Removing ‘grand’ from GOP

JOSEPH N. BELL

It warms the heart to see that our congressman, Chris Cox, has taken

time from his new duties as head of the House of Representatives

Homeland Security Committee to keep in touch with the home folks

through the Forum page in the Pilot -- twice in the past few weeks.

The first time he was upset at the suggestion that homeland security

might distract him from focusing his attention on more arcane needs

back home. And last week, he was upset by Pilot Managing Editor Steve

Cahn’s incredulity -- that I shared in this space -- over some

sweeping claims he made about the Republican Party.

They were offered up in a highly partisan document called the 2005

Republican Freedom Calendar, produced by the Republican Policy

Committee of the House of Representatives -- hopefully not with

taxpayer dollars. The statement both Cahn and I found beyond even

partisan credibility went like this: “The Republican Party became the

most effective political organization in the history of the world in

advancing the cause of freedom by staying true to its founding

principles.”

Cox suggested we click on the policy.house.gov website and have a

look at the entire calendar before we comment further.

That seemed reasonable, so I did. August was as far as I could

hang in, but it was clear long before that what to expect the rest of

the way. Far from trashing the calendar, though, I’d like to beef it

up a bit. So here are a few notes on signal contributions of the

Republican Party to American history that didn’t make the cut in the

calendar copy.

* The administration of Ulysses S. Grant was so rife with scandal

that “Grantism” became a code word for corruption in government.

Grant was blindly loyal to his cronies, including -- among others --

his private secretary, who was part of a gang stealing tax money on

whiskey; his secretary of war, who defrauded the Indian Agency; and

two high-level confidence men named Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, who used

Grant in a scheme to make a fortune speculating in gold.

* Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote in 1876 -- shades of

2000 -- but got the presidency when his party promised concessions to

three former slaveholding states that then delivered their disputed

electoral votes to Hayes.

* Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for vice president in 1900

because Republican conservatives wanted to get him offstage as a

major player. When President McKinley was killed by an assassin, TR

took over a nation where unregulated industry was enjoying great

prosperity, and the poor were getting poorer and angrier. He

responded by breaking up big trusts, arbitrating the Mine Workers’

strike, toning down empire building and creating the Department of

Commerce and Labor, among similar reforms. He introduced regulated

capitalism, dragging the Republican Old Guard behind him.

* When Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft,

tacked back toward the reactionaries, TR split the Republican Party

by running against Taft as a third-party candidate in 1912, thereby

throwing the election to Woodrow Wilson.

* Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations to end wars was shot down

by the Republican Old Guard in the Senate, under the leadership of

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. They then nominated for president Ohio Sen.

Warren G. Harding -- who once remarked, “I know how far removed from

greatness I am.” He was absolutely right.

* The Harding administration has generally been regarded by

historians as the most corrupt in American history. Harding’s

principal virtue in “staying true to the party’s founding principles”

was his loyalty to his bandit friends. He spent much of his time as

president playing poker and drinking bootleg booze while his pals

ripped off the country with such capers as the Teapot Dome scandal,

which still holds the record for corruption. Harding died in office,

but the Republican Old Guard, which put him there, was firmly back in

charge of the party.

* When the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover

believed the Depression would heal itself if he cut taxes and

stimulated business. It didn’t, and when he finally decided

government needed to act and created the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation, it was too late. We were in the soup. A nice calendar

item here might be the day Hoover sent mounted federal troops under

Gen. Douglas MacArthur to roust thousands of war veterans who had

marched on Washington to demand the bonuses owed them for fighting

World War I.

* Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy discovered in 1954 that red-baiting

was a quick and sure route to power and prestige. He managed to smear

dozens of perfectly solid citizens and cow his party associates

before he was brought down, not by his Republican president, Gen.

Dwight Eisenhower, but by CBS newscaster Ed Murrow and the U.S. Army.

* In August, 1974, Richard Nixon became another Republican “first”

-- the first president in American history to resign that office. In

the wake of torturous months of cover-up at the White House that

followed a bungled burglary of Democratic headquarters and in the

face of certain impeachment, Nixon chose to resign. Although he was

given a full pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford, many of Nixon’s

cabinet members and advisors faced criminal charges and prison for

their part in the cover-up.

There is more. But there are also many examples of dedicated and

even visionary service on the part of some of the Republicans

mentioned here -- and many who aren’t. And nothing in Cox’s calendar

to explain that there was once a strong, progressive wing of the

Republican Party that has now been reduced to a powerless handful of

senators from New England.

While Cox was using selective examples to canonize all Republicans

with hyperbole that defies credibility, he repeatedly painted the

party that led this country through two world wars and a devastating

economic Depression as a bunch of guys in white sheets terrorizing

black people.

The introduction to his calendar would have been a lot more

credible if he had first pondered these words of Ulysses Grant as he

was leaving the White House: “Mistakes have been made, as all can see

-- and I admit.”

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.