But seeing Democrats and Republicans growing increasingly polarized about America’s role in the world while recognizing the threat a remilitarized Germany and Japan might pose, Vandenberg was moved to address the Senate in 1945, declaring that no country could “immunize itself” from the rest of the world. Among these isolationists, Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg was the unofficial spokesman. While Americans were fighting overseas in World War II, many congressional Republicans were increasingly wary of a lengthy American involvement in Europe after the war ended. 1945: Senator Vandenberg’s Bipartisan Foreign Policy It was an olive branch to congressional Republicans-and a chance for a new president to find common ground with the congressional opposition. While naming a Democrat to the seat likely would have been approved, Truman broke with his party and instead chose Republican Ohio Sen.
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Three months after FDR’s death, new President Harry S Truman was faced with an open Supreme Court seat, seven associate Court justices already appointed by the Democratic FDR and a legislative branch full of skeptical Republican eyes waiting to see what he would do. Roosevelt had some bipartisan record-he appointed Republicans as Secretaries of War and Navy-his squelched plan to pack the Supreme Court was still a bitter pill among Washington Republicans. Lincoln’s so-called “team of rivals” has come to be seen as a watershed political moment as Lincoln himself explained to newspaper reporter, he felt had no right to deprive the country of its strongest minds simply because they sometimes disagreed with him. Lincoln later added a Democrat-Edwin Stanton-as his Secretary of War. That all three lost the presidential nomination to a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was the first surprise of 1860 that Lincoln won the general election and then appointed all three of his Republican rivals to his cabinet was the second.
By the time of the Republican party convention, three men representing these factions emerged as party favorites: N.Y. 1860: Lincoln’s Team of RivalsĪs smaller political parties were evolving into what was to become the modern Republican party, each faction, representing differing viewpoints on slavery and federal power, had a favorite son in the presidential election of 1860. Eventually the Connecticut Compromise-known now as the Great Compromise-was adopted and the opposing sides in the debate each felt vindicated. It was Connecticut’s well-respected Roger Sherman who proposed a compromise: a proportional House of Representatives and a Senate with equal representation, an idea that seems familiar to us now, but was so radical in 1787 that, at first, it was dismissed by the group. Representatives from large, populous states-who wanted proportional representation-thought the current system was obviously unfair. Representatives from small states were loathe approve any plan that tampered with the equal representation they currently enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation. In debating a new model for self-rule that would eventually become the Constitution, states’ delegates in the summer of 1787 were so intensely divided over the difficult idea of congressional representation that the very topic threatened to end the Constitutional Convention.