Why is Eisenhower so praised?

[Mechaman]

-was the first republian to try and court the segregation racist vote

You are aware that Herbert Hoover, the Great Humanitarian, was actually the first Republican candidate to employ a Southern Strategy, right?

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#19th_century_disfranchisement_and_rise_of_the_Solid_South
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Presidential_election_of_1928
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1928

[Mechaman]

I suspect it has something to do with many a forumite obsession with "respectable" politicians, regardless of how retrograde many of said politicians views were or the actual reasons for their policies.

[Mechaman]

Nixon had some conservatives policies and some liberal policies, but:
1.He was the last president before Clinton who put forward a healthcare plan, which is apparently virtually identical to the plan Obama passed.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/29/nixon_proposed_todays_affordable_care_act_partner/

2.He was the last president of either party to propose a guaranteed annual income.

You're right Nixon wouldn't be considered today as the last liberal president, he'd be considered the last socialist president (prior to Obama, of course.)

This sounds very impressive until you consider that the standard liberal position back in Nixon's day was to advocate for a universal healthcare program provided by the government.  That Obama plan was pretty much the same as Nixon's is far more a condemnation of modern Democrats than it is praise of old school moderate Republicans.

[Mechaman]

I suspect it has something to do with many a forumite obsession with "respectable" politicians, regardless of how retrograde many of said politicians views were or the actual reasons for their policies.

I don't see how Eisenhower was retrograde. At all really. If anything he was moderately liberal.

I didn't mean Ike specifically, this was more a general comment on figures that many people on here take a lazyboy chair historian take on instead of going outside the one or two issues that their underpaid non-tenured high school history teachers tell them were the only things that ever mattered.

But at the same time, "Operation Wetback" sounds pretty darn retrograde to me, as does using the CIA to knock over any democratically elected government that dare not agree with the Oilmen (see Iran).  And as it is, I agree with the notion that Ike was a respected enough general and a popular enough public figure in 1952 to have rebuked McCarthy.  Hell, it might've won him even more votes from swing liberal voters who were disgusted by the presence of John Sparkman on the Democratic ticket.  Yet he didn't.
If that isn't the sign of a retrograde I don't know what is.

[Mechaman]

I suspect it has something to do with many a forumite obsession with "respectable" politicians, regardless of how retrograde many of said politicians views were or the actual reasons for their policies.

I don't see how Eisenhower was retrograde. At all really. If anything he was moderately liberal.

I didn't mean Ike specifically, this was more a general comment on figures that many people on here take a lazyboy chair historian take on instead of going outside the one or two issues that their underpaid non-tenured high school history teachers tell them were the only things that ever mattered.

But at the same time, "Operation Wetback" sounds pretty darn retrograde to me, as does using the CIA to knock over any democratically elected government that dare not agree with the Oilmen (see Iran).  And as it is, I agree with the notion that Ike was a respected enough general and a popular enough public figure in 1952 to have rebuked McCarthy.  Hell, it might've won him even more votes from swing liberal voters who were disgusted by the presence of John Sparkman on the Democratic ticket.  Yet he didn't.
If that isn't the sign of a retrograde I don't know what is.

Um, no. You can't call someone a retrograde based on one thing.

I mentioned several, reread the paragraph.  And no these aren't just minor issues either, at least to people who subscribe to semi-decent philosophies.

[Mechaman]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Universal healthcare was also completely unnaceptable to the southern Democrats.  So, that Nixon offered anything on the issue, when I don't believe he had to, was still pretty liberal of him.

By this logic Medicare Part D made Bush liberal.

[Mechaman]

By this logic Medicare Part D made Bush liberal.

No, it made him a 'compassionate conservative'

Liberal Nixon foreign policy
1.Opening up to China
2.Persuing Detante with the Soviet Union

My God. And it's "pursuing", not "persuing".

Fixed for you captain.