Pete McCloskey, Republican Who Tried to Unseat Nixon, Is Dead at 96
Last edited Wed May 8, 2024, 07:35 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: New York Times
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By Robert D. McFadden
May 8, 2024
Pete McCloskey, a California congressman who raised a flag of rebellion against President Richard M. Nixon's war policies in Vietnam with a spirited but futile race for the Republican presidential nomination in 1972, died on Wednesday at his home in Winters, Calif., west of Sacramento. He was 96. His death was announced in a statement released on Wednesday by a family spokesman, Lee Houskeeper.
Mr. McCloskey, who represented an area south of San Francisco for 15 years, from late 1967 to early 1983, was a liberal Republican who admired President John F. Kennedy, voted for environmental causes with Democrats and believed that the Republican Party had veered too far to the right.
In July 1971, with the nation divided over the war and Nixon heavily favored for re-election, Mr. McCloskey, a 43-year-old Korean War hero and two-term congressman best known for defeating Shirley Temple Black in a special election, launched his quixotic quest for the Republican nomination.
He had no money, party support or realistic prospects. But he had gone to Vietnam three times, and in campaign appearances he vividly portrayed the war's "cruelty and futility," as he put it, evoking cluster bombs that killed or maimed anyone within 25 acres, and napalm strikes that burned all within 150 feet at 2,000 degrees. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans were dying in a war that could not be won, he argued. "To talk, as the president does, of winding down the war while he is expanding the use of air power is a deliberate deception," Mr. McCloskey said. "I'll probably get licked, but I can't keep quiet."
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/politics/pete-mccloskey-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU0.8VQS.G0sCPkKpy5cZ&smid=url-share
He was quite a patriotic man. Too bad the Republican Party didn't follow his lead. I remember he was also associated with a bank in Walnut Creek, CA., that had a peace symbol on the outside of its building. It lit up brilliantly at night. I also remember seeing him as a lawyer in case when I got called to jury duty.
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demosincebirth
(12,560 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(24,911 posts)Brought a keg of beer with him. That was back in the day when the Republicans and Democrats moved progressive legislation. Sadly, there is no room for smart thinkers, like Pete, in the Republican Party.
Trumpdumper
(174 posts)McCloskey gave succor to Holocaust deniers late in life. He didn't come out and say they were right, but he gave them wide berth, pretending that this is a debatable issue. Inexcusable, whatever his earlier merits.
Hekate
(91,228 posts)Trumpdumper
(174 posts)McCloskey gave succor to Holocaust deniers late in life. He didn't come out and say they were right, but he gave them wide berth, pretending that this is a debatable issue. Inexcusable, whatever his earlier merits.
electric_blue68
(15,072 posts)I don't know about that part of his life what he said, when, public statements etc .
But that's a serious charge to make.
Hekate
(91,228 posts)electric_blue68
(15,072 posts)I volunteered for 2 different Liberal Republicans.The only times I ever campaigned for Republicans.
First was Mayor John V Lindsey for reelection in '69.
Then Sen Charles Goodell in '70 who'd been appointed by Gov Rockefeller to hold Sen Kennedy's seat after June 5,6 1968.
I felt Jake Javits was too conservative on several issues important to me.
Hekate
(91,228 posts)
for the sake of us all.
Brother Buzz
(36,525 posts)SouthBayDem
(32,113 posts)From Wikipedia:
Temple wasn't the first entertainment figure in California politics at the time; there were also Governor Ronald Reagan and Senator George Murphy (both Republicans).
electric_blue68
(15,072 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,525 posts)
2007
McCloskeys have been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln's election. My great grandfather, John Henry McCloskey, orphaned in the great Irish potato famine of 1843, came to California in 1853 as a boy of 16, and joined the party just before the Civil War.
By 1890 he and my grandfather, both farmers, made up two of the twelve members of the Republican Central Committee of Merced County. My father's most memorable expletive came when I was a boy of 10 or 11: "That damn Roosevelt is trying to pack the Supreme Court!"
I registered Republican in 1948 after reaching the age of 21. We were the party of civil rights, of free choice for women and fiscal responsibility. Since Teddy Roosevelt, we had favored environmental protection, and most of all we stood for fiscal responsibility, honesty, ethics and limited government intrusion into our personal lives and choices. We accepted that one the duties of wealth was to pay a higher rate of income tax, and that the estates of the wealthy should contribute to the national treasury in reasonable measure.
I was proud to serve with Republicans like Gerry Ford, the first George Bush and Bob Dole.
In 1994, however, Newt Gingrich brought a new kind of Republicanism to power, and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 has led to wholly new concept of governance. The bureaucracy has mushroomed in size and power. The budget deficits have become astronomical. Our historical separation of church and state has been blurred. We have seen a succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes, and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.
The single cardinal principle of political science, that power corrupts, has come to apply not only to Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees. The stench of Jack Abramoff has permeated much of the Washington Republican establishment.
The Justice Department, guardian of of our rule of law, has been compromised. It's third ranking official, a graduate of Pat Robertson's dubious law school, has taken the 5th Amendment.
Men who have never felt the fear of combat, and who largely dodged military service in their youth, have led us into grievous wars in far off places with no thought of the diplomacy, grace and respect for other peoples and their cultures which has been an American trademark for at least the last two thirds of a century. We have lost the respect and affection of most of the world outside our borders. My son, Peter, one of the U.S. prosecutors at The Hague of the war crimes in Serbia and elsewhere, tells me that people of other countries no longer look at the country which countenances torture as a beacon for the world and the rule of law.
Earth Day, that bi-partisan concept of Gaylord Nelson in 1970, has become the focus of almost hatred by today's Republican leadership. Many still argue that global warming is a hoax, and that Bush has been right to demean and suppress the arguments of scientists at the E.P.A., Fish & Wildlife and U.S.Geological Survey.
I say a pox on them and their values.
Until the past few weeks, I had hoped that the party could right itself, returning to the values of the Eisenhowers, Fords and George H. W. Bush.
What finally turned me to despair, however, was listening to the reports, or watching on C-Span, a whole series of congressional oversight hearings on C-Span, held by old friends and colleagues like Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman, Norm Dicks, Nick Rahall, Danny Akaka and others, trying to learn the truth on the misdeeds and incompetence of the Bush Administration. Time after time I saw Republican Members of the House and Senate. speak out in scorn or derision about these exercises of Congress oversight responsibility being "witch-hunts" or partisan attempts to distort the actions of people like the head of the General Service Administration and the top political appointees in the Justice and Interior Departments. Disagreement turned into disgust.
I finally concluded that it was a fraud for me to remain a member of this modern Republican Party, that there were only a few like Chuck Hegel, Jack Warner, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins I could respect.
Two of the best, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Jim Leach of Iowa, after years of battling for balance and sanity, were defeated last November, and it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago. My favorite spokesmen have become Senators Jim Webb and Barack Obama.
And so it was, that while at the Woodland courthouse the other day, passing by the registrar's office, I filled out the form to re-register as a Democrat.
The issues Helen (McCloskey) and I care about most, public financing of elections, a reliable paper ballot trail, independent re-districting to replace gerrymandering, the right of a woman to choose not to bring a child into the world, a reversal of the old Proposition 13 and term limits which have so hurt California's once superb education system and the competence of our Legislature, are now almost universally opposed by California's elected Republicans, and the occasional attempts at reform by our Governor are looked on with grim disdain by most of them.
From Helen's and my standpoint, being farmers in Yolo County gives us the opportunity to work for purposes which were once Republican, but can no longer be found at Republican conventions and discussions.
I hope this answers your questions about the party and a government I have served in either civil or military service under ten presidents, five Republican and five Democrat ... I doubt it will be of much interest other than to our friends, but it has been a decision not easily taken.
Respectfully, Pete McCloskey
Crowman2009
(2,512 posts)...career.
An interesting read I might add.
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