the religious right.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2002, 30 percent of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats. Now it's 25 percent Republican, 33 percent Democrats.
What did Barry Goldwater think of where the GOP was going?
In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the retired senator said,http://en.wikipedia....
"When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."In response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, "Every good Christian should be concerned," Goldwater retorted: "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."
Goldwater urged Republicans to lay off Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on homosexuals. This is a classic Goldwaterism:
"Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar." He also said, "You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight."
In 2004 I was living in Minnesota. An article appeared in the Star-Tribune detailing a group of midwestern Republicans who were either not supporting Bush or were leaving the GOP. There were many eloquent statements in the article and I just cannot find it right now. If I do, I'll add it to this diary.
The remaining hard core base of the GOP seems to be aspiring to genuine cult status, as in "Rapture-awaitin'."
"President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "spew outright untruths with evangelistic fervor." He also said Cheney was evil. http://news.minnesot...
Nuttiness.
Lies.
The Peggy Goldwater Award is the highest honor one can receive from Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona (PPCNA). Named after the founder of our Planned Parenthood affiliate.http://www.plannedpa...
I forgot about Ron Reagan.
And here's one -- William Milliken, who succeeded George Romney as Michigan's governor and then was elected as a Republican to serve a total of 14 years, supported John Kerry because:
Sadly, that is not the Republican Party that I see at the national level today.My Republican Party has always been a party that stood for fiscal responsibility. Today, under George W. Bush, we have the largest deficit in the history of our country***
To make matters even worse, this president inherited a surplus, but squandered it with huge tax cuts structured primarily to benefit the wealthy and powerful.
My Republican Party is the party of Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg who helped forge a bipartisan foreign policy that served this nation well and produced strong alliances across the globe. This president has, in a highly partisan, unilateral way rushed us into a tragic and unnecessary war ***
What's worse, the basic premises upon which we were taken to war proved to be false. ***
My Republican Party is the party of Theodore Roosevelt, who fought to preserve our natural resources and environment. This president has pursued policies that will cause irreparable damage to our environmental laws***
My Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, who freed an enslaved people. This president fought in the courts to strike down policies designed to provide opportunity and access to our own University of Michigan for minority students.
My Republican Party is the party of Eisenhower, who warned us to beware of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. This president has pursued policies skewed to favor large corporations in the defense and oil industry and has gone so far as to let those industries help write government policies.
My Republican Party is a party that respects and works with the men and women of the law enforcement community***This president ignored the pleas of law enforcement agencies across America and failed to lift a finger to renew the assault weapons ban that they strongly supported ***
My Republican Party is a party that values the pursuit of knowledge. But this president stands in the way of meaningful embryonic stem-cell research that holds so much promise ***
My Republican Party is the party of Gerald R. Ford, Michigan's only president, who reached across partisan lines to become a unifying force during a time of great turmoil in our nation's history. This president has pursued policies pandering to the extreme right wing ***
Women's rights, civil liberties, the separation of church and state, the funding of family planning efforts world-wide - all have suffered grievously under this president and his administration.
The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues.
John Eisenhower, Susan's father and Ike's son, left the party in September 2004. (We don't know if he called her first.) He stated:
"As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry.'
You can read his further views here:
[http://www.truthout....]
former US Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky Republican ... "For me, as a Republican, I feel that when my party gives me a dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes the country into an undeclared war and then adds a war on terrorism to it without debate by the Congress, we have a duty to rid ourselves of those who are taking our country on a perilous ride in the wrong direction. If we are indeed the party of Lincoln (I paraphrase his words), a president who deems to have the right to declare war at will without the consent of the Congress is a president who far exceeds his power under our Constitution.Amazing statement.
And another one:
"As an environmentalist who served as chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, I know that this administration has turned environmental policy over to lobbyists for the oil, gas and mining interests... I believe President Bush has failed our country and my party.
-- Former US Senator Bob Smith, Republican from New Hampshire, from an endorsement letter sent to John Kerry, October 28, 2004.
If the Bush administration stays in power four more years, it will pack the Supreme Court with neocons who reject the idea that the Constitution is a living document designed to protect the freedom of the citizens.
The last was by Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of former Republican National Committee chair Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary of the Interior during the Nixon administration and Secretary of Commerce during the Ford administration. She endorsed Kerry over the Bush guy.