printThe excerpt is from “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” now on WND.COM:
“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day?
In an effort to better conjure Roosevelt, the shameless Barack Obama had flown to Osawatomie in Kansas, where, in 1910, Teddy delivered his “New Nationalism Address.” So radical was the Roosevelt political program that its author was condemned as “‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters.”
On the day of this staged affair—in eerie synchronicity—Newt Gingrich, whose favorability among Republican “caucus goers” is at 33 percent and rising, described himself to broadcaster Glenn Beck as “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.”
Back in the day, “the Eastern United States denounced [Roosevelt] as a ‘communist agitator.’” This was “the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President,” writes Robert S. La Forte in The Kansas Historical Quarterly:
“[Roosevelt’s] concepts of the extent to which a powerful federal government could regulate and use private property in the interest of the whole and his declarations about labor … were nothing short of revolutionary.”
As La Forte chronicles, “Roosevelt had no interest in retaining the ideals of Jeffersonian ‘state’s right’ demagogues, as he called them. He was interested in a Hamiltonian concept of power which he described as the ‘New Nationalism.’”
Roosevelt’s speech, seconded White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Really set the course for the 20th century.” Yet to listen to the president in Kansas, a vote for “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican” is a vote for a Mad-Max dystopia, where “everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”
Don’t look for a “square deal” from the characters on the other side of the aisle. “We want to avoid becoming a welfare state like the European states” is the stock phrase we get from GOP pointy heads. Truth is not their stock-in-trade. As they tell it, America has a long way to go before it turns as Rooseveltian as Europe. …”
The complete column is “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” Read it now on WND.COM.
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UPDATE I (Dec. 8): Nut Gingrich is what a a LRC.COM blogger has christened You Know Who, pointing out Nut’s support for “two governments in the United States: one that follows the Bill of Rights and one that doesn’t (for our “security,” of course).” MORE.
UPDATE II: More explosive details about “Newt’s grand schemes for a small, unintrusive federal government”: “NEWT PRESENTS A FRESH NEW VIRTUAL FACE” by Ann Coulter.
I will say this for the original Teddy: that however misguided his centralist tendencies he did at least have physical courage, which he proved in combat; and that he was not only a faithful husband by all accounts, but contrived to wait till his first wife was dead before marrying his second. Had his second wife not outlived him he might well have waited for her demise before notching up Spouse #3. These stupendous feats of continence must strike Gingrich as too bizarre even for science-fiction.
I don’t think Teddy was into adultery.
On the other hand, Mencken wrote an excellent essay comparing him and Kaiser Wilhelm (and stating that the Kaiser was less militaristic than Teddy).
Can any of these Big Government Republicans explain to me WHY it is so important to “defeat Obama” when they have the same core beliefs as the evil Barack Hussein????