Last week, I wrote this diary about the 1956 Republican Party platform; about how, by today's admittedly impoverished standards, it was a genuinely progressive document in many ways, and how Dwight Eisenhower not only wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP, he'd likely be forcefully removed from one of their gatherings.
Welp, turns out Ike was just the tip of the iceberg. Guess who's next in line to be disappeared from GOP history for the crime of being "too liberal"? Go on, guess. Think of the nuttiest example you can. Give up?
None other than...Herbert Hoover.
Quoth keynote speaker Glenn Beck:
So what happened? Hoover came in. Hoover -- a progressive, by the way -- Hoover came in and said, "Really, what has to happen, is...we've gotta spend more money." Everything shimmied apart.
You see, Herbert Hoover's real crime was being a big-spending liberal. If not for him, the glorious Roaring Twenties bequeathed to us by Harding and Coolidge would have continued on indefinitely. It was Herbert freakin' Hoover's big government liberalism that led to the big crash of '29.
But Beck wasn't done. What other Republican president could be condemned as an apostate? Well, this time we'll have to go back over a hundred years, back to the turn of the previous century, way back to...Teddy Roosevelt!
In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a "guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt." He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that "we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."
There you have TR's unforgivable error: a reference to the common good--anathema to the modern conservative. And, of course, he also founded The Progressive Party of 1912, which probably would have sealed his fate all by itself.
And so we witness the consignment of two more Republican presidential icons to the dustbin of history. As Beck put it, to rousing cheers:
"Is this what the Republican Party stands for?" Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of "no!" "It's big government, it's a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer."
Okie-doke, so Dwight Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover and Teddy Roosevelt have now been banished. Who's next? As Sadly, No put it:
Does Abe Lincoln get tossed over the side for his failure to protect states’ rights (I’m pretty sure he does, yes)? Will you guys rethink your adoration of Thomas Jefferson when you realize that he was at heart just a hippie farmer boy? How much further will Teh Crazy take you?
Just in case you're wondering...no, Beck didn't go after Ronald Reagan. St. Ronnie was still good for a few applause lines, and they've got far too much invested in that myth to tear it down.
Yet.