My grandfather was a strong GOP supporter during the days of his life….and in 1956 he worked and voted for Ike…..if he were alive today he would be a strong Left progressive…..why would I say that?

First of all let’s look at the platform of Ike and the GOP in 1956……

Or if you prefer….I have written about this platform and the GOP in the past here on IST……https://lobotero.com/2018/11/06/where-has-the-gop-gone/

If you read the platform closely you will see just how “liberal” the party was in those days……(I miss those days)…….

Now you may ask….what happened to the GOP?

The year is 1971 and the Nixon nominee for the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell, wrote a memo to be forever known as the Powell Memo.

It was 1971 and Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, who had been president of the American Bar Association and a member of the board of the giant tobacco company Philip Morris, had come to believe that American capitalism was facing a dire threat. Americans were angry about corporate abuse and corporate pollution; President Richard M. Nixon had responded by signing the National Environmental Policy Act and creating the Environmental Protection Agency through executive order. Across the country, activists marched for Earth Day, and Congress passed the first air pollution standards. Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates had successfully fought for safer cars and other products.

Powell believed that corporate America needed a decisive response to this perceived threat to the free-enterprise system. In a lengthy memo, the soon-to-be Supreme Court justice laid out his concerns and proposed responses to the Chamber of Commerce, where he served as chairman of the education committee.

The document he penned, now known as the Powell Memo, has been described as the road map for conservative dominance of public policymaking. For any such plan to be successful, Powell understood, conservatives would have to fund a broad array of institutions that would exert control over the levers of power, including the courts, the legislature, and the media. Importantly, the tobacco lawyer insisted, it would require “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.” What Powell grasped is that policy victories come after gaining control of the levers of power—and not before.