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Remember that in 1980, Ronald Reagan declared himself for states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, near where the Freedom Summer killings occurred and the KKK had reigned, then his campaign sabotaged the release of the hostages from Iran to hurt Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. The republican party really hasn't changed.

Professor, re: Carter. I published this earlier this year on Medium: medium.com/@kentanderso…

Shocking! You mean the Repub's "god" Reagan did something underhanded? (bit of sarcasm there) Remembering the welfare queen issue. I think Eisenhower was the last decent (as far as I know) Republican politician - downhill trajectory all the way to the bottom orange.

This current crop makes Ike look damn good. Was Ike sort of like LBJ, got real chicken Schitt advice from his “smartest people in the room.” Or, was he aware of the damage. Bill Moyers quoted LBJ as saying, one has to act based on the information you have. And you never have the whole story. Or words to that effect. I would say, less is better in that case. But people thinking that they are keeping worse things from happening, often do the worst damage. As a parent, I know that to be true.

based on everything I've read, LBJ wasn't ever a foreign policy guy and was extremely simplistic and naive about the "evils of communism" and seems to have completely accepted the prevailing ignorance on display from the "smartest guys in the room," all of whom accepted the Domino Theory as Always True. of course, at the same time, LBJ's domestic plans represented a brilliant re-flowering of the unfinished New Deal coupled with an abiding (and very genuine) need to include the formerly uninclud…

Johnson used to joke about how there were all those "New Frontiersmen from Harvard" who he kept on after the assassination - McGeorge Bundy, McNamara, etc. - in a cabinet meeting, and how they were reporting to "a graduate of Southwestern State Teacher's College," but he really was intellectually intimidated by those guys. When I researched "Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club" and "Going Downtown," what became clear was the president who got us into Vietnam and had no intention of getting out, no matter ho…