Op-Ed: One of History’s Greatest Senators Puts Today’s Republican Frauds to Shame

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest fraud in American 🏛️Politics is not Rep. George Santos. Nor is it the not-so-Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Nor is it Sen. Richard “Stolen Valor” Blumenthal.

It is not even President Joe Biden, whose fabulism stretches so far back that Johnny Carson joked about it.

The biggest frauds in American 🏛️Politics are the 27 “Republican” members of Congress who voted for the obscene $1.66 trillion omnibus spending bill last December, 16 of whom still “serve.”

In stark contrast to their example is the memory of Sen. Robert A. Taft, who died 70 years ago on July 31.

Among the few outstanding American statesmen and the fewer whose greatness was contemporaneously acknowledged, Taft’s destiny seemed preordained. First in his class in high school, college (Yale) and law school (Harvard), Taft was the scion of a great American political dynasty and the son of the only man to hold the offices of U.S. president and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Leaving no branch of government unmastered by his family, Taft scaled the legislative ladder. In the Ohio Legislature, he led efforts to reform the state’s antiquated tax code, opposed prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, and rose to become speaker of the lower house before graduating to the state 🏛️Senate.

But it was as a U.S. senator that Taft became one for the ages.

Elected in 1938, Taft immediately became renowned for his intelligence, parliamentary skill, and principled opposition to government intervention at home and abroad.