Demagogues, Demagoguery Quotes
See {585638} for the kind of statement that led people to fear him as a dictator.
Writing during World War II:
Gingrich was one of the most polarizing political figures of his era. He conflated liberals with intellectuals, and people he called “elites” creating a form of class warfare where the class divisions were educational and cultural instead of socioeconomic.
He was assessing him with the demagogue Huey Long and determining that MacArthur was more dangerous, This was based on his brutal suppression of the Veterans who protested and camped in Washington to get the Bonus that Congress had promised them from WWI but would not appropriate the money, MacArthur’s huge ego and ambition, and his penchant for self-promotion. FDR did not at the time know of course that MacArthur would disobey his orders and almost start WWIII later by attacking China in the Korean War. President Truman fired MacArthur. See {638721} for the way FDR tried to handle him. In 2014, historian Mark Perry, would use this quotation as the title of his biography of MacArthur.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, this is one of the most negative attacks on an opponent in a Presidential election in all of American History—to call the opponent ‘dangerous’ to the nation. Second, it is a classic example of two close political friends and allies, after a falling out. Roosevelt had in effect made Taft President in 1908, but Roosevelt was extremely disappointed as Taft was controllable by the Republican Party bosses, who hated Roosevelt. TR then challenged the then sitting President for the Republican Presidential nomination. At that time there were 12 states that had primary elections and Roosevelt won 9 of them. La Follette won 2 and Taft only 1. The majority of the states did not then have primaries allowing the party bosses to make the decision of which candidate to support. Party leaders generally did not like Roosevelt who was a major reformer, so they voted for Taft at the convention pushing him over the top when he clearly was the less popular of all 3 candidates. Roosevelt, outraged by the party bosses overriding the will of the people, then walked out of the convention and organized his own convention and TR ran as the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party). In the general election Roosevelt got more votes than Taft, but the two of them had split the majority Republican vote and the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was the winner.
