Black Belt and Blue Water
object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression , and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal .
Now , imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery�but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud .
After dealing with the Republican charges point by point , he built toward the famous climax :
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me , or my wife , or on my sons . No , not content with that , they now include my little dog , Fala . Well , of course , I don ’ t resent attacks , and my family doesn ’ t resent attacks , but Fala does resent them . You know , Fala is Scotch , and being a Scottie , as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him�at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three , or eight or twenty million dollars�his Scotch soul was furious . He has not been the same dog since . I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old , worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable . But I think I have a right to resent , to object to libelous statements about my dog ( F . D . Roosevelt 1944 ).
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