Posted on 08/26/2009 4:28:54 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
. . .
Much of the admiring conservative literature about Reagan, like that written by liberals, also focuses chiefly and too narrowly on the Cold War story.
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The difficulties Reagan had controlling spending and the growth of government were not lost on conservatives during and immediately after his presidency. The case for disappointment, verging at times on betrayal, was made often while Reagan was in office. For example, the Winter 1984 issue of Policy Review contained a symposium called “What Conservatives Think of Reagan.” .
Terry Dolan, head of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, complained: “There has been no spending cut. There has been no turnover of control to the states. There has been no effort to dismantle the Washington bureaucratic elitist establishment. . . . The question when Reagan got elected was whether he was going to be closer to Eisenhower as a caretaker or to Roosevelt as a revolutionary. He’s been generally closer to Eisenhower, preserving the status quo established by previous liberal administrations.” On and on the conservative commentariat fulminated. Conservative journalist M. Stanton Evans: “This has been essentially another Ford administration. It has been business as usual, not much different from any other Republican administration in our lifetime.” Paul Weyrich: “The radical surgery that was required in Washington was not performed.”
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Today we speak of the three liberal Republican senators (one of them now a Democrat) who backed Obama’s stimulus package. In 1981, there were as many as 15 such senators in the Senate Republican caucus .(w
. . .
Gingrich was frequently included among conservatives who expressed frustration with Reagan. “Ronald Reagan is the only coherent revolutionary in an administration of accommodationist advisers,” Gingrich complained in 1984.
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(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Evans was editor of the Indianapolis News--which ceased to exist.
Coulter called him the greatest living authority on McCarthy--fine, but I am losing patience with Reagan anklebiters.
I found how hard a sell Goldwater was. And getting there counts for so very much.
Your comment here contains two truths vital to our age:
The arguments include the fact that politics is the art of the possible and that no one administration can undo all of the destruction done to our liberties by generations of politicians.
It may not have been clear, but the criticisms were made by a large part of the conservative leadership during Reagan’s first term. I remember it well, because I was critical of many of his actions at the time, especially including his decisions on appointments, from VP Bush on down.
This is exactly why I say we have to change our States, then change the House and then the Senate. If we can do that and if they will work with a new President, things will change. Any politician has to have the country and its interest at heart or it’s a waste of time. We need to go back to the Constitution, get rid of laws that are meaningless but desctructive. Break off ties with countries that hate us and let them know we will not be pushed around. If they push, we will do more than just push back. This is how we will get our respect back as a country. It would be a tough row to hoe but it can be done.
Excellent article. And the sting of a wasp in the last sentence.
Great article. I enjoyed it.
parsy, the reader
I take it you mean the last sentence in the excerpts? One mans RINO is another man’s conservative, I guess. The article is six full pages, the book is two volumes.
Ping to ls.
This is what I meant.
The French tried to do it the fast way in 1789. That way also has problems. See my homepage.
Against the entrenched liberal establishment from the Congress to the press, his was an uphill battle.
Difficult to picture from our perspective.
There was nothing from Roosevelt through Carter of any sunshine at all until Reagan.
Nixon was after all price controls and the EPA.
The analysis attempts to dismiss the Cold War--impossible.
The major fact of existence of the Soviet Union set the dimension of the political arena.
Appalling that Evans would miss that.
Beyond taxes, Reagan tore down their wall for them, but was too much the gentleman to point it out.
Despite the despicable treason of worms like Ted Kennedy.
I understand but the option could get ugly.
Haywood should stick to the accomplishments and successes of the Reagan Presidency and stop whining. Would have been great if Reagan had a GOP House to ram through even more conservative policies. As it was, the Reagan Presidency was based in substance.
Reagan's policies in the 1980`s were good for America and good for the world. Reagan won the Cold War, dismantled the Soviet Empire and the communist Eastern Bloc, freeing some 500 million people from totalitarian rule; revived a battered US economy from the worst conditions since the Great Depression; enlarged the military and expanded national defense; cut federal income taxes 25% across the board, reducing top tax rates from 70% to 28%; reduced welfare state and non-defense discretionary expenditures; reduced overall federal spending as a percentage of GDP; and seriously reduced federal regulations like never before. Reagan`s leadership was extraordinary, winning two historic elections and uniting America behind common goals. In the 1980`s Reagan confronted Democrats head on; fought liberalism to a standstill; and halted America's slide towards euro-socialism.
The Reagan Presidency expanded individual freedom and that is always a good thing.
With the hindsight of 30 years, GHWB was his biggest mistake.
It’s funny how of all the presidents since Reagan, it was Clinton who encouraged the most economic growth, and contained government the best.
Having a solidly GOP Congress for most of his terms probably had a lot to do with it.
“Reagan`s leadership was extraordinary, winning two historic elections and uniting America behind common goals.”
Period.
Actually I thought Clinton showed how you could stop government spending in it’s tracks. Back when he shut the government down while confronting congress, he was wanting more spending and made the congress pay politically for trying to simply hold the line on spending.
I thought a Republican president could do this exact thing, but force congress to accept real spending reductions and elimination of programs.
I thought maybe even Bush would do this, hahahahaa! I cracked myself up!
“With the hindsight of 30 years, GHWB was his biggest mistake. “
Yep
George H. W. Bush did much the same thing in his term. Naturally the media said it was all Bush's fault. It was after that episode that Bush went back on his 'read my lips' pledge, when the alternative was a total shutdown that would be blamed on him and the GOP.
Maybe not so strange. Divided government leads to less spending, at least when Republicans control Congress and Democrats the Presidency or at least when Democrats can't override Republicans on spending.
But then again, maybe it's strange after all. What would Obama be like if he had a Republican House and Senate to work with? That could happen yet. Would he be like Clinton or wholly different?
Ronald Reagan was so great that those who are lesser men in public life and in the media feel threatened by his shadow, and seek to diminish him.
Too bad, I remember Stan Evans being one of the columnists I loved to read in the 80s, and I don’t recall him being critical of Reagan back then.
We need to always, always remember that the inherent nature of government is to grow. One of George Washington's first actions was to triple the number of "cabinet" posts---he created three when there were none! Jefferson asked his SecTreas to come up with an "highways" bill that by itself was the size of the entire federal budget. John Adams and other Founders supported public education.
I think it was Madison who said that there will always be a reason concocted to do whatever a leader wants done. That's why any conservative must CONTINUALLY ask himself/herself, "Besides accomplishing the immediate task of what needs to be done, how does this grow government, and is there a way to do it without growing government?" It is very difficult, like trying to think about nothing. As soon as you act (i.e., "think about nothing") you have actually done something. Andrew Jackson, who thought he was a "small government" guy, vastly grew the federal government, and particularly the executive, through the VETO power---but like a muscle, using it one direction grows it in all directions. Therefore, in my opinion, it is simply impossible to actively "cut" government---desirable, certainly, but probably not effective. I think the real way government must be cut is through the relative growth of the private sector. If the private sector grows faster, it shrinks the relative size. That CERTAINLY doesn't mean that there aren't major "reforms" that would drastically reduce the actual level of government.
One idea I have had, that no one yet has taken up, is to mandate a limit of TWO STAFFERS per legislator, period. That can be a secretary and a researcher, two researchers, or two secretaries. When you think that the ratio of congressional staff is in the hundreds-to-one, and that THEY are writing all the bills no one reads, you'll see what an immediate impact this would have on our daily lives! And imagine congressmen having to answer their own damn phones, or hold their own meetings!
So: as to Reagan. He had three major goals, and in order of priority they were 1) rebuild the economy so as to 2) be able to back down Soviet communism, and 3) reduce the role of government in people's lives. He absolutely did 1 & 2 and to some degree, through tax cuts, actually did #3. He even closed one minor agency, but as far as I know, it's one of the ONLY federal agencies ever closed (the CAB).
BTW, when Arlen Specter screwed Reagan on one budget vote, RR wrote in his diary that he'd never raise a dime for that idiot again, and kept his word. I never, however, got from RR that he was closely tied to the national GOP organization---but rather that he was wary of it, having been cheated basically twice by the "establishment" (did you know he actually won more primary votes in 1968 than Nixon or Romney, but only carried one state?)
In short, someone like a Sarah Palin cannot just come into the Oval Office as a "conservative" thinking you'll just "cut government." There has to be as deliberate and clever a strategy for doing so as RR had for ending the Cold War. It must be approached as a war. Actually, the best at doing this was Grover Cleveland, who chopped hundreds of thousands of loafers off the welfare rolls from the army pensions; and who vetoed the seed corn bill. Number two would be Coolidge, who in every area except farming got out of the way (but CC also, unfortunately, was so isolationist as to fail to take measures to prevent Japanese and German militarism from surfacing). I guess you can't have it all.
Reagan got the most primary votes in '68 because he was the only one on the ballot in California. He didn't win anywhere else.
With his California base Reagan was a power in his own right and the other candidates keyed off of him. In the runup to '80 our contact points were in Utah and Nevada.. The California guys were focusing on the bigger picture. Two years before the electon the effort was massive.
We took a look at what the major influences on politics and government will be two, five, ten and fifteen years out. The consensus is that it is going to be economics. Social Security and other entitlements are going to be cutting into available funds and government will be cut. The question is where. Obama has put everything on the table. This is the opportunity of a lifetime for Republicans if we don't get mired in the South.
I agree, but you cannot “Romney-esque” just run on “managing things more efficiently.” The monster must be brought under leash at all levels, and this must be a deliberate, dedicated, conscious effort, not an “add on.”
Good point. I think right now there needs to be a strategy on how to sell small government to Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and the once-solid red states. I don’t mean to write off CA-—but CA may, just may, eventually come around under the weight of its own failures. Remember, in the 1990s, we had a GOP senator from both CA and NY.
Obamanomics will fail. We know that. We want to pick up the pieces when it does.
Coulter's acknowledgement of him as "the greatest living authority on McCarthy" shows where his strength lies.
One has the sense that Washington should simply moosh into the Potomac under the weight of the granite and the corpulent bloviators.
Palin reminded Michael Reagan of his father, who, as you note, was not an organization man, and was very clear on loyalties.
I recall covering the Rudd people running down the street in the 69 Nixon Counterinnaugural that they banged the iron knockers on Justice but the shirtsleeved lawyers in the second floor windows smiled and flashed them the bird.
Lacking a neutron bomb, a staff cutback inside the Beltway must needs be innovative.
It would be cheaper to buy ninety-nine percent of bureaucrats out into early retirement.
Returning to the staffing levels of a century before, austerity, conservation, and the last one out of the building please turn out the lights.
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