Should Republicans go back to sounding like this?

[mikhaela]

Do you think Republicans should sound more like this?

[Joe Haydn]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

[Battista Minola 1616]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

How much straw did you pull to make this post?

[beaver2.0]

I’d would not mind this becoming Republican standard but this video seems to gloss over the fact Willkie was a former Roosevelt ally and there was a sizable conservative faction within the party even if it was unable to prevent Willkie and other liberal nominees.

[darklordoftech]

Do you think Republicans should sound more like this?

Hell yes!

[KaiserDave]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

Agreed with this but crossed out the silly strawman

[RI]

Regardless of the general argument, OP's video is horrendous and exemplary of much which is wrong with YouTube "political discussion."

[Mopsus]

Yes - bring back the Mid-Atlantic accent!

[Lechasseur]

Yes absolutely

[Lechasseur]

Yes - bring back the Mid-Atlantic accent!

And yep I agree with this too, it sounds better than the modern American accents

[courts]

no

[Nightcore Nationalist]

To a large extent, yes.  Zombie Reaganism and the persistent worship of the free market/neoliberalism is an unsustainable course politically and negatively affects wide swaths of GOP/swing voters (that make between 35-90K a year).  It's anti worker, anti-family and anti-Nation.  Democrats win elections because they understand who butters their bread-they reward their own voters (see-college debt forgiveness and teachers unions).


Although I'd like to point out to Kyle Kulinski gushing over Wilkie's embrace of "Liberalism" that it was a pretty new term in that context in 1940, having been co-opted from classical liberals by new dealers.  Wilkie and other moderates like Eisenhower accepted the New Deal status quo as the alternative wasn't politically viable after the depression.

[Nightcore Nationalist]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

Haven't NC Yankee and many others finally destroyed the "the Federalists/Whigs/pre-1964 GOP were the REEEEAL liberals" narrative already?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

Haven't NC Yankee and many others finally destroyed the "the Federalists/Whigs/pre-1964 GOP were the REEEEAL liberals" narrative already?

You are talking to HenryWallaceVP.

[darklordoftech]

To a large extent, yes.  Zombie Reaganism and the persistent worship of the free market/neoliberalism is an unsustainable course politically and negatively affects wide swaths of GOP/swing voters (that make between 35-90K a year).  It's anti worker, anti-family and anti-Nation.  Democrats win elections because they understand who butters their bread-they reward their own voters (see-college debt forgiveness and teachers unions).

[Joe Haydn]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

Haven't NC Yankee and many others finally destroyed the "the Federalists/Whigs/pre-1964 GOP were the REEEEAL liberals" narrative already?

No. Wendell Willkie was a self-described liberal and so were many of his predecessors in the Republican, Whig, and even Federalist Parties.

[Kingpoleon]

Regardless of the general argument, OP's video is horrendous and exemplary of much which is wrong with YouTube "political discussion."

I recommend you check out J. J. McCullough, then.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Regardless of the general argument, OP's video is horrendous and exemplary of much which is wrong with YouTube "political discussion."

I recommend you check out J. J. McCullough, then.

I have seen some of his videos, some are good some of them less so.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

Haven't NC Yankee and many others finally destroyed the "the Federalists/Whigs/pre-1964 GOP were the REEEEAL liberals" narrative already?

No. Wendell Willkie was a self-described liberal and so were many of his predecessors in the Republican, Whig, and even Federalist Parties.

Wilkie was also a registered Democrat prior to 1939 and supported FDR in 1932.

Really Henry, this is the line you take.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I’d would not mind this becoming Republican standard but this video seems to gloss over the fact Willkie was a former Roosevelt ally and there was a sizable conservative faction within the party even if it was unable to prevent Willkie and other liberal nominees.

His own VP nominee led a stop Wilkie movement at the convention.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To a large extent, yes.  Zombie Reaganism and the persistent worship of the free market/neoliberalism is an unsustainable course politically and negatively affects wide swaths of GOP/swing voters (that make between 35-90K a year).  It's anti worker, anti-family and anti-Nation.  Democrats win elections because they understand who butters their bread-they reward their own voters (see-college debt forgiveness and teachers unions).


Although I'd like to point out to Kyle Kulinski gushing over Wilkie's embrace of "Liberalism" that it was a pretty new term in that context in 1940, having been co-opted from classical liberals by new dealers.  Wilkie and other moderates like Eisenhower accepted the New Deal status quo as the alternative wasn't politically viable after the depression.

shhh you might undermine Henry's bs narrative about self profession for failing to account contextual understanding of the terms. Or the historical positioning of the US relative to the powers of the world, its history as a country born of revolution and so on, etc etc made it so that "Liberal" was indeed a word everyone wanted to claim.

Regardless of the general argument, OP's video is horrendous and exemplary of much which is wrong with YouTube "political discussion."

I agree to an extent precisely because of him defining Wilkie as a "conservative" is problematic for obvious reasons stated by myself and others in this thread. But his point about people chasing after the definition of liberal even as defined by the New Deal era, is an important point. It demonstrates the massive power of the Depression and the New Deal era to redefine politics to compared to the 1920s and of course the power of the NE establishment within the party as well as the needs to adapt to survive in the base region necessitated this shift to the left.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Decided to separate this one out, because it is probably going to be longer than first expected:

Of course they should. 1940 had one of the best choice of candidates imo, plus Henry Wallace was elected VP that year!

I wonder if anyone will come in and say "ackshually the Republicans were always a conservative party so Willkie, Roosevelt, and La Follette can't be liberals" or "ackshually deeply-held policy positions don't matter at all since they're just a means to an end."

In the words of Atun-shei films, "This is a bs argument, but I am going to bite".

Did I ever say La Follette was not a progressive? Did I ever deny that TR's views were progressive? Did I ever say Wilkie was not a liberal?"

The point we have been trying to make is that Republicans more often then not sided with business while Democrats more often than not sided with their opponents.  Because I don't trust politicians who lie all the damn time and I don't take them at their word and I instead look to who is benefiting and why to determine political leanings, because "professed ideological alignments " are fluid. Otherwise you have to explain why the same "deeply held policy positions" by those wonderfully liberal Federalists went from economic and political nationalism to free trade and secessionism in the space of just ten years, I don't because the answer is obvious. MONNNNNNNNNEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY. Because you have politicians you admire like Henry Wallace, you assume that most politicians are not just vessels for interests, but this incredibly naive and ignores the historical reality that money talks.

Now let's state the obvious, the NE Republican establishment was made by, for and of Wall Street business interests and was funded, created and existed for their interests. Their shift to the left was precisely because of the need to obtain political power post New Deal and it was to chase after the Democrats, they were not the leaders of this shift. This same establishment shunned TR and kicked him upstairs to get rid of him only to have an anarchist nutjob put him in the White House, and his attempts in 1912 to reclaim the nomination failed obviously. 

In the Historical continuity thread towards the beginning Truman posted the delegate counts for Republican Progressives by percentage and they were all in the single digits except for one, incumbent TR in 1904, by the grace of God and the assassin's bullet. It is also worth remembering that La Follette went third party in 1924 and his son ditched the party for the WI Progressives only to fold back into the party in 1946, and get primaried by Joe McCarthy.

As for Wilkie he obtained the nomination as the only candidate who was both non-isolationist and also seen as old and experienced enough to be President in a war time unlike Tom Dewey. He had abandoned the Democrats in 1939 and had criticized the New Deal over the TVA because it wrecked his utility company. So while he sought to define himself in this video a certain way, can you honestly claim that Wilkie was more progressive then FDR? Obviously, no!

The sad part here, is that you actually think any of the hot takes and hand grenades in your post, actually helped your cause at any point.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Yankee has already done most of the heavy lifting here, but re: self-identification with ideological markers —the word "liberal" has like half a dozen different meanings across three hundred years and two continents and it is really just very silly to suggest you can gather everyone who ever called themselves a liberal under one roof and expect they will all get along and agree on everything or even most things. Wendell Wilkie was obviously very progressive both for his time and today, which has nothing to do with whether the Federalist party was "liberal" (spoiler: no) (also —seriously, what?) or whether Gilded Age industrialists using nationalist rhetoric to hang on to their privileged positions as members of the upper middle class were "liberals."