The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Thaddeus McCotter Remembers, If Not Honors, Millard Fillmore

Posted on | February 18, 2013 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

In one of the biggest Huh? moments of my memory, McCotter went from high-ranking GOP representative and dark horse Presidential hopeful to. . .recovering Congressbum and of Counsel at the Detroit law firm of Ottenwess, Allman & Taweel, PLC.

McCotter offers a profile of Millard Fillmore over at Breitbart.com, wherein he performs the masterful trick of making 160-year-old history quite interesting. A taste:

Historians have been even less kind. Fillmore’s presidency has been consistently ranked in the “Bottom 10,” no mean feat for someone who wasn’t a Republican. A key reason is Fillmore’s acquiescence to signing the Compromise of 1850 over the objections of, among others, Northern Whigs and his wife Abigail (Note to husbands: she is always right).
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state; settled the Texas boundary and gave that state $10,000,000 in debt relief; granted territorial status to New Mexico and Utah and allowed them to determine the status of slavery within their own borders; enacted the fugitive slave law, which put Federal officers in the service of slaveholders; and abolished the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia. Intended to end slavery’s sectional divisions, the compromise only exacerbated them: afterwards, Northern Whigs prayed, “God Save Us from Whig Vice Presidents!”

A great read. About the only thing missing was a “separated at birth” gag, which I’ll provide:

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Comments

3 Responses to “Thaddeus McCotter Remembers, If Not Honors, Millard Fillmore”

  1. Adjoran
    February 18th, 2013 @ 3:08 pm

    If anyone had a better idea than the Compromise of 1850, they did a marvelous job of keeping it secret. If the real objection is that the war didn’t start ten years earlier, yeah, blame Fillmore.

    McCotter has his own separated-at-birth issues, as befits such a hapless union tool as he:

  2. Bob Belvedere
    February 18th, 2013 @ 4:02 pm

    The case of Thaddeus McCotter is a true Tragedy. Was it vaulting ambition? I don’t know.

    BTW: From the OED:
    …from Greek trag?idia, apparently from tragos ‘goat’….. Indeed.

  3. Holy Crap, is Alec Baldwin Racist | Andrew J. Patrick
    February 18th, 2013 @ 5:49 pm

    […] UPDATE: Alec Fillmore? […]