C-SPAN: The Contenders - Thomas Dewey (2011)

Source:C-SPAN- presidential historian Richard N. Smith, talking about the life & career of Thomas E. Dewey.

"C-SPAN continues its series "The Contenders" LIVE on Friday, October 28 at 8:00 p.m. ET with Thomas Dewey. In this clip, Presidential Historian Richard Norton Smith, Goucher College History Professor Jean Baker and Washington Editor of Real Clear Politics Carl Cannon discuss Dewey. More information on the series can be found here:C-SPAN." 

From C-SPAN

"Dewey led the moderate faction of the Republican Party during the 1940s, and 1950s, in opposition to conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. Dewey was an advocate for the professional and business community of the Northeastern United States, which would later be called the Eastern Establishment. This group consisted of internationalists who were in favor of the United Nations and the Cold War fight against communism and the Soviet Union, and it supported most of the New Deal social-welfare reforms enacted during the administration of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Dewey served as the 47th governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. In 1944, he was the Republican Party's nominee for the presidency, but lost the election to incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the closest of Roosevelt's four presidential elections. He was again the Republican presidential nominee in 1948, but lost to President Harry S. Truman in one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history.[1] Dewey played a large role in winning the Republican presidential nomination for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, helping Eisenhower win the presidential election that year.[2] He also played a large part in the choice of Richard Nixon as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956.[3] He was the first major party nominee for president of the Greatest Generation, and the first to have been born in the 20th century.

Following his political retirement, Dewey served from 1955 to 1971 as a corporate lawyer and senior partner in his law firm Dewey Ballantine in New York City. In March 1971, while on a golfing vacation in Miami, Florida, he died from a heart attack. Following a public memorial ceremony at St. James' Episcopal Church in New York City, Dewey was buried in the town cemetery of Pawling, New York." 

Source:Wikipedia- Thomas E. Dewey (Republican, New York)

From Wikipedia

If you want to know what kind of politician that Thomas Dewey was ideologically, I'll tell you anyway. Think about people who are tough on serious crimes and criminals, people who represent real threats to any free society, like America, who are tough on communism and other authoritarian ideologies, who believe in free enterprise, opportunity and responsibility for all, as well as freedom for all, that liberal democracy is the best form of government, civil and equal rights and justice for all, fiscal responsibility, the best government is the government that's closest to home, that's Tom Dewey. 

Tom Dewey was a Northeastern Republican from the 1930s and 40s and into the 1950s and that was the Republican Party pre-Christian-Right of the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Back then, the Republican Party was a party of basically two center-right factions: a Progressive faction form the Northeast and to a certain extent of the West Coast and a Classical Conservative faction from the Midwest and the Mountain West. They became a national party when the Christian-Right and other parts of the Far-Right came into the party in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. 

In the mid-20th Century, the Republican Party was the party of the Tom Dewey's, Dwight Eisenhower's, Nelson Rockefeller's, Bill Scranton's, George Romney's, and yes Richard Nixon's, who ideologically, was a Cold War, center-right Progressive Republican. 

The Republican Party also had a center-right Conservative faction in this same timer period, led by people like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater. 

The Republican Party was a real center-right party, perhaps not just of America, but perhaps the rest of the western world as well, when Far-Right people like the John Birch Society and others, were treated like escaped political mental patients, not like main street populist Republicans, the way they're treated today. And Tom Dewey was their leader in 1944 and 48, while he was also the Governor of New York. 

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