printI’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I were going to characterize my—on health where I come from, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning is okay.—Newt Gingrich (the gibberish too).
To some—perhaps many—Republicans, to be a Theodore Roosevelt Republican is quite respectable. Therein lies the rub. If you’re the type of (Robert) Taft Republican who values your life, liberty and property—then Teddy Roosevelt, “the guy who started the Progressive Party,” and was a proponent of “progressive ideals”—is bad news.
If you didn’t already know Newt was bad news; then Glenn Beck makes it abundantly clear. Especially politically poignant is Newt’s folksy retelling of Teddy’s food safety awakening.
About “‘TR’s drummed up a phony ‘food safety crisis,'” Thomas J. DiLorenzo observed the following:
… there were no epidemics related to commercial food processing” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roosevelt’s “pure food laws” were aimed “at protecting producers,” not the general public. For example, as Powell recounts, some of these early laws set exceptionally high regulatory standards on imported foods as a form of veiled protectionism. Food inspection laws during the Roosevelt era were invariably favored by larger corporations who understood that the laws would disproportionately harm their smaller competitors. “The 1906 Pure Food And Drugs Act empowered the Agriculture Department’s notorious quack, Harvey Washington Wiley, to conduct crazy crusades against foods competing with the interest groups he served” (mostly larger corporate interests).
In Into the Cannibal’s Pot, I mention the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos whom TR killed.
In all, TR was happiest when he was killing. Like many a mass murderer, TR began his career by killing animals, one biographer alleging that “after an argument with his girlfriend a young Teddy Roosevelt went home and shot his neighbor’s dog.”
Glenn mocks the self-important Speaker: “… So you’re a minimum regulation guy on making sure the people don’t fall into the vats of sausage?”
Yes, Newt Gingrich got mince-up well in the Glenn grinder.
I very much enjoy your unbridled delivery and all the wisdom that comes with it.
Jack
In a recent post to this blog I commented that the country had “gone to hell in a hand basket”. Pretty original, right? But that’s where we are. We all know what we have in the Democrats. Nothing good and no chance of redemption. I’ve hated them since I was a kid in the 1950’s. But the real burr under my saddle is the Republican party. They remind me of a combination of the Keystone Cops and the Marx Brothers. Here we have a sitting president so obviously inept, obviously corrupt and obviously an actual enemy of the country that a defeat in 2012 should be a forgone conclusion. Yes, Newt has warts. Romney has warts. Bachmann has warts and so on down the line. But, instead of getting their game together and fighting for the future of America they continue to quibble over the usual inside the beltway infighting and government business as usual. AS the great philosopher, Buggs Bunny used to say “What a bunch of Maroons”. I have always resisted a third party for obvious reasons but I am ready to sign up and go on the attack. I hate the Democrat party like a bunch of snakes in a school yard but it’s the Republican party that brings on indigestion.
Why do you say that Harvey Washington Wiley was a quack? As far as I can tell he was a legitimate M.D. (Indiana University) and long-time university chemistry teacher when he started getting into government work. I agree that he and TR were wrong, but I hope you aren’t tossing a word like “quack” around just based on difference in beliefs about the role of government.
It is somewhat pathetic to watch those who claim to support “small government” or even those who claim that their causes is “moral values” to vote for the same Big Government Hypocrites year after year after decade after decade …
The Republicans will mouth a few “small government” pieties against the Democrats just to hold office for them and their whorehouse consultant buddies. They care as much for small government as the Democrats who meet at the Martha’s Vineyards and Hampton soirees care for “the poor”.
Meanwhile, the lemmings are falling off the cliff for their NEWTONIAN hero (Gingrich).
Here is what Teddy’s nephew-in-law tried to do against alleged “sick chickens” with his economic fascism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schechter_Poultry_Corp._v._United_States
One more link on Newt and his love for the New Deal:
http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/05/gingrich-praised-fdr-new-deal-in-95-06-books/
Ron Paul is never going to have a better opportunity to seize momentum in the GOP, then right at this very moment. Even with Newt’s consolidated momentum, he’s still a soft front-runner.
Ron Paul needs to force the Tea Party voters to ask themselves if they were really genuine in their desire for small, limited government.
A few years ago I read a book titled “Bully Boy,” by CATO’s Jim Powell. http://www.amazon.com/Bully-Boy-Theodore-Roosevelts-Legacy/dp/0307237222
Powell told me everything I need to know about Theodore Roosevelt, and the progressive Republican party, whose warfare philosophy hasn’t changed in over one hundred-forty years.