Tuesday Great Aunt Blogging: Democratic Wars Edition

You gotta love this cartoon from the early 1950s. It demonstrates wingnuttery is truely timeless. Look at the last thing blamed on Democrats in the caption.

That's right, "Three Democratic World Wars"! I am assuming they are referring to the Cold War as the third world war here but I'm not sure -who knows with wingnuts. Germany, Japan and the other powers who initiated one or both of the historically identified world wars are apparently blameless. No, it was the Democrats. Who knew?

Lest you thinks this was a one time idea of weirdness, this notion of Democratic Wars was reiterated some 25 years later by none other than Bob Dole.

At the Alley Theater in Houston on Oct. 15, 1976, Republican vice presidential candidate Bob Dole faced off against Democrat Walter Mondale. Walter Mears of the Associated Press asked Dole whether his 1974 criticism of President Gerald Ford, while running for a second Senate term from Kansas, for pardoning Richard Nixon might be appropriate in 1976 when Ford was running for president.

Obviously exasperated, Dole retorted that it was not "a very good issue any more than the war in Vietnam would be or World War II or World War I or the war in Korea, all Democratic wars, all in this century. I figured out if we added up the killed and wounded in the Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit."

Damn Democrats, always starting wars. Like the one in Iraq.

But I guess Democrats are really in a tough position. They are to be criticized for taking the nation to war and then called unpatriotic when they oppose it. It sucks to be them. Has for a long time I guess.