Greatest Republican Leaders of Past Criticized the President During Wartime!

I posted here before how powerful Republican Leaders have criticized the President during times of war. Former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt criticized Democratic President Wilson during WWI, and said that people who claimed you must not criticize the president especially during war were themselves the traitors because they were "morally treasonous to the American public." Republican Senator Robert Taft who was known as "Mr. Republican" and was the son of Republican President William Howard Taft, was openly critical of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and throughout WWII. He scoffed at those who said that criticism of the President during war time was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. He said, “if that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments they are welcome to it... because the maintenance of the right to criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a good deal more good than it will do the enemy." Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower also supported criticism of the President as honest patriotic dissent reminiscent of the founders of our nation.

But I forgot to mention the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, while he was a Congressman during the Mexican American War – a war declared by Congress – openly challenged Democratic President Polk insisting that the president had lied to the American people in order to start the war. Lincoln demanded the proof of the claims that Polk had made – the equivalent of Bush’s claims that Iraq had WMDs including nuclear weapons and the Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 – both claims which have been proven false yet many Americans still believe them because the Corporate-Owned News Media is failing to do their job of informing them.

These Republican leaders of the past were 100% right to defend the American right to disagree with the President even during war. To question the President’s truthfulness and even accuse him of lying to start a war if there is any suspicion he did so. They were 100% right to dismiss the charges that criticism of the President or his administration gives aid and comfort to the enemy. The enemy gets great comfort when the American people’s right to criticize the President is taken away or disparaged as unpatriotic. That is Treason as Teddy Roosevelt observed.

Anyone who thinks that this is an unpatriotic blog is either not reading it or just too blinded by propaganda to see the truth. I pity them.

Joe