Does the below look familiar? Back in the days of Great Depression I, a constant refrain from the Republican Party was that President Franklin Roosevelt was a communist or a socialist, and that the United States had become a communist dictatorship, because Democrats were in power. The below left cartoon by Rollin Kirby, is from the mid-term elections of 1934, showing the G.O.P. holding up signs proclaiming that Roosevelt is a Red!, and, Back to 1929 (a call to return to the Republican financial ideology, which had led to the first Great Depression — just like Republicans/Tea Party ideologues are today calling for a return to their policies which have now given us the second Republican-caused Great Depression), backed up by Wall Street on one side, and Rugged Individualism on the other. This cartoon, titled The Best They Have to Offer, appeared first in the New York World-Telegram. It is taken here, from its reprinting in the October 1934 issue in the American Review of Reviews.

Below right, from the 1912 Presidential Election year, we see Pulling the Same Old Stuff, by Stinson in the Cincinnati Post, showing the monopolies, big business, and party newspapers, cranking out the same old song (in this case, to re-elect Republican President Taft). Just as John Boehner and the Republicans this year, in their 2010 version of “The Contract with America”, while telling us how they were going to do things differently, also threw in to reassure people, that they are still the same old G.O.P., and that their ideas haven’t changed… (ahem). What that means to me, is that Republicans always talk fiscal responsibility, but in practice, when they’ve been in power, their actions have been precisely the opposite. They’ve cried wolf several times too many. I don’t buy it. The cartoon is taken from its reprinting in the November 1912 issue of Cartoons Magazine.

Click on any picture, to see a larger version.

And yet another example of Republican campaign propaganda of the past, below is but one of innumerably similar examples which appeared in The Fellowship Forum during the Presidential Elections of 1928. The Fellowship Forum was a Washington, D.C. published newspaper which intertwined Conservative Christian Fundamentalists, the Ku Klux Klan (which had wide mainstream acceptance at this time), Prohibition, and the Republican Party. The Democrats had nominated an anti-Prohibition, Catholic candidate for President — Al Smith — to run against Republican Herbert Hoover. This led to the constant refrain that A Vote for Al Smith is a Vote for the Pope. That if the people didn’t vote for Hoover and the Republicans, America would become a Catholic theocratic dictatorship, run both by the Pope and rum-running boot-leggers. An example detail from below, is candidate Al Smith at the head of the parade, driving a beer wagon with the words “Make America 100% Catholic, Drunk and Illiterate” written on its side, while Al says, “From Washington I’ll drive these protestant nags thru to Mexico City.” The below cartoon appeared on the front page of the June 16, 2025 issue of The Fellowship Forum. I could show tons of these, but, one hate-filled example is enough.

Click on the below picture, to see and read all the details.

In case you didn’t notice — yes, in 1928, Republicans claimed that if Democrats won the Presidency, the United States would become a theocratic catholic dictatorship, ruled by the Pope. In 1932, Republicans claimed that because a Democrat was in the White House, that the United States was a socialist/communist dictatorship. Today, extremist Tea Party-Libertarian-Republicans, claim that because Democrats are at the moment in charge, we are living in a socialist/communist dictatorship, ruled by an atheist communist, who is a secret muslim, with a crazy christian preacher… (They also say that allowing tax rates on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, to return what they were during the Clinton years, would also mean we’re a socialist dictatorship — implying that during President Clinton’s Presidency, we were living in a dictatorship then, as well.)

To make it easy, let’s just sum it up — the definition of “dictatorship” for a conservative extremist, is anytime their candidate loses a democratic election. Using Republican logic, their God-given freedom to impose their way of thinking upon everybody else, is being oppressed when they are not in charge of everything. The only way to make the United States free, is to make it a one-party state, in which the most right-wing conservative Republicans are guaranteed to win every election.

Does that basically sum it up?

To find previous Election-related Cartoons, click here.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionCartoons anti-Catholic