Posted on 02/16/2007 8:30:44 AM PST by meg88
The GOP Should Dump Its Litmus Test By Michael Reagan FrontPageMagazine.com | February 16, 2007
The philosopher Diogenes is said to have wandered around ancient Greece holding a lantern and seeking to find an honest man.
My fellow Republicans, sans lanterns, are now wandering around the political landscape seeking to find the perfect Republican presidential candidate.
I don’t know if Diogenes ever found that honest man, but I do know that those Republicans are never going to find the perfect candidate, simply because he does not exist.
Some Republicans insist that the only perfect candidate would be a clone of my Dad, Ronald Reagan. Aside from the fact that there is no such thing, it’s important to recognize that Ronald Reagan, as he often admitted, was anything but perfect.
One of the criticisms about former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney focuses on his record concerning the abortion issue. We are told by the modern day Diogenes clones that he can’t be trusted to fight abortion because he once, more or less, supported a woman’s right to butcher her baby.
It may come as a surprise to these purists, but Ronald Reagan once supported abortion too. Yet nobody ever questioned his strong pro-life credentials after his conversion to Republicanism. They accepted his sincerity. Why can’t they accept Mitt Romney’s?
Romney’s record shows he should be totally acceptable to all conservatives, yet because of one dubious question concerning the validity of his conversion to the pro-life side, he is deemed unsuitable to carry the conservative banner.
The same is true of Rudy Giuliani. On every major issue, he is a solidly conservative and extraordinarily adept executive, but because he backs abortion and some form of gun control, America’s mayor -- the hero of 9/11 and the man who did the impossible by cleaning up New York -- is all but ruled out as a 2008 candidate.
Not one of the major candidates is free of some real or imagined flaw that offends some conservatives.
This is madness, and if it does not stop, the GOP is going to lose the presidential election in 2008. In the search for the perfect candidate we are going to end up with an imperfect candidate. Keep in mind the truism that agreement with someone on most issues and disagreement on others is seen as normal, but should you agree with someone on every single issue imaginable … well… to put it plainly, psychologists say you’re nuts.
I recently got a letter from a conservative Christian organization that asked me if the current GOP candidates are the best the Republican Party has to offer.
“Is it possible that GOP conservative ranks are this thin?” the letter writer asked. “Has the GOP nothing better to offer? Should not pro-family pro-life voters also want a low taxes and limited government candidate before they vigorously support him? Increased taxes and expanded government hurts everyone. Was Ronald Wilson Reagan an anomaly and did he represent the values of his party?
“These GOP candidates,” the letter instructed me, “are little better than Bob Dole, Gerald Ford, or [George] H.W. Bush. Did anyone notice they all lost?”
This makes me wonder if anybody can stand up to the litmus test these people are applying to candidates.
Ronald Reagan had one litmus test he applied to candidates. Were they Republicans? If they were he backed them all the way. He would let the party choose the candidate and he would support and vote for the candidate. He didn’t go sniffing around trying to find some flaw in their character or their past. Once nominated, they were his choice.
And nobody was more candid in admitting that he was anything but perfect than my Dad. He knew that like all men, he had his flaws and he spent a lifetime combating them. Had today’s GOP litmus test been seriously applied to him, he could not have passed the test.
The Democrats don’t have litmus tests. If the nominee is a Democrat, they support their candidate all the way, and if they lose it isn’t because they didn’t fight like demons for their man or woman.
If we want to win in 2008, Republicans had better wake up, and quit talking Ronald Reagan and start being like Ronald Reagan.
More ramblings of falsehoods from a one of FR`s desperate housewives.
Exactly. Michael Reagan reminds me so much of his father. A Gentleman to the max.
Very nice post devolve!!
Continue your whine, its amusing.
I also think that Rudy Giuliani has something significant to offer (more likely as Attorney General than as president) That having been said, I cannot disagree with you more on the significance of social conservatism in the 2006 election. In our country, conservatives tend to be Republicans. If they ever turn toward libertarianism on social issues, it will be obvious and tragic. Ronald Reagan permanently changed the GOP from the party of Barry Goldwater/Gerald Ford sympathy for Roe vs. Wade and the resultant Holocaust of 50+ million innocent babies. Goldwater despised Reagan for that. Ford, representative of an even older and far more liberal and less respectable order in the GOP (Rockefellerism) than was Goldwater, despised Reagan in any event.
Contrary to numerous posts here, I remember very well the 1876 GOP convention at which Reagan partisans, shouting Viva! on one side of the hall and Ole! on the other prevented Ford from giving an acceptance speech until he invited Reagan to speak. Reagan urged every delegate to go home and support gubernatorial, senatorial Congressional and state legislative candidates, pointedly omitted any suggestion that they elect Ford, and urged them to have a great election. With Ford disposed of in that election that featured a faceoff between two feckless nonentities in Ford and Carter, the old order of the GOP passed into the dustbin of history and Reagan became president four years later.
Was he perfect??? No. No president is. None will ever be. He did redefine Republican politics. There is no going back to polo club social anarchy that produces dead babies by the tens of millions, turns a blind eye to radical attempts to redefine marrage to include same-sex sodomy as though it were actual sex, and despises the social issues values by which "red state" America lives. Reagan guaranteed that Catholics would be welcomed by the millions into the GOP, that evangelicals and pentecostals are welcome, that the GOP will do more than pay mere lip service to the 2nd Amendment.
Also contrary to several posts here, Reagan was in favor of legal abortion when he was the Republican governor of California. In fact, he signed California's permissive abortion statute into law. A year or two later, having viewed the results, he was going door-to-door, as governor, with a petition for an initiative to outlaw abortion. He later wrote a book against abortion published by Jim McFadden of Human Life Review.
It is waaaaaaay too early for many of us to choose a candidate in what seems to be a less than exciting field of potential GOP nominees. We are paying the price for failure to continue the education, training and activism that were the conservative movement pre-1980 (the New Right of YAF, CRs, YRs, and the Ashbrook-era ACU, among others). We did add the social conservative agenda to the mandatory canon of conservative views. Most pro-lifers are busy wit the issue and not with personal presidential ambitons or even with party control agendas.
I want a pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, anti-homosexuality (as to special rights or "marriage"), anti-taxation (particularly on Americans of modest means), modestly protectionist candidate. I may not get every one of those agendas with the nominee.
With Hillary or Barack Hussein Obama, I get none of those agendas. We will spend more money each year whether the GOP (military and warfare) or the Demons (establishing even more institutionalized socialist thievery at an ever escalating price) are elected. We are a long way from any realistic chance of cutting the welfare state. No one elected will be able to close borders and coasts.
The one agenda that can be accomplished within the next presidency (especially with a restored GOP Senatorial majority, is the re-establishment of the long-absent "rule of law" by appointments of SCOTUS justices "like Roberts, Alito and Scalia." Only Nixon could "go to Red China" (not that he should have). No Demonrat would have dared. Only Nixon could impose wage and price controls (not that he should have). No Demonrat would have dared. Only Slick Willie could sign welfare reform into law (we are glad he did). No Republican would have dared.
I personally believe that Nixon's appointment of Blackmun, and Ford's appointment of Stevens and Bush the Elder's appointment of Souter were all conscious appointments of pro-aborts to save Roe vs. Wade. Bush the Elder balanced Souter with Thomas. Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor because of a memorandum of lies submitted by Kenneth Starr (then Solicitor General) and instgatd by James Baker claiming that O'Connor was pro-life when she was the precise opposite from her days n the Arizona State Senate. She is and always has been a Unitarian Universalist and not a Catholic as many wrongly suppose because of her name. Reagan tried to appoint Bork but was thwarted. Bork was for state's rights at the time but very shortly thereafter became a pro-lifer when, as a widower, he married a conservative ex-nun. Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy who had a very pro-life track record when appointed and apparently was converted to the dark side by Lawrence Tribe in about 1990. Reagan appointed Scalia, the best nominee in at least half a century. Reagan named Rehnquist (an original Roe vs. Wade dissenter) as Chief Justice. Dubya gave us two outsanding justices in Roberts and Alito, who seem trustworthy but have had little opportunity to rule.
We desperately need to hold onto the White House against Hillary or any other Demonrat nominatable. If we get one more SCOTUS justice, we overturn Roe vs. Wade. If we get two more (replacing Stevens and the ever unhealthy Ginsburg), we can probably make that overturn permanent.
Such a SCOTUS may finally give operative constitutional enforcement to the RTKBA. And to property rights (overturning Kelo vs. New London). Protection of marriage (in many pending cases). An end to affirmative action outrages. Name your constitutional cause (within reasonable reach).
If, as one can prove with reasonable ease, Rudy stopped being a pro-lifer as an opportunist convinced that NYC (not normal America) would not elect him as a pro-lifer, what makes him any less flexible as a national candidate in the GOP. Make him promise strict constitutionalists as nominees for ALL federal courts. Make him define strict construction so as to make it clear that the constitution does not allow much less require Roe vs. Wade. Make him state that homosexual "marriage", bestiality, twelvesomes or interspecies sex are not constitutionally required and that his judges will not make believe that any of them are.
Whatever the polls look like today, Rudy probably will not be nominated. McCain may or may not be nominated. Romney may or may not be nominated. You can bet your bottom dollar that Tancredo won't be nominated (no matter how hard his partisans hope). I would probably vote for Sam Brownback. I could easily vote for Duncan Hunter if Brownback is out but I don't see Hunter being nominated. Newt Gingrich might be nominated if he ran but it is by no means certain that he will run or that he will be nominated if he does run.
The social issues (particularly guns,abortion and marriage) and the military/war on terror issues are the defining issues which separate Republicans from Demonrats today and for the foreseeable future.
If you say that social conservatives are "extremists," then you are saying that you are not a social conservative. If it is "extremist" to think that 50+ million innocent babies dead of surgical abortion alone over three decades, then I gladly plead guilty.
It's long past time that FR's Reagan mythographers let their delusion go. Reagan was a GREAT president, warts and all. We should allow his REAL history, warts and all, stand on its own. He doesn't need the WASHINGTON CUT DOWN THE CHERRY TREE" kind of stories to make him great.
Good grief, your arrogance knows no bounds!
You've surpassed John F. Kerry.
You're only upset because whoever you are for, isn't being talked about.
Bravo. This one's a keeper.
He is a very smart and honest man.
Good grief, your ignorance knows no bounds!
You've surpassed Hillary Clinton.
It would be laughable if he really thought he were doing us a favor. Its despicable actually. He wants nothing more than we holding other republican candidates in contempt. It doesn't really matter which one, Rudy is just his vehicle now.
That TOO is a bothersome statement, as if NYC should not have to live under the same Constitution as the rest of the U.S.
However, he isn’t the anti-Second Amendment Nazi he is made out to be.
As if mere statements somehow can redress a fairly consistent anti-rights position when he was given authority?
On Hannity Rudy said, “I understand the Second Amendment. I support it. People have the right to bear arms.”
A political fox-hole conversion?
Rudy isn’t going to try to ban guns or come take anyones guns.
Okay, I could take him at his word, and still recognize that his nuanced position is less than reassuring. Ie., By the same token, how hard will he fight to defend the consitutional gun rights of common citizens? That was one area of promises that W really helped himself with.
Are Democrats pushing for gun control now that they have control of Congress? No.
Actually, I heard something on the radio just yesterday. I didn't make a note of who or where they were...but it was a prominent national democrat.
And nobody has pushed for gun control since Gore lost the election in 2000. Everyone knows its a losing issue and I don't see any push for gun control by anybody in the near future.
Anybody? Don't get too complacent. Actually, check this January 23rd story out: Gun Control Advocates Head to D.C.
Supporting the murder of late term babies is not some minor flaw. Michael. Perhaps you should read your Dads book?
I concur.
Stay away? Is that a threat?
Don't make me laugh.
He's a bona fide gun grabber.
His love of God clearly came first, and from that, as a wonderful practicing Christian, his light so shown that all were impressed...his personal humility, steadfastness on issues of conviction...and his love of truth. A definitive good read on the man's faith:
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