October 14, 2009

GOP.com's Indian accomplishment

GOP.Com:  Republicans Accomplished Indians!Everyone's been making fun of the GOP.Com web site and so In The Hoop thought we would too but inclusion of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 in the "Accomplishment" list of the Republican Party seems more sad than humorous. So there you go.Comment:  I don't mind giving Republicans credit for this act. But it would be good to have some background first. For instance, did the GOP envision Indians having dual citizenship in the US and their own sovereign nations? Or did they consider citizenship part of the process of terminating the tribes and assimilating the Indians?

A better choice for GOP.com's Indian accomplishment would be the legislation championed by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. I don't think there's any way to spin that as a negative. For Indians, his reign was one of the highlights--perhaps the highlight--of the 20th century.

For more on the subject, see Why Nixon Did It.

But we can guess why GOP.com didn't highlight Nixon's accomplishments. Presumably it's because Nixon resigned in disgrace after launching a conservative culture of corruption that's lasted 40 years. Republicans would prefer to pretend that Nixon didn't exist.

2 comments:

dmarks said...

"Presumably it's because Nixon resigned in disgrace after launching a conservative culture of corruption that's lasted 40 years"

Only some of those 40 years, For four years in the 1970s, there was a liberal culture of corruption. And another period of a liberal culture of corruption started in 1992 and lasted for 8 years.

Rob said...

As I recall, the Carter administration had only a few major scandals, and Carter wasn't personally involved in them. Most people consider him an ineffective president, not a corrupt one.

Many of Clinton's scandals were overblown or unproved. And Republicans scandals continued during his administration. Several of the Congressmen trying to impeach Clinton were shown to be rank hypocrites.

As one website put it:

http://www.answers.com/topic/political-scandal

Congressional scandals also abounded in that era. The scandals leading to Representatives James Wright's and Newt Gingrich's loss of power and position had a major impact on the political makeup of Congress in the last part of the twentieth century.