Betty Ford: A Socialist By Today's Standards

Looking back on the many photos of Betty Ford, you can see she was really the old school 70’s-style Republican: socially liberal while still representing the conservative presence.

Rather shocking today, not just for a button the size of, well, the Soviet Union, but the activist support of women’s rights amidst her tenure as First Lady of the United States, this picture from ’75 is jarringly emblematic of a party that has since gone over to the “far right side.” The photo, by the way, was captured at that bastion of the old Republican Party, the country club, during a major golf tournament. RIP BABWF and the old GOP.

(photo: Karl Schumacher/Courtesy Gerald R.Ford Library/Handout via Reuters caption: Former first Lady Betty Ford wears a button expressing her support for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment while taking some personal time as President Ford plays in the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic Celebrities Golf Tournament in Hollywood, Florida, in this handout photograph taken on February 26, 1975 and obtained on July 8,2011. Ford, whose battles with addiction led to the founding of a famed drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic bearing her name, died on July 8, 2011. Ford was 93.)