May Day

That's Cliff May's story, and he's stickin' to it. Even if it is all crap.

Cliffie still hasn't corrected his bogus history of F.D.R. and the timing of the Pearl Harbor commission investigations. David Corn of The Nation and tompaine.com adds to the debunking of May's fiction, elaborating on points made by Atrios and Eric at Wampum earlier this week. Corn writes:

Fifty-eight years ago, when this country was engaged in World War II, a battle for freedom and security, when American troops were sacrificing their lives for the folks back home, the Republicans had no problem running a candidate against the commander-in-chief, Franklin Roosevelt, nor did the GOP nominee, Thomas Dewey, shrink from criticizing FDR.

He accused FDR of being responsible for the death of American soldiers because Roosevelt had not adequately prepared the country for the war, and he maintained that if FDR was reelected, America would be at risk of a communist takeover. (That sounds overheated now, but it's how Republicans used to campaign against Democrats.) Moreover, Dewey assailed Democrats who argued the debate over the communist threat should be suppressed because it undermined the war effort. (The United States and the Soviet Union were allies at the time.) Dewey claimed the war should not prevent discussion of vital matters.

By questioning the United States-Soviet alliance and FDR's commitment to freedom and liberty while war was raging and the final outcome uncertain, did Dewey and the Republican Party undermine FDR's management of the war? Republicans at the time were spreading gossip that FDR had sent a Navy destroyer to fetch Fala, his Scottish terrier, after the dog supposedly was left behind during a trip to Alaska. Was this attempt to weaken the national standing of a wartime president an action that could have hindered the war? In any event, FDR beat Dewey, 54 to 46 percent. The Republican Party did not believe Dewey had engaged in improper activity, for he went on to win his party's presidential nomination again in 1952 and nearly beat Harry Truman.

To be fair, May did get F.D.R.'s initials correct.