Monday, June 20, 2016

Donald Trump returns the Republican Party to Teddy Roosevelt as Conservatives Self Destruct



Get the vapors, the GOP is headed for the fainting couches.  Donald Trump is guilty of being Donald Trump, the antithesis of the modern day Republican Party.  The conservative takeover of the Republican Party began after the election of Taft who overturned the gains made by Presidents McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt.  Today’s Republicans represent massive deregulation of corporations and banks, open boarders, despoiling the environment for profit, privatizing federal lands, endless wars of imperialistic aggression, destruction of workers’ rights, media monopolies, repression of human rights and destruction of society as we know it. 



Donald Trump, espousing the policies of President Theodore Roosevelt has overwhelmingly won the vote of the American people in the Republican primary.  Teddy Roosevelt laid out his domestic plan to combat poverty in 1910 called “The Square Deal.” 


Excerpt:


The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program. He explained in 1910:


When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.


His policies reflected three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. These three demands are often referred to as the "three C's" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. Thus, it aimed at helping middle class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting business from the most extreme demands of organized labor. 


A progressive Republican, Roosevelt believed in government action to mitigate social evils, and as president he in 1908 denounced "the representatives of predatory wealth” as guilty of “all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing competition, and to defrauding the public by stock-jobbing and the manipulation of securities…."


Roosevelt gave high priority to environmental conservation, and safeguarded millions of acres of wilderness from commercial exploitation…  Roosevelt believed that nature existed to benefit humanity….  In the area of labor legislation, Roosevelt called for limits on the use of court injunctions against labor unions during strikes (injunctions were a powerful weapon that mostly helped business).


He wanted an employee liability law for industrial injuries (pre-empting state laws). He called for an eight-hour law for federal employees. In other areas he also sought a postal savings system (to provide competition for local banks), and, finally, campaign reform laws.


During his second term, Roosevelt tried to extend his Square Deal further, but was blocked by conservative Republicans in Congress.



Paul Ryan on behalf of his corporate conservative overlords has demanded that Donald Trump discard those policies and get in lockstep with the conservative agenda that was written by the oligarchs who control the conservative GOP called “The Better Way”.  From Think Progress: 


Excerpt:


Paul Ryan Is Pretty Sure Welfare Recipients Are Not Working Hard Enough


Three months after apologizing for calling poor people “takers,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled his plan to make life harder for them.


Ryan delivered remarks about the plan, entitled A Better Way, at a drug rehab center in Anacostia, an impoverished and heavily black neighborhood of Washington, D.C., as part of a broader rollout of House Republican priorities this week.  Ryan has become the leading voice in Republican lawmakers’ crusade against welfare programs. In the past, he’s blamed poverty on a “culture problem” in “inner cities,” where he says black men are “not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”


He has also argued that marriage is the cure for poverty, not government programs, and refused to allow any actual poor people testify at his hearings on poverty…  Ryan’s previous poverty plans have targeted the federal safety net …  The proposal asserts that “for low-income families, it may not always pay to work,” echoing a longtime conservative theory that poor people choose not to get jobs because it’s more lucrative to rely on government benefits. 


Consistent with that philosophy, the plan includes a bevy of policies designed to make it much harder for people in need to access federal programs: tougher work requirements for food stamps, housing aid, or cash welfare… cutting Social Security; eliminating funding for early childhood education lifeline Head Start; sealing off tax credits from some low-income families; and further allowing states to cut certain programs as they see fit…  The end game, judging by Ryan's stated agenda over the years, is to cut trillions of dollars from a safety net that's already borne heavy blows in the face of increased need in the post-financial crisis era… 


Donald Trump’s stand on immigration is aligned with the Teddy Roosevelt.  According to Donald J. Trump’s campaign website:


Excerpt:


IMMIGRATION REFORM THAT WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN


The three core principles of Donald J. Trump's immigration plan


When politicians talk about “immigration reform” they mean: amnesty, cheap labor and open borders. The Schumer-Rubio immigration bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties.


Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first – not wealthy globetrotting donors. We are the only country in the world whose immigration system puts the needs of other nations ahead of our own. That must change. Here are the three core principles of real immigration reform:


1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.


2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.


3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.


Teddy Roosevelt’s immigration policy according to Snopes:


Excerpt:


Sole Loyalty


Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.


"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...


There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."


Theodore Roosevelt 1907


The Conservative Republican claims that Canadian Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen and eligible to run for President are laughable.  Here is the Conservative stand on immigration.  From Breitbart:


Excerpt:


Paul Ryan Portrays Mass Immigration As GOP Principle


House Speaker Paul Ryan apparently wants the GOP to keep importing foreign workers — even though the party’s actual voters are instead backing Donald Trump and his promise of immigration restrictions.  The little-noticed reveal came in a Thursday interview on CNN, when Ryan declared that “this is the party of [President Abraham] Lincoln and [President Ronald] Reagan and Jack Kemp.”


O.K. everyone knows Lincoln and Reagan — but who is Kemp? He’s a former football star, House Representative, cabinet secretary, and failed vice-presidential candidate in 1996.  The key point is that Ryan worked for Kemp in the 1990s… He seems to have persuaded Ryan that the U.S. economy could provide middle-class jobs to endless waves of striving unskilled immigrants, who would then back GOP candidates as they campaigned for smaller government, spending cuts and capital gains rollbacks…


“Americans and immigrants share the same values of work, family and opportunity,” Kemp wrote in 2006.”There is no reason to fear the newcomers arriving on our shores today. If anything, they will energize what is best about our country,” he wrote, while insisting the Americans need a “robust annual flow required to keep our economy growing.”


Kemp’s immigration principles may have been great for Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce — but a disaster for blue-collar Americans…  So now Trump is heading towards the 2016 nomination largely because voters picked Trump’s promise of a strong border wall to stop illegals, plus a pause in legal immigration, plus cutbacks in guest-workers, plus a ban against further immigration of Islamic adherents, with their murderous doctrine of jihad and their Islamic scriptures that repeatedly urge hatred towards Christians and Jews, women and gays, secularists, apostates and modernizers….


Unsurprisingly, foreign-borne workers now comprise one-sixth of America’s workforce, leaving many millions of Americans unemployed or underemployed.  Ryan’s own actions also show he’s still entranced by Kemp’s pro-immigration vision.  In 2014, for example, his secretly drafted legislation to bring in more cheap foreign workers was derailed as the last moment when GOP voters defeated GOP majority Leader Eric Cantor in his primary.


In December 2015, he backed a House plan that now allow companies to bring in an extra 200,000 cheap foreign workers to take Americans’ jobs in kitchens and hotels, golf courses and resorts. His plan bumped up the annual inflow of guest-workers to roughly 900,000. 



President Teddy Roosevelt believed in conservation, that the American land belonged to all Americans.  The conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt is found in the 230 million acres of public lands he helped establish during his presidency. Much of that land - 150 million acres - was set aside as national forests.


Excerpt:


Theodore Roosevelt's Philosophy of Conservation


"Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use... Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few...


Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation."


NATIONAL PARKS


"All the great natural resources which are vital to the welfare of the whole people should be kept either in the hands or under the control of the whole people."


NATIONAL MONUMENTS


"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. Keep this great wonder of nature as it is. You cannot improve it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."


NATIONAL GAME PRESERVES


"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."


             BIRDS


"Birds should be saved for utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer....


And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad of terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach-why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time."


This is the Conservative agenda on National Parks and public land from Politicus:


Excerpt:


Koch Brothers Are Ramping Up To Eliminate National Parks And Seize Federal Lands


A favorite target of Koch-Republicans is the National Park system that Republicans have so drastically underfunded that a Koch and ExxonMobil-funded organization is calling for an end to national parks and privatization of all federally-owned land. The argument being put forward by the executive director of Koch fossil fuel organization, Reed Watson, is that since the National Park system is hurting for funding, the only option is to first stop creating national parks and then cheaply sell off those already in existence. Why?


Because according to the Koch brothers’ organization calling to sell off all public land and national parks, “True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have; we can protect it properly…”  Republicans across the nation contend that no state, federal, or local government has any right to own any land within America’s borders…


The Kochs and ExxonMobil have already committed PERC to publicly call for an end to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) because it is one of America’s most successful parks programs.  LWCF is not in financial jeopardy yet because Republicans have failed to end its budget-neutral status.  LWCF is budget-neutral as a result of using funds from offshore oil and gas development fees to fund projects across the country at the federal, state and local levels.


The LWCF program supports some of nation’s “most iconic” national parks such as Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. It has also created tens-of-thousands of outdoor projects the general public uses regularly such as local parks and baseball diamonds in all 50 states.



Donald Trump has said that America is broken and our politicians no longer represent the people.  When he looked at what the politicians have done to our country, he felt he had to run.  President Teddy Roosevelt felt much the same way when he saw what the conservatives under his successor President Taft had done to America.  From APStudy.org:


Excerpt:


In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt could have easily carried his burgeoning popularity to a sweeping victory in the presidential election, but in 1904 he made an impulsive promise not to seek a second elected term. However, he did not intend to completely relinquish control, so he handpicked a successor. Howard Taft, the 350-pound Secretary of War, was chosen as the Republican candidate for 1908…


The first major blow to the Progressives during Taft’s administration was the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909... the House of Representatives passed a bill that moderately restricted tariffs, but their legislation was severely modified when it reached the Senate. 


Radical Senators, led by Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, tacked on hundreds of revisions that effectively raised tariffs on almost all products. Taft eventually signed the bill and declared it “the best bill that the Republican Party ever passed.” This action dumbfounded Progressives and marked the beginning of an internal struggle for control of the Republican Party.


Another issue that caused dissension among Republicans was Taft’s handling of conservation issues…  Taft was a dedicated conservationist and he devoted extensive resources to the protection of the environment. However, most of his progress was undone by his handling of the Ballinger-Pinchot dispute. Pinchot, the leader of the Department of Forestry and a well-liked ally of Roosevelt, attacked Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger for how he handled public lands.


Ballinger opened up thousands of acres of public lands in Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska for private use and this angered many Progressives. Pinchot was openly critical of Ballinger, and in 1910 Taft responded by firing Pinchot for insubordination. This infuriated much of the public as well as the legions of political players who were still fiercely loyal to Roosevelt…


In early 1912, Roosevelt triumphantly returned and announced himself as a challenger for the Republican presidential nomination. Roosevelt and his followers, embracing “New Nationalism,” began to furiously campaign for the nomination. However, as a result of their late start and Taft’s ability as incumbent to control the convention, they were unable to secure the delegates necessary to win the Republican candidacy. Not one to admit defeat, Roosevelt formed the “Bull Moose” Party and vowed to enter the race as a third-party candidate…


When Teddy Roosevelt was running for President on the Bull Moose Party ticket against Taft and Woodrow Wilson he was shot by a would be assassin.  From Wikipedia:


Excerpt:


John Flammang Schrank (March 5, 1876 – September 15, 1943) was a resident of New York, best known for his attempt to assassinate former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.


The 1912 Presidential election campaign was characterised by a serious split in the Republican Party between the conservative wing under President William Howard Taft and the liberal/reform wing under ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. After a bitter confrontation at the Republican Convention, Taft won renomination.


Roosevelt led a bolt of his followers, who held a convention and nominated him for President on the ticket of the Progressive Party, nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party." Taft and his supporters attacked Roosevelt for being power-hungry, and seeking to break the tradition that U.S. Presidents only serve up to two terms in office.


On October 14, 1912, while Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Schrank attempted to assassinate him.    It is unclear when Schrank's interest in domestic politics grew to the point that he would attempt to kill Roosevelt. It is known that he was an opponent of a sitting President's ability to seek a third term in office


Both Taft and Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson suspended their own campaigning until Roosevelt recovered and resumed his. Roosevelt made only two more speeches in the campaign. Although Roosevelt won more votes and electoral votes than Taft, Wilson bested both of them and won the Presidency.


Wilson won the Presidency with only 41% of the vote.  Will history repeat itself?  From CNN:


Excerpt:


First on CNN: Priebus probes state GOP leaders over anti-Trump push


(CNN)Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been quietly having conversations with state party leaders to discuss the latest push by convention delegates to nominate anyone other than Donald Trump.   Priebus has spoken with GOP party chairmen in multiple states in recent days in part to get a better sense of how large the anti-Trump faction is among their convention delegations…


One source said Priebus' ultimate goal is unclear. But some anti-Trump forces are hoping to garner enough support to press the convention's rules committee to alter the rules governing the convention and open a path for a different candidate.  The conversations between Priebus and state leaders come as frustration and mistrust continues to linger between the RNC and the Trump campaign…


The conservative wing of the Republican Party that seized power from the progressive wing of Teddy Roosevelt is trying to thwart the will of the American people.  The American people have soundly rejected the conservative agenda, they are sick of it and disgusted by it.  The Republican voters want to rid themselves of the “tainted love” offered by Paul Ryan and his conservative agenda.  Will history repeat itself?




By Patricia Baeten

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