What Each Political Party
Has Given the United States

Today's Republicans like to parade around in the emperor's clothing of family values. Since results speak louder than bombast, let's examine what each political party has given the United States. You have to go all the way back to Lincoln to find a Republican whom virtually everyone alive today agrees is wholly admirable, so we'll start in 1861, with Lincoln — a diamond in the muckpile.

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Criminal Wrongdoing
Republicans
Democrats
  1. Civil War profiteering
    (1861-65; Lincoln)

  2. (1864; Lincoln)

  3. (September 24, 1869; Grant)

  4. (1874; Grant)

  5. (1875; Grant)

  6. (1876; Grant)

  7. (1876-82; Garfield)

  8. (1921-22; Harding)

  9. (1953-57; Eisenhower)

  10. (1957-74; Eisenhower)

  11. (1971; Nixon)
  12. Spiro Agnew
    (1973; Nixon)
  13. Nixon jewelry scandal (1974)

  14. (1972-74; Nixon)
  15. "Debategate" and October surprise
    (1980; Reagan)

  16. (1983-84; Reagan)
  17. William Casey convicted of insider trading
    (1983; Reagan)

  18. (1986-87; Reagan)
  19. John Tower
    (1987; Reagan)
  20. Savings & loan scandal and Keating Five
    (1980-88; Reagan)
  21. Mario Biaggi and Wedtech
    (1988; Reagan)
  22. Jim Wright ethics violations
    (1989; Bush/41)

  23. (1990; Bush/41; protagonist is Bush/43)
  24. Tailhook scandal
    (1991; Bush/41)
  25. BCCI scandal
    (1991; Bush/41)
  26. (2000-present; Bush/43)
  27. Traficant scandal; Torricelli bribery
    (2002; Bush/43)
  28. Downing Street memo
    (2002; Bush/43)
  29. Forgery of yellowcake "evidence"
    (2002; Bush/43)

  30. (2003-05; Bush/43)
  31. Bombing Fallujah with white phosphorus
    (2003?; Bush/43)
  32. Tom Delay first reprimanded for numerous ethics violations, finally indicted
    (2003-05; Bush/43)
  33. Bush administration payment of conservative columnists to write favorably about Bush policies
    (2005; Bush/43)
  34. Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, wire fraud and Indian gambling fraud
    (2005; Bush/43)
  35. Republican Congressman Randy Duke Cunningham admitted to receiving approximately $2.4 million in bribes and resigned. (Holy smokes! A Republican criminal who resigned his office! That hasn't happened since Nixon! Do you suppose we can get Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Frist, DeLay, and all the many other criminals to resign too?)
    (2005; Bush/43)

  1. (1860-; Lincoln)
  2. Newport sex scandal
    (1919; Wilson)
  3. Department of Justice tax scandal
    (1951-52; Truman)
  4. Adam Clayton Powell expelled from Congress and reelected anyway
    (1967; Johnson/36)
  5. Richard Daley: dead people voting
  6. Richard Daley: 1968 Democratic Convention riots
  7. Vietnam: napalm
  8. Tongsun Park scandal
    (1977-80; Carter)
  9. Abscam (1980; Carter)
Financial Disasters
  1. Post-Civil War Panic
    (1865-69)
  2. Crisis of the Gilded Age
    (1873; Grant)
  3. Grant's Last Panic
    (1884; Arthur)
  4. Northern Pacific Comer
    (1901; McKinley)
  5. The Knickerbocker Trust Panic
    (1907; Teddy Roosevelt)
  6. The Great Wall Street Crash & ensuing Great Depression
    (1929; Hoover)

  7. (1981-92)

  8. (2000-08 — I hope!)
  1. Grover Cleveland and the Ordeal of 1893-95
Miscellaneous Awfulness

  1. (1863; Lincoln)

  2. (1873; Grant)

  3. (1869-; Grant)
  4. Reconstruction
    (1866-77)
  5. Gilded Age (1878-89), also known as the era of the robber barons
  6. Wounded Knee
    (1890; Benjamin Harrison)
  7. (1919; Wilson)
  8. Harold Carswell withdrew his Supreme Court nomination saying "I yield to no man . . . in the firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy."
    (1970; Nixon)
  9. Swine Flu
    (1976; Ford)

  10. (2001-02; Bush/43)
  1. (1884, 1888, and 1892)
  2. Spanish Flu
    (1918; Wilson)
  3. Internment of Japanese Americans
    (1940s; Roosevelt/32)
  4. Jim Crow laws

  5. (1961; Kennedy)
  6. Republican persecution and impeachment of Bill Clinton for receiving blow jobs (1997-98)
Positive Accomplishments
  1. Emanicipation
    (186?; Lincoln)

  2. (1954; Eisenhower)
  3. Title IX, other Nixon achievements
  4. National Park System
    (Roosevelt/26)
  1. Feminist movement of 1880s & '90s
    (Cleveland)
  2. Gibson Girls
    (1890s; Cleveland)
  3. Feminist movement of 1910s (Wilson), culminating in women's emancipation
  4. League of Nations
  5. Social Security
  6. New Deal
  7. G.I. Bill
  8. United Nations
  9. Medicare
  10. Medicaid
  11. Civil Rights movement
  12. Feminist movement of 1960s (Kennedy, Johnson)
  13. Youth movement of 1960s
    (Kennedy, Johnson)
  14. Great Society
    (1960s; Johnson)
  15. Clean Air Act
  16. Clean Water Act
  17. Environmental Protection Agency
  18. The sexual revolution
    (1960s; Johnson)
  19. Balanced budget
    (199?; Clinton)
Presidents who can be credibly accused of felonious behavior:
  1. U.S. Grant
  2. Richard Nixon
  3. Ronald Reagan
  4. George W. Bush
  • , vice president of Republican Abraham Lincoln, was technically a member of the “Democratic/National Union” party. The Republican-controlled Congress impeached Johnson because he refused to obey Republican orders.
    (1867; A. Johnson)

So there we have it. The Republicans are the party of “moral values” only if those values happen to be corruption; cronyism; elitism; looting of the U.S. Treasury to benefit Republican corporations, financiers, and wealthy men; and self-righteous posturing.