Saturday 18 July 2009

Cronkite perfectly described the fatal flaw in the GOP

Here's Cronkite, the night Nixon was elected:

“There’s a great deal of talk tonight of Richard Nixon, not by his own admission a loveable figure, succeeding without a clear mandate, to the leadership of a divided nation. These, to put it mildly, are negative thoughts. President-elect Nixon has said his first job will be to try and unite the nation. There’s no one who can say tonight, including Richard Nixon, whether he can do that job. Who can restore the hope of the American spirit, to all our people, black and white, rich and poor. But there is one thing that should be abundantly clear, the President-elect, whether it was Nixon or Humphrey or Wallace or the candidate of the Prohibition Party, could not do that job alone. The leaders of the opposition including Dick Gregory in a particularly Statesman-like concession called for unity. Their followers can do no less than to give the new man a chance. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News election headquarters – good night.”

Today America faces problems much more dire than we did in 1968, and today's GOP has categorically refused to help clean up the mess they created. They have bitterly resisted everything Obama has tried to do, they refuse to even participate in the clean-up process or put in any new ideas to help fix the problems...obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.

This wasn't the case in 1968. The Democrats backed up Nixon in resisting the Russians, and Nixon went along (and even expanded) the Democratic domestic programs from FDR and LBJ.

Back then, the GOP had statesmen. In 1974 they had enough class to march to the White House and tell Nixon it was time to resign. Today their poster child is psychotic convict G. Gordon Liddy giggling about Sonya Sotomayor's menstruation cycle.

How pathetic is it, that Nixon is more bipartisan and constructive than today's Republicans? The current batch of "leaders" is below Nixon on the evolutionary scale??


And that's the way it is.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

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