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CrappyDom -> RE: Iraqis favor attacks on Americans (9/28/2006 4:35:21 PM)
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Republicans have always treasured their pocket books more than their country. They almost betrayed us to Hitler and Japan prior to WWII, to say otherwise is to attempt to revise and falisify history.
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the GOP faced pressures similar to those Democrats are under now. There were admonitions not to criticize the sitting administration, and declarations, immediately after the Japanese attack, that politics had to stop at the water's edge. But conservatives had detested Franklin Roosevelt, his New Deal and his foreign policy -- the lend-lease program and the destroyer deal with Britain in particular. And the events of Dec. 7, 1941, seemed to stifle their ability to dissent.
What, then, were they to do? Taft had his answer. He gave a speech to the Executive Club of Chicago arguing that it was precisely the duty of the opposition party to ask the tough questions. He didn't give this speech five and a half months after the attack, as Daschle did (and remember, Daschle didn't even give a speech). He wasn't speaking five weeks after hostilities began, which was how long it took DeLay to blast President Clinton on the war in Kosovo. Taft delivered his speech ... on Dec. 19, 1941!
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Two Neutrality Acts were passed in 1937 (in January and May) in response to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War - this was not covered under the early legislation, as it applied only to conflicts between nations rather than within them. Sponsored by the isolationist Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, it tightened the restrictions on US businesses and private individuals assisting belligerents, even prohibiting travel by U.S. citizens on ships of belligerents. When Japan invaded China in July 1937, starting the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), President Roosevelt chose not to invoke the Neutrality Acts by declining to identify the fighting as a state of war. In so doing, he ensured that China's efforts to defend itself would not be hindered by the legislation.
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In 1938, as the New Deal drew to a close, the Republicans made a strong comeback from near-oblivion, gaining eighty seats in the House and six in the Senate. The Republicans recaptured the governorship of Pennsylvania and locally, Wolfenden gained a sixth term with 68% of the vote over C. Ferno Hoffman, his Democratic challenger. Continuing the previous trend, however, Wolfenden fell 1,800 votes below the average vote for the Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator, while Hoffman was 1,100 votes higher than his running mates. Attention was now shifting toward ominous developments overseas, with both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan committing acts of aggression against their neighbors. As the international crisis worsened, with a full-scale war in Europe in September, 1939, President Roosevelt asked Congress to strengthen the military in order to deter aggression. Like most of his Republican colleagues, Wolfenden voted the isolationist line, against the Naval Expansion Act of 1938, the Lend-Lease Act, and the extension of the Selective Service in 1941. Even though the public was divided on most of the defense measures and many were hoping that the U.S. could miraculously avoid war, if these and other military defensive measures had not been adopted, the results could have been catastrophic.
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