- Banned
- #1
This guy would have been booted out in today's party and told the truth about his party in 1938. He stated the republican party was no more the party of Lincoln
When it came time for the meeting of the National Republican Club at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, party leaders turned to the governor of Vermont to deliver a speech addressing the nation. They got perhaps more than they bargained for.
Gov. George Aiken spoke up on behalf of the farmers and working men who had formed the Republican Party in 1854. Had they known hardships? “Yes,” Aiken said, “misery, poverty, sickness, lack of education, beset by parasites and profiteers, yet they were the strength of America, and the greatness of the nation is ever dependent on such as they.”
It’s hard to imagine a Republican of national stature denouncing his party for being unfair to labor, for being too friendly with Wall Street, for using states’ rights as a cover for abuse, for failing to lead.
But as of 1938, Aiken said, “the Republican Party attracts neither the farmer nor the industrial worker. Why not? To represent the people, one must follow them. Lincoln did. The Republican national leadership today does not. The greatest praise I can give to Lincoln on this, his anniversary, is to say that he would be ashamed of his party’s leadership today.”
His catalogue of complaint against his party was lengthy.
He said the GOP was silent when a Democratic boss from New Jersey curtailed free speech and assembly because he was doing so to crush a major labor group.
He said Republicans before Roosevelt were “silent too long over the abuses of Wall Street.” Republicans had acquiesced in the neglect of farmers and in the unfair treatment of labor.
When Republicans formed a committee to chart a new course, it was dominated by banking, insurance, stock and bond sellers, manufacturing, business and lawyers and the states of the Northeast.
On the New Deal, he said that “the rank and file of the Republican Party is not opposed to federal leadership. The country needs it. We cannot tolerate Republican lip service to states’ rights simply to cover up abuses which backward states (southern states) or backward big business refuse to exterminate.”
What Aiken Said | BillMoyers.com
When it came time for the meeting of the National Republican Club at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, party leaders turned to the governor of Vermont to deliver a speech addressing the nation. They got perhaps more than they bargained for.
Gov. George Aiken spoke up on behalf of the farmers and working men who had formed the Republican Party in 1854. Had they known hardships? “Yes,” Aiken said, “misery, poverty, sickness, lack of education, beset by parasites and profiteers, yet they were the strength of America, and the greatness of the nation is ever dependent on such as they.”
It’s hard to imagine a Republican of national stature denouncing his party for being unfair to labor, for being too friendly with Wall Street, for using states’ rights as a cover for abuse, for failing to lead.
But as of 1938, Aiken said, “the Republican Party attracts neither the farmer nor the industrial worker. Why not? To represent the people, one must follow them. Lincoln did. The Republican national leadership today does not. The greatest praise I can give to Lincoln on this, his anniversary, is to say that he would be ashamed of his party’s leadership today.”
His catalogue of complaint against his party was lengthy.
He said the GOP was silent when a Democratic boss from New Jersey curtailed free speech and assembly because he was doing so to crush a major labor group.
He said Republicans before Roosevelt were “silent too long over the abuses of Wall Street.” Republicans had acquiesced in the neglect of farmers and in the unfair treatment of labor.
When Republicans formed a committee to chart a new course, it was dominated by banking, insurance, stock and bond sellers, manufacturing, business and lawyers and the states of the Northeast.
On the New Deal, he said that “the rank and file of the Republican Party is not opposed to federal leadership. The country needs it. We cannot tolerate Republican lip service to states’ rights simply to cover up abuses which backward states (southern states) or backward big business refuse to exterminate.”
What Aiken Said | BillMoyers.com
