Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) isn't a particularly bright man, and so I can forgive him for thinking this nonsense about Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
Original intent was the general welfare, the general welfare of the nation, not welfare of individuals. We've developed this big welfare system in this country. It all started, in earnest, with President Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt just exploded the size and scope of the government with his New Deal. Both progressives. Both had socialist beliefs. In fact, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent his advisors, his close friends, his cabinet people to go visit with Stalin in communist Russia to study what he was doing, what Stalin was doing there so that FDR could replicate it here in the United States. And he did everything he possibly could to do so. [Emphasis mine]
Unless I missed something very important about Roosevelt's administration, I'm reasonably sure that FDR wasn't collaborating to bring Stalinism to the United States. Indeed, in the world as it actually exists, the New Deal -- which Broun clearly equates with communism -- was meant to save capitalism from an economic catastrophe that radicalized millions and jeopardized the viability of the American project.
As an aside, Broun's bromide against FDR is a nice example of the massive ideological shift among white Southerners since the New Deal. For a long time, white Southerners were absolutely enamored with Roosevelt; through the New Deal, his administration brought infrastructure and economic assistance to poor, rural communities across the South, including Georgia. But, as the Democratic Party became a genuine political home for white liberals and African Americans, this near messianic view of FDR transformed into something a lot more sinister.
