What Happened to the Republican Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Goldwater & Reagan?

If Abraham Lincoln were alive today it is likely he'd keel over in a dead feint upon learning what the Republican Party has become 150 years after his tragic demise via a bullet  fired by a reactionary Southern fanatic.

Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower would also likely be appalled.

Republican William McKinley, thought to be a conservative Republican in his day, would  likely be appalled at the behavior of those considered to be conservative Republicans in 2015.

In 1898 McKinley was dragged, reluctantly, into war with Spain, over Cuba.

When the Spanish American War was so easily won, with the United States taking possession of Puerto Rico and the Phillippines, President McKinley did not crow about "Mission Accomplished" aboard an American battle ship, even though, in that war, the mission was actually accomplished.

When Barry Goldwater became the first conservative presidential nominee for the Republicans since Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater was thought to be, by many, far too right wing conservative to be president. As the years passed after his smashing defeat by LBJ, Goldwater seemed to become a much more reasonable Republican.

I suspect Barry Goldwater would be appalled by what passes for conservative Republicans in 2015. Be it Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson or any of the other Republican embarrassments currently seeking to be the next American president.

Like Donald Trump.

If Barry Goldwater were alive today would he agree to go on the Rush Limbaugh Show? I don't think Barry Goldwater would be able to restrain himself from reacting to some of Limbaugh's nonsense.

What if Ronald Reagan was still alive and firing on all cylinders? Reagan always seemed to be a decent, nice guy. He worked with the Democrats to find common ground. Reagan and House Leader, Democrat Tip O'Neill, had a cordial relationship, trying to do what the two thought was best for America.

I found the two memes you see above, on Facebook, both from the good people at NOTEAPARTY / AGAINST TEAPARTY. I thought the No Tea Party / Against the Tea Party people summed up the current Republican situation quite succinctly....

Is President Obama Channeling Teddy Roosevelt Speaking Softly While Carrying A Big Stick?

On September 2, 1901, American Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt, in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair, used the phrase, in regards to American foreign policy, that America should "speak softly and carry a big stick."

Four days later President William McKinley was shot by a terrorist assassin, Leon Czolgosz. McKinley died on September 14, 1901, which made Teddy Roosevelt America's president for the first 8 years of the new century.

Sort of a George W. Bush of his day.

Only Teddy Roosevelt exercised America's power in a less noisy way than George W. Bush, who spoke way too loudly and used a big stick way too much.

Tonight America's current president, Barack Obama, is giving a speech from the Oval Office regarding Syria. Regarding Syria, President Obama seems to be sort of speaking softly while threatening to use the big stick.

The speaking softly, while threatening, seems to be having some results. There have been no fresh reports of Syrian sarin gas murders. The Syrian Civil War seems to be taking a bit of a break. There seems to be a lot of international debate going on regarding what to do about Syria, if anything.

Somehow Russia's President Putin has managed to get himself in the role of peacemaker, doing his own version of sort of speaking softly while not carrying quite as big a stick as America carries.

To my way of thinking I prefer the Barack Obama go slow approach, applying pressure, listening to the debate, to the George W. Bush approach of boldly going where no sane president has gone before, invading another nation to "pre-emptively" remove a supposed threat that turned out to be non-existent, and in the process seeing thousands of American soldiers killed, a number in excess of the number murdered in the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis killed during the Iraq War's American use of its big stick, when speaking softly had been working well for years keeping Saddam Hussein from being a bad boy.

I hope Obama's speech tonight hits it out of the ballpark, continuing with that big stick metaphor, but I am not all that optimistic that I am going to like what I am about to hear.

America could really use a Teddy Roosevelt. Or his cousin Franklin. In these troubled times....