Posted on 11/26/2007 7:40:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Presidential Race: The war for the soul of the Republican Party was won in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Presidential candidates who want to re-wage the conflict in 2008 will only weaken the GOP against the Democrats' nominee.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate and a Jimmy Carter presidency that rendered America an economic and foreign policy basket case, Republicans discovered a tried-and-true recipe for electoral success.
They would stand for three sets of principles:
Lowering high taxes and stemming the growth of government in order to revive the private economy, lower inflation and interest rates, and generate jobs.
Rebuilding U.S. defenses and unashamedly confronting Soviet expansionism with the goal of winning the Cold War rather than learning to live with communism.
Reasserting traditional values in the aftermath of the 1960s social revolution, including opposing abortion and smut, especially through the appointment of federal judges holding strict-constructionist views.
Overnight, the GOP was transformed. Losing the 1976 election with Gerald Ford as its standard bearer, it was a scandal-plagued "dime store Democrat" party, backing detente with an ever-more-aggressive Russia, imposing wage and price controls, and appointing to the Supreme Court liberals such as Roe v. Wade author Harry Blackmun and the high court's current most left-leaning member, John Paul Stevens.
Under candidate Reagan in 1980, it suddenly represented a vast cross-section of the country:
Beleaguered businesses, big and small alike (and those they employ).
Voters who feared the geopolitical consequences if America didn't soon take the "kick me" sign off its back, as the late Jeane Kirkpatrick so eloquently put it.
The legions of Catholics, evangelicals and others who deplored America's sinking into a Hollywood-inspired moral sewer.
More than a quarter-century later, sustaining the Reagan coalition remains the recipe for Republican victory in a national election.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
What national security experience does Fred have? Sitting on a committee next to Patrick Leahy.
You can find pictures or Ronald Reagan with lots of folks. you can find pictures of him with Jim Jeffords. Ask Ed Rollins if he remembers any Thompson involvement with the Reagan campaigns.
Actually I make it a point to ask “why not”, and typically the candidates don’t like the question and don’t answer. Everybody’s daddy served in WWII. My great grandmother had som many serving she was selected to launch a liberty ship. You make a decision as a you young man to serve or not to serve. If there is a problem (Bill Weld-supposedly bad back, Howard Dean—sports injuries) we’ll hear about them. More often than not they just don’t want the sacrifice and discipline; they have “other priorities” in the words of another nonserver.
He’s helping by bumping the thread! You’ve got to give him credit for that, for Pete’s sake!
I’ll give it another bump. It seems to be doing him a lot of good. Perhaps he’ll find that hunting license next to his DD 214...
People are finally starting to see him.
He’s going to build the same type of multi-ideological coalition that Reagan did...fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, All-American patriot, kill-the-terrorist security conservatives, illegal immigration control advocates, Reagan Dems, and leave-me-the-hell-alone conservatives.
My tagline says it all.
Who pissed in your cornflakes?
Read ONE thing Fred has said or written and you’ll note that it’s a lot more like Reagan than Ford.
Well, I can look back to 1976 and see if he wrote a check to anybody.
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