Doug Henwood wrote:
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> This doesn't really describe Nixon, who was nothing if not an iconic
> Republican. Reagan couldn't get the nomination in 1976 - but by 1980,
> he was dominant in the party. He was clearly a rising force in 1976,
> but Ford still beat him (and had beat him in the primaries). Reagan,
> Wikipedia reminds us, promised to select Richard Schweiker as VP, to
> please the moderates and liberals. Meaning that there were still
> moderates and liberals in the party 30 years ago.
And more. Wilkie was far enough left that (at least according to some accounts) before FDR's death he and Wilkie had plans to restructure u.s. politics by forming a party to the left of both DP and RP. And one biographer of Wilkie was a flaming liberal himself. (He was on the Northern Michigan faculty.) And Stassen was not a joke to begin with.
Also: While Taft was both conservative and isolationist (as was *Vandenberg before his 'conversion') isolationism was NOT at all synonymous with conservative politics.
And Taft was a mixture. He had an educational plan that would be considered rabidly socialist today, and his foreign policy would have been far preferable to that of Truman/Eisenhower. And Morse, my favorite Senator, was a Republican to begin with. The GOP was consistently anti-labor: TR thought strikers should be treated in the fashion the French treated the Comjunards. And Landon's politics were not all that bad. (In terms of what is possible in mainstream politics.)
Carrol