Arlen Specter is a bit liberal socially, but the totally pro-life Bob Casey was pleased to get him, so he must have something going for him. To those who said “good riddance”, was Teddy Roosevelt “a real Republican”? In his autobiography, he wrote:

“I hold that a corporation does ill if it seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors, or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly. It is, in fact, a conspiracy against the public welfare which the Government should use all its powers to suppress.

If, on the other hand, a corporation seeks profit solely by increasing its products through eliminating waste, improving its processes, utilizing its by-products, installing better machines, raising wages in the effort to secure more efficient help, introducing the principle of cooperation and mutual benefit, dealing fairly with labor unions, setting its face against the underpayment of women and the employment of children; in a word, treating the public fairly and its rivals fairly: then such a corporation is behaving well. It is an instrumentality of civilization operating to promote abundance by cheapening the cost of living so as to improve conditions everywhere throughout the whole community.”

I have been hoping for years to read a proper study of the two Presidents Roosevelt in terms of their similarities, preferably leading to a synthesis of their thought as applicable in the present age. If anyone knows of such a work, then do please let me know – davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

The rural and Western half of the Republican Party supported the New Deal. Congressional Republicans (not all, but some) cast the votes that passed Civil Rights in the face of Dixiecrat resistance. Their party historically and rightly viewed the wider world in strictly realistic terms, “not seeking for monsters to destroy”. Republicans called for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War, an outcome (also advocated by Pope Benedict XV) which would have precluded both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Theirs was the party of Eisenhower, with his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, and with his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. The party of Nixon, who ended the Vietnam War as President Obama will end the Iraq War, and who began détente with China as President Obama is beginning détente with Iran, Cuba and beyond. And the party of opposition to Clinton’s unpatriotic job-exportation, unpatriotic sweatshop-importation, and unpatriotic global trigger-happiness, all continued and expanded by the unpatriotic Bush Administration (except for when it came to protecting Pennsylvanian steel, the ingrates…).

But where is it now?

Yet Democratic America has the pro-life majority that Republican America never had. The Democrats owe their pre-eminence to the supporters of traditional marriage in California and Florida. To the opponents of deregulated gambling in Missouri and Ohio. To the opponents of legal discrimination against working-class white men in Colorado. To those who keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going from coast to coast. And to an increasingly large chunk of the white Evangelicals.

It is time to put away the childish things of campus pseudo-radicalism from the year before yesteryear, and instead to get on with the Pregnant Women Support Act, which President Obama as good as told his Notre Dame audience was a high priority so soon after telling the world frankly that the Freedom of Choice Act was not (and we all know what a politician means when he says that). To get on with the Employee Free Choice Act.

And to get on with all other aspects of the restoration of America as the land of big municipal government. As the land of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific. As the land of very high levels of co-operative membership, not least including housing co-operatives for the upper middle classes. As the land of small farmers who own their own land. As the land that pioneered Keynesianism in practice. And, again, as the land “not seeking for monsters to destroy”.

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