Or has the once truly grand old party of such 'greats' as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight David Eisenhower, and yes, *'even' Herbert Hoover, vanished without trace?
My question, seemingly rhetorical, is somewhat facetious, as there are a couple - influential - Republicans (senators both) who have indeed come to the fore in this time of crisis (and previously) and truly shown their mettle. In the **genuinely bipartisan spirit of the equally great Republican senator of the 1960s through 1980s, Washington State's Mark Hatfield - a man so genuinely decent, progressive and far-sighted he was even apparently considered a serious Vice-Presidential nominee for George McGovern's radical presidential ticket of 1972 - Kentucky Senator and would-be presidential nominee Rand Paul has just stepped up to the mark (along with John McCain, who has almost made a specialty of standing up to President Trump); in publicly criticizing (and staunchly opposing) the imminent appointment of two individuals notorious for their active support (in recent times past) of techniques of torture utilized by the American military. Rand's voice of independence has been well-noted over recent decades with his firm and unyielding opposition to post-9/11 U.S. Government infringements upon citizen rights, freedoms and privacy, and by his almost sole 'voice in the (Republican) wilderness' opposing American involvement in Iraq. Paul, like McCain - and that despite the latter's momentary lapse of judgment in selecting then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his own presidential running mate in 2008 - has long shown himself a thoroughly independent 'operator', acting courageously 'in all seasons' quite irrespective of his formal party political allegiance. Thus proving themselves - in times of crisis when heroes and heroines are few upon the ground and exceptionally hard to locate - people of valour and principle, of integrity and decency.
*Whom I mention because the historical records suggest that - very similarly to 'Jimmy' Carter - while not a particularly effective (some would claim more an 'unfortunate') President, he, just like James Earl Carter, proved himself an exceptional human being and humanitarian (throughout his lifetime). The former thoughts were gleaned especially during a memorable course/university paper in American History I undertook when recommencing my two-decade-long university study in 2003. I also found it interesting how each of these two (Hoover and Carter) were replaced by similarly popular, sanguine, charismatic Presidents with 'the gift of the gab', who went on to serve multiple terms (Reagan probably being prevented from a third term by the Republican Party, post-FDR, passing a two-term limitation on presidential terms.) Hoover served 'on the ground' throughout Europe during and after WW1 (and indeed also following WW11), personally overseeing and organizing the distribution of emergency food relief to the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of displaced and homeless orphans and adults from Belgium through to famine-stricken Soviet Russia, silencing critics by declaring: "Twenty million people are starving...Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!" So respected did his name thus become, that he was literally feted by homeless orphans in post-World War 11 Europe, his name becoming synonymous with disinterested benevolence both at home (hence the term 'Hooverizing') and abroad (coined in Europe as tantamount to the same, i.e. charitable good works without hope or prospect of reward or recompense).
Or such is my memory thereof. Whereas President Carter's works of decency, goodwill, reconciliation and peace-building since leaving office have quite rightly earned him the reputation of achieving more and greater things shorn of the vestiges and prestige and accoutrements of elected office than many, even arguably most, presidents have accomplished during their tenure in office.
**Indeed even the highly contentious 1964 Republican presidential nominee (and long-serving Arizona Senator) Barry Goldwater, and the equally long-serving and far more controversial Alabama Governor (and independent president candidate in 1968 and 1972) George Wallace, later proved their own qualities in various ways, the latter's eventually radically resiling from his staunch, do-or-die segregationist stance - even to the point of appointing blacks into top positions in his Alabaman cabinet; the former proving a genuine bipartisan force upon Capitol Hill, from being one of the first to seek President Nixon's impeachment, through to declaring illegal the Reagan Administration's bombing of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and/or equipping of El Salvadoran death squads, to his ultimately parting ways with the one-time Moral Majority, nowadays 'Religious Right', and then 'Christian Coalition', declaring his firm conviction that they were interposing upon long-settled American constitutional principles, and would indeed prove eventually to cause the demise of the Grand Old Party.
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