People won't forget GOP House vote

Republicans often refer to the issues associated with social security as "the third rail of Republican politics." For people in Minnesota who have no such reference, the "third rail" refers to the "instant death by electrocution" of the third rail of the New York subway system that provides the electrical power to run many of the subway trains.
Democrats have their own "third rail" of political death: war and peace. With the Democrats in charge of the country at those times during the 20th Century that we became involved in four major wars (World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam), the party doesn't have much credibility on those issues.
In 1935, with the country mired deep in the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt sent to the Congress his "Economic Security Bill," which would be renamed the "Social Security Act of 1935." Republicans started and continued an all-out attack on the idea of social security with such ferocity that the party is still remembered for it today. However, nothing the GOP members of the House or the Senate did in 1935 ever approached the mean-spirited vote the world witnessed last week on the Obama Stimulus bill. Not a single Republican in the House voted for this legislative effort to ease the burden that the current recession has placed on American families.
This selfish and totally partisan response stands in stark contrast to the party's actions in 1935. At that time, April 19, 1935, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted 81-to-15 in favor of the social security measure. Not bad, but it looked fairly faint-hearted when compared to the action of the House Democrats who cast 285 votes for the bill's passage, with only 15 opposed. To this day, many people in this country believe that all of the Republicans in the Congress unanimously opposed social security.
If the Republicans of 74 years ago are still unable to shed the skewered legend of their opposition to social security, imagine the political price the party stands to pay in the years ahead. Voters in future campaigns will be reminded repeatedly that that the GOP unanimously opposed the stimulus plan shortly after 91 House Republicans joined a majority of Democrats to vote in favor of a $700+ billion bailout of their friends in the nation's banks. Many of those recipients of taxpayer dollars then turned around and doled out $18 billion in bonus payments to their needy and deserving millionaire executives.