Best Republican President in the Last 70 Years?

Only trash detected, I fear

Eisenhower is winning in an 82% landslide at 11:45 AM eastern. Must be that Lavender Scare program that makes you guys think so highly of him.

None.

Eisenhower

H.W. Bush

Jerry Ford

Nixon

W. Bush

Reagan

Trump

Only one "best republican" POTUS and look what they did to him.

Nixon would be considered a conservative Democrat now.

R6 They're all cocksuckers. Cocksuckers!

I hope the 15% who voted for Trump are joking.

Ford did the least amount of damage because he wasn't in office very long.

Wow, when listed like that, you realize how horrid these presidents all were

Sadly for Boris, Eisenhower destroyed the Nazis.

Trump chumps foiled again!

It's a comparative thing, r2, plus the fact that very few people actually know about the Lavender Scare.

If you think W. Bush was better and less dangerous than Reagan, you are seriously deranged.

Methinks r4 is an eldergay survivor of AIDS who wants to blame all AIDS on Reagan, who could not have stopped the deaths. Reagan sucked, he hurt gays for sure and infected the Republican Party with the fictitious "supply side economics" that has put the U.S. into the devastating national debt and tax evasion we have today. But it would take almost 20 years for the private sector in tandem with public funding to research effective AIDS treatment.

Dumb Dubya Bush killed a quarter of a million people, including 4,000 U.S. soldiers for imaginary weapons of mass destruction, destabilized the Middle East, empowered a Shiite fundamentalist Muslim government in Iraq allied with Iran, empowered ISIS and created a refugee crisis all across Europe and the Middle East that killed hundreds of thousands more.

Dubya was SO much worse than Reagan.

r13, that's way out of line. R4 didn't do anything but list presidents, and you took that list and made up some strawman argument about how "Reagan wasn't that bad when it came to AIDS." Absolutely NOTHING r4 said deserved your shitty personal attacks.

On the contrary, R6, Nixon would be considered a MODERATE Democrat now. Gerald Ford would be a conservative Democrat.

Ford pardoned Nixon so, while I get the impulse to say he's the least bad, he caused a lot of problems even though he was only in office a short time.

Eisenhower was probably the least awful Republican but that's only something we've come to believe in hindsight, and it's not because he was a good president. He was mediocre.

A lot of people have a huge investment in making people forget that Republicans were only liberal until roughly the 1890s. Republicans began edging toward allying themselves with corporations immediately after the Civil War, basically starting with Rutherford Hayes. By the time McKinley was president, the Republicans were conservative, though Teddy Roosevelt for some reason has a reputation of being a progressive. He loved national parks so people forget he banned all Asians and started wars for personal monetary gain, I guess.

I'd almost go so far as to say that Republican corruption became an expected feature of the party a century ago, when Harding died and a good half-dozen scandals were revealed. Everyone just kind of swept that all under the rug (with the exception of Teapot Dome, sort of) and from that point on, Republicans have been able to get away with just about anything.

Taft being a fascist who scammed his way into a SCOTUS appointment after his presidency somehow also rarely gets mentioned in the history books.

R17 I liked Taft though.

R14 Thank you. Some people let their emotions get the best of them.

Taft looked like a great big jolly fat man who enjoyed his donuts every morning.

IF she would even deign to be added to your list OP, Vivian Vance would win in a landslide.

I liked Ike because the colored people were much more content then.

Nixon was likely the smartest of those listed.

DJT got 10% of the vote?! Is he posting on the DL now?

The cult strikes again.

They were ALL AWFUL

[quote] They were ALL AWFUL

The most recent survey of presidential historians beg to differ, ranking Eisenhower the fifth greatest president, just under Lincoln, Washington, FDR & TR.

^begs

Hi, R1 here. I was being somewhat silly. I actually appreciate a lot of what Nixon achieved. Eisenhower was, I'm sure, the last somewhat wholesome and decent Republican President (I need to read more about his Presidency).

Too many trash Republican Presidents. Hate hate HATE Reagan with a passion. I hate Dump too but he was a pitiful failure more than anything else *rofl emoji* Reagan was evil. Pure evil.

[quote]Methinks [R4] is an eldergay survivor of AIDS who wants to blame all AIDS on Reagan, who could not have stopped the deaths.

Wow, what an idiot you are. That whole AIDS thing was just a footnote to what Reagan did to destroy the country. He brought in the religious nuts who previously did not side with a single party. That set the stage for the Republican party we have today of extremists and cult behavior a generation later. Trump would never have been elected if Regan had lost the election. We wouldn't have millions of homeless people of the streets if he had not closed all the mental instantiations which has snowballed in recent years. We wouldn't have been so dependent on oil had he not gutting the solar energy act and removed the solar panels from the White House to make his point about how oil was are friend. He made Liberal a dirty word which the right has used now for decades. He removed the laws requiring media to actually have legal ethical standards about facts vs fiction. That's just a few I can think of, the list is endless.

tRump is dropping, 8.7% now....down the toilet soon enough!

Must be a mighty big toilet r30.

Can we find the 9% who voted for Trump and block them from this board, please?

When Eisenhower was approached to run for President, he wasn’t sure whether to run as a Democrat or a Republican.

The worst Democrat president still is 99 times better than the best Repug president.

Fuck you, OP.

My understanding was that Ike was always a republican, but that both parties courted him to run for president. And that, before their famous falling out, Truman was prepared not to run for election in his own right in '48 so that Ike could be his party's standard bearer.

R35, Eisenhower was ask to run from BOTH parties

Oops, meant to write that R35 is RIGHT, Eisenhower was ask to run from BOTH parties

Eisenhower was a RINO!

r14 = r4 = r18

r4 ranked the presidents, so you're lying when you say, "r4 didn't do anything but list presidents."

[quote]strawman

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Try using simpler words you know, instead of the ones you steal from me because you're a cyberstalking freak.

Don't put words in my mouth, either, like "Reagan wasn't that bad when it came to AIDS." I never said that. I clearly wrote:

[quote]"Reagan sucked, he hurt gays for sure and infected the Republican Party with the fictitious "supply side economics" ...

And that argument is a real man, not a strawman. Idiot.

If questioning whether someone is an eldergay is "a shitty personal attack" "absolutely NOTHING" "deserves," how on earth do you survive any thread on DL? Why haven't you thrown a tantrum at all, three million other people who call posters "eldergays"on DL? I didn't even say r4 was an eldergay for sure. Such a Delicate Flower as yourself should really stay off DL, go to the North Pole and join all the other snowflakes instead.

It looks like I struck a nerve because r13 was right on the money.

r13 Thank you.

r18 = r14 = r4

Clearly, r14 is a hysterical, emotional mess who needs to catch her breath and make a coherent statement.

And clearly, she's still incapable of a cogent argument by r18. What a crybaby!

r5, and the irony being that most of swine who make up the current Republican party would have voted for Booth over Lincoln.

"Party of Lincoln" my ass.

of the* swine.

[quote] [R18] = [R14] = [R4]

No. Basic ignore-dar will tell you that.

Also, are you aware that at r39 you said "r13 was right" and then signed your post AS r13?

I get that you're the troll who makes false claims about being able to detect various sockpuppets but then calls everyone ELSE a "cyberstalker," but I still expected a teensy bit more from you than this sloppy trolling.

I’m 90% certain you ladies voted for her and not her husband

It surprises me that Eisenhower is considered one of the best presidents these days. Time and cultural change are strange things; if you'd asked people in the 60s and 70s, they would have been very critical of Eisenhower, who was known for cozying up to millionaires, having a particularly ineffectual admin staff, and ignoring the McCarthy travesty because he was too scared to criticize him for fear of political fallout.

Exactly, r44.

Many great points, r29.

But I measure in bodies, i.e. how many innocent people a President kills as a direct result of his unnecessary wars in the Middle East, COVID neglect, AIDS neglect, etc.

[quote]Trump would never have been elected if Regan had lost the election.

That's not necessarily true. And if Reagan hadn't united the Bible-thumping nutjobs and racists with the plutocrats, somebody else would have in the post civil-rights era. It was the standard model for conservative parties around the world before Reagan.

[quote]We wouldn't have millions of homeless people of the streets if he had not closed all the mental instantiations which has snowballed in recent years.

The Supreme Court is mostly to blame for that, not U.S. presidents who started closing asylums like Kennedy and Reagan. OÇonnor v. Donaldson, 1975:

Lincoln. After him they all sucked donkey balls.

A lot of the growth in the 90s under Clinton can be attributed to HW Bush raising taxes. Of course that enraged Republicans and the got rid of him (also crazy old coot Ross Perot helped too).

Now the lunatics are issuing death threats to Republicans that voted yes on bridges and road improvements. Imagine what they would've done to old Poppy Bush for raising taxes if tRump had been a political player back in the late 80s/early 90s.

Since when does Ignore-dar account for all the sock puppets trolls use on this site to agree with themselves on threads and hide their posting histories, r43?

Oh, that's right, NEVER.

Nice try, hunty. Your gaslighting will never stop readers from knowing the dirty, obvious "secrets" about this toxic waste dump of a website.

[quote]are you aware that at [R39] you said "[R 13] was right" and then signed your post AS [R 13]

Of course, numbskull! I wrote both r39 and r13!!!

I voted Ford, because at least he seemed like a decent guy and was in office the shortest period of time. I think Eisenhower only seems good because of some kind of nostalgia.

Raising taxes doesn't cause economic growth.

The recession of 1992 ended because the Iraq oil shock ended, restrictive interest rates ended, the savings and loan crisis ended, the Cold War ended and people adjusted.

R49 I agree with you. Bill Clinton also raised taxes a few years into office. H.W. Bush should have won again. We wouldn't have any of the Gingrich/Dole/Lott trying to overthrow the president. We damn sure wouldn't have Donald J. Trump.

R52 Yeah. Eisenhower, H.W. Bush, and Ford all seemed like decent guys who tried to do the right thing.

The poll should have been hottest Republican President in last 80 years. An easier and more fun question.

/Sorry, 70 years and here is the link.

Eisenhower was known as the "do nothing president," a president who golfed and had heart attacks. He pushed for interstate highway system - check. But basically he was popular because people "liked" him, just as they liked Ronald Reagan as a personality. Eisenhower did the least harm among those Republican presidents, so he wins by default.

Don't kid yourselves about "decent" people like HW Bush. He was the moderate alternative to Reagan when he ran in 1980, yet upon becoming the VP nominee, Bush turned conservative on a dime. As pres, Bush threw the conservatives a bone known as Justice Clarence Thomas. And don't forget Bush's vice president - Dan Quayle. I had never voted Republican before, and was not going to start with Bush in 88 or 92.

Dan Quayle was a moderate Republican, too. Also Bush had Baker, Scowcroft, Brady, and Powell who are/were moderate Republicans (especially by todays standards). Cheney was the hawk back then.

The only good guy there is Eisenhower and that's just because the era is fondly remembered -- Happy Days, anyone? -- not because he really did anything remarkably good.

Also worth noting: Eisenhower and Nixon would both be considered center-left Democrats by today's standards.

Barry Goldwater would have more in common with Mitt Romney or Ben Sasse than with Ted Cruz or Traitor Hawley

He/She/They hasn't been born yet.

We have to get DefatTurd a part time job

Eisenhower’s court appointments made an enormous difference and resulted in the immense social progress of the 60s-70s, but that wasn’t really intentional on his part…but I think it should still count. Justice Brennan was one of the most brilliant and radical Supreme Court justices we’ve ever had, and Earl Warren got the Court to align on desegregation. He also put Harry Blackmun onto a federal appeals court, without which he never would have made it to the Supremes, where he wrote Roe v Wade.

R63 The alternative, recall, was Stevenson. His judicial appointments would have been of the same caliber, if not higher. That's why it was the era that mattered, not the individual.

Deciding which Republican president was better is like deciding between Dollar Store pound cake or the McRib. Neither choice is good for you.

Rather like the choice between LBJ and Obama.

I chose an analogy that DeFatTurd could relate to.

Can we be so sure of that, R64? Bear in mind that in ‘52 Stevenson shared the ticket with a segregationist, Alabama Senator John Sparkman, & Stevenson would’ve owed a victory in either ‘52 or ‘56 to his support from Southern segregationist states.

Apparently, Ike didn't think Stevenson and his running mate were REAL MEN.

I liked Ike well enough until I learned about him making that deal with the aliens.

OP, you left Lincoln off?!? Vivian Vance certainly should have been a choice.

And increased the time span ^^^

R68 We can never be sure of anything. But Stevenson would have been President not Sparkman, who would have had the same influence as Nixon under Eisenhower or LBJ under Kennedy. Zilch. Can you even name Truman's VP?

Stevenson was about the most dyed-in-the-wool traditional-liberal presidential candidate we've seen the Democrats nominate, 1972 apart. Of course his court picks would have reflected his philosophy.

As for Warren, recall he was not considered a great liberal hero when nominated to the Court. That came later. The internment of Japanese-Americans weighed heavily on his reputation, as it should.

I guess this poll result was what you were going for, OP? Asshole.

[quote]Eisenhower and Nixon would both be considered center-left Democrats by today's standards.

Oh, hardly. I don't know how this canard got started but people just blindly repeat it as if it were true, and it's not.

Nixon was all about shifting power to the states instead of the Federal government, he was a big States Rights guy because he knew it meant far-right laws would be more difficult to fight, i.e. sodomy, abortion, segregation done on a local level couldn't be easily outlawed on a Federal level. He campaigned on ending welfare even though it had massively lowered U.S. poverty levels, and the Democratic Congress had to stop his "welfare reform" to keep from throwing millions back into poverty. Nixon also dismantled most of Johnson's social programs.

Eisenhower was a whole mess, his mistakes lead to the Middle East quagmire, the Bay of Pigs, nuclear escalation. He was behind the Lavender Scare and his inaction along with anti-Communist beliefs made him responsible for McCarthyism. He was anti-immigration and opposed the Brown v Board of Education ruling.

These were not "center left Democrats by our standards." Not even close.

According to DL fav Shirley MacLaine, Eisenhower was approached by aliens and told him of their mission to observe Earth and even wanted to wrangle permission out of him to do so.

Eisenhower was famous for playing golf a lot and was President during a 'sleepy-time' of America when not much was going on. From what I can remember he wasn't very impressive.

I'm a Canadian and I honestly couldn't vote for even one of them. The Republican Presidents have been lazy, deceptive, ineffective, and crooked for years. I'm not even sure why they exist anymore.

Fake News @ r58.

Dan Quayle was a far-right extremist candidate who defended Reagan’s voodoo economics and and tax opposition like a Puritan. His anti-gay, anti-free speech legislation and attacks on anyone who wasn’t “nuclear family” were also in the Mike Pence vein.

Bush Senior was considered the moderate and choosing Quayle for VP was to balance the ticket with someone the base of tax haters and Bible-thumping nutjobs could get behind.

My point, though, R73, is that just as his selection of a segregationist as his running mate suggested, Stevenson would’ve deemed it necessary to trim his liberal sails in order to curry favor with those who “brung him to the dance,” that is, his Southern constituency.

Oh, and yes, I do remember that Alben Barkley was Truman’s VP for his elected term.

R69, it wasn’t only Eisenhower who didn’t think Stevenson was a real man.

I'll bet when President Trump is reinstated to complete his second term, he will launch a program like the one President Eisenhower did starting in 1954. It was called Operation Wetback. Movin more in '54 !

The only good Republican is a dead Republican.

bump

R79 Stevenson-Sparkman was ticket balancing at its best and nothing more.

Can you think of a single VP brought on for balance (emphasized) who actually had influence?

Best example is nice liberal HHH, the perfect balance to LBJ and we all know how much influence he had: the same as LBJ balancing JFK.

Which one was the sugar daddy?

[quote] Stevenson-Sparkman was ticket balancing at its best and nothing more.

That Stevenson deemed it necessary to balance the ticket with a Dixiecrat just shows how much segs were then a part of the Democratic base ... and how a Pres. Stevenson would've felt it necessary to continue to feed them.

R86 Intriguing theory to push. Shame there's no historical justification for it.

We don’t like Ike.

R87, are you seriously claiming that 1950s Democrats with national ambitions did not seek to curry favor with the South, which was still largely the "Solid South"?! JFK's Profiles in Courage was widely thought to have included a chapter on the decisive acquittal vote of Senator Edmund G. Ross in Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial as a sop to the Southern segregationists he knew he needed to capture both the nomination and presidency in 1960.

R89 You're changing the topic. The question under discussion is whether AS as president would have stayed true to his liberal beliefs and appointed a like-minded soul or two to the Supreme Court. I think he would have.

His one sop to the South was Sparkman's nomination, and I expect he swallowed it hard. I would not have expected pandering to the Dixiecrats to have become a recurrent theme of his administration. First, because it went against his core beliefs. Second, because most of the country was, and is, outside the South and did not share Southern beliefs.

Kennedy owed his Electoral College victory (303-219) to the South (Texas: 24; North Carolina: 14; Georgia: 12; Louisiana:10; South Carolina: 8 and Arkansas 8).

[quote] His one sop to the South was Sparkman's nomination

A vice-presidential selection is a candidate's first presidential decision. And as Stevenson wasn't elected president in '52, his lone presidential decision then was to choose a segregationist!

[quote] The question under discussion is whether AS as president would have stayed true to his liberal beliefs and appointed a like-minded soul or two to the Supreme Court.

It’s more complex than this, though. The era in which Eisenhower (or an alternate) appointed his judges was one of such turmoil and change that any given judge was unpredictable. It’s not like Ike intended a William Brennan, let alone an Earl Warren, to become what they became. It wasn’t as simple as liberal to more liberal either. So would Stevenson have appointed judges who had the same radical willingness to overturn precedent, the same talent in persuading colleagues, the same sheer brilliance, not just the same liberal beliefs?

[quote]Dan Quayle was a moderate Republican, too

NO Nyet nada

Dan Quayle as a clueless pro-life conservatize - Bush's REASON for nominating him. WHAT PLANET are you people ON?

Truman is our best example of what kind of SCOTUS appointments a '50s Democrat would make. And his appointees weren't exactly stellar.

R91 Talk about numbers twisting. With 77 electoral votes NY and PA alone outnumbered those Southern states. Can just as logically say the NE won it for Kennedy.

Huh, R91? If you take away those 76 EC votes of southern states and move them to the Nixon column, JFK loses 295-237.

It's getting boring now. Points made.

[quote]I'm a Canadian and I honestly couldn't vote for even one of them. The Republican Presidents have been lazy, deceptive, ineffective, and crooked for years. I'm not even sure why they exist anymore.

The most laughable parts are that they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, yet the Dems who precede them always leave them a surplus which they go right through via wars and corporate welfare leaving the next Dem with a deficit. And they claim to be the party of family values, meanwhile, tons of those assholes are probably treated like Norm from Cheers when they walk into an abortion clinic with one of their mistresses.

Fun Fact: Dan Quayle the dummy said that the movie The Candidate (1972) inspired him to run for office. Author of the screenplay, speechwriter Jeremy Larner wrote an OP ED in the NYT explaining to Quayle that the film is anti-politics, not pro-politics.

> Sorry, Senator Quayle, you thought we were telling you 'how-to,' when we were trying to say: watch out. You missed the irony. Unless, in a way I never could have foreseen, you are the irony.