George Bush -- fallen away Republican

Editorial
May 7, 2004

With his visit to Wisconsin today, President Bush again visits the state where the Republican Party was founded as we are marking the 150th anniversary of that seminal political event.

So far, however, the Republican president has failed to visit the city where his party was born: Ripon.

Unfortunately for Ripon, which could turn such a visit into quite a tourism bonanza, Bush does not have much interest in the Republican Party's roots.

That's understandable, as it is difficult to imagine that the radicals who gathered to start the party in 1854 in Ripon would want to have anything to do with a conservative stalwart like George W. Bush.

Many of the founders of the Grand Old Party were socialists, who had come to Ripon as participants in the Ceresco Phalanx project to create an egalitarian community based on the ideals of the French utopian thinker Charles Fourier.
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The Ripon Republicans proudly were determined to root out and eliminate slavery and other forms of discrimination. They rejected the notion that individuals or groups could be treated differently. It went against the basic principle that the authority of the government was derived from the consent of the governed.
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http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/73817.php

That Republican Party, which I believed in, many years ago, is long gone.

That party opposed slavery & discrimination.

That party favored a strong middle class, & put working people above corporations.

That party believed international meddling & inperialism was the worst foreign policy.

That party believed private life was private, & the government should butt out.

That party believed in our individual liberties, over the power of the state, & would never have supported the Patriot Act.

don't they. Old time revival time.

"That's my boy!" Tailgun Joe was just as genuine about HIS military record as *.

The Republican Party serious jumped the shark when Joe McCarthy commenced his war on communists (read, intellectuals and progressives). Honorable mention to the party welcoming Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats.