With all the recent talk about a different John McCain and all the mud being hurled in the presidential campaign, someone unfamiliar with the history of the Republican Party in the post-World War Two years might think that something new is occurring.  Even a cursory look at the record reveals a familiar story.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman established the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively along with confronting the Nazi and Fascist menaces in winning World War Two, a Republican Party hungry for victory as the fifties beckoned used the Cold War against the Soviet Union to advance their presidential aims.

The era of McCarthyism-Nixonism was launched.  While grand smears were launched questioning the patriotism of loyal Americans and targeting those who opposed them, a party that had been out of power for twenty years achieved the presidency under World War Two military hero General Dwight David Eisenhower.  

As perceptive journalists said at the time, the apolitical Eisenhower took the "high road" and his aggressive vice presidential running mate Richard Nixon traversed the "low road."

Walter Mondale stated it correctly when he was running against the Reagan machine as well as a vigilant mainstream media in 1984, explaining, "They know that if they ever ran on the issues they would lose, so what they do is try and trick the majority of the American people to vote against themselves."

Richard Nixon came out of the Navy in 1946 and made a quick peace time adjustment by waging war of his own.  His target was Congressman Jerry Voorhees, who was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee with impeccable anti-Soviet credentials as the Truman administration rolled up its sleeves as the Cold War began.

Nixon's smear stalwarts impugned Voorhees's patriotism with series' of anonymous calls to people residing in the Whittier area district stating, "We just wanted you to know that your congressman, Jerry Voorhees, is a Communist."

Four years later Nixon and his fat cat benefactors decided it was time for him to move up to the senate.  This time his target was Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas and the same game was in active play.  Nixon uncorked his memorable barb of the campaign that "Congresswoman Douglas is pink right down to her underwear."