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View Full Version : John G. Taft bashes GOP and Tea Party, claims his grandfather was a moderate




compromise
10-24-2013, 09:16 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/opinion/the-cry-of-the-true-republican.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=OP_TCO_20131024

I AM a genetic Republican.

Five generations of Tafts have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans, from Alphonso Taft, who served as attorney general in the late 19th century, through William Howard Taft, who not only was the only person to be both president of the United States and chief justice of the United States but also served as the chief civil administrator of the Philippines and secretary of war, to my cousin, Robert Taft, a two-term governor of Ohio.

As I write, a photograph of my grandfather, Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, looks across at me from the wall of my office. He led the Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1940s and early 1950s, ran for the Republican nomination for president three times and was known as “Mr. Republican.” If he were alive today, I can assure you he wouldn’t even recognize the modern Republican Party, which has repeatedly brought the United States of America to the edge of a fiscal cliff — seemingly with every intention of pushing us off the edge.

Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.

Speaking through the night, Senator Ted Cruz, with heavy-lidded, sleep-deprived eyes, conveyed not the libertarian element in Republican philosophy that advocates for smaller government and less intrusion into the personal lives of citizens, but a new, virulent strain of empty nihilism: “blow it up if we can’t get what we want.”

This recent display of bomb-throwing obstructionism by Republicans in Congress evokes another painful, historically embarrassing chapter in the Republican Party — that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose anti-Communist crusade was allowed by Republican elders to expand unchecked, unnecessarily and unfairly tarnishing the reputations of thousands of people with “Red Scare” accusations of Communist affiliation. Finally Senator McCarthy was brought up short during the questioning of the United States Army’s chief counsel, Joseph N. Welch, who at one point demanded the senator’s attention, then said: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He later added: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Watching the Republican Party use the full faith and credit of the United States to try to roll back Obamacare, watching its members threaten not to raise the debt limit — which Warren Buffett rightly called a “political weapon of mass destruction” — to repeal a tax on medical devices, I so wanted to ask a similar question: “Have you no sense of responsibility? At long last, have you left no sense of responsibility?”

There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party. The Republican brand is (or should be) about responsible behavior. The Republican party is (or should be) at long last, about decency.

What a long way we have yet to go.

A disgrace to his grandfather's name. If Robert Taft were alive today, he would have been standing with Ted Cruz in defunding Obamacare.

erowe1
10-24-2013, 09:20 AM
I guess that means that Robert Taft must have been a big fan of Thomas Dewey.

compromise
10-24-2013, 09:27 AM
I guess that means that Robert Taft must have been a big fan of Thomas Dewey.

It's sad to see the descendants of conservative heroes embrace progressivism.

Most of Goldwater's grandchildren are Dems too.

gwax23
10-24-2013, 09:27 AM
Fuck this guy. He thinks he can speak for his Grandfather simply cause he has the last name? He isnt even relevant and this attempt to gain relevancy is futile.

What a moron.

Lucille
10-24-2013, 09:31 AM
What a drama queen.

Is he unaware that Obama is the one who shut down the government because Republicans wanted to delay the individual mandate, and then he turned around a week later and delayed the individual mandate on his own (illegally)?

AuH20
10-24-2013, 09:42 AM
All this fretting about the government imploding brings a smile to my face. Do these fools not realize that this fate is assured if something drastic is not done? Your precious government is on borrowed time. The Tea Party wants to blow it up if their demands aren't met. Blah. blah. Who do you think has been running things and setting the agenda for the last 100 years? Certainly not the Tea Party.

JK/SEA
10-24-2013, 10:22 AM
genetic republican.....LOL....

JK/SEA
10-24-2013, 10:29 AM
“blow it up if we can’t get what we want.”...

but if you try sometimes, you get what ya need.