Spoken by a Republican president

Dwight David Eisenhauer was not my choice for president in 1952.  I was an ardent Adlai Stephenson supporter.   But Eisenhauer was not a bad president, and he said some wise things.

 

We've long known about his warning of the dangers of giving too much power to what he called "the military industrial complex," that combination of weapons manufacturers and the military that always wanted more weapons.

Another Ike quote has re-surfaced, and it is equally wise -- and equally ignored by his latter-day Republican colleagues.

 "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and elimate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.   There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. . . . Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, and the whole lot of you obstructionists and betrayers of the American people.

Eisenhauer and Reagen would both be ashamed of you.   Even Richard Nixon would think you're cruel -- and that's a pretty low level to sink to.

Ralph