On his book “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by historian Gary Gerstle:
5:56 “The Soviet Union represented an existential threat to the United States”.
6:48 “-and that required (to contain communism) a standing army and quasi-peacetime of a sort that America had never experienced before. And Taft was profoundly uncomfortable with this…he was a republican in a classical sense, small central government, devolve power to the state, it’s suspicious of foreign entanglements, believing that America was protected by the two vast oceans and thus did not need a strong standing army, did not have to be involved in world affairs, and he was opposed to The New Deal; he thought it was a form of tyranny, was going to lead to collectivism, Soviet style, and he was poised, in the 1940’s, to roll back The New Deal-“
Eisenhower came along to address communism and without the cold war The New Deal would have disappeared and been seen “as a blip” instead of a “juggernaut” that continued on for 30 more years.
17:18 “-but the scale of this would not have reached the point that it did without getting a lot of republicans on board and the critical argument for them was national security and the critical event was Sputnik-“.
Ice on the Moon 