[Hugin]

Reagan didn’t engage in the kind of vitriolic personal attacks on his opponents I am seeing here. He debated policies where they differed and offered his own vision for America. I can’t imagine Reagan ever saying of an opponent “He agrees with me now, but he didn’t twelve years ago, so he’s a liar. LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!”

Now I would prefer to see Fred Thompson the nominee. But IMNHO, the odds are NOBODY is going to win the nomination in the primaries. The most likely scenario is that it will end up with Rudy, Mitt, Huck, Fred and McCain each having between 10-30% of the delegates going into the convention. If these vitriolic attacks keep up nominating a candidate and uniting the party behind him will be impossible. I think it would behoove the candidates and their supporters to promote their own beliefs and agenda positively, and quit the pointless smearing of other candidates.

[Bigh4u2]

“The so-called 11th Commandment has served the Republican Party well over the years. Ronald Reagan is often given credit for coming up with the rule, but in fact, it was someone else’s idea — someone named Gaylord Parkinson, who years ago was chairman of the Republican Party in California. In September 1965, as California Republicans (including Reagan) prepared to compete for the GOP nomination for governor, Parkinson decreed that the candidates should refrain from attacking each other. He called it the 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” The idea was to foster party unity and avoid the acrimony of the year before, when moderate and conservative Republicans were bitterly divided over their presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater.”

http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/10/17/416583.aspx

[Bigh4u2]

A little more on Reagan and Ford...

“Campaigning in Florida that March, Ronald Reagan broke the 11th Commandment and attacked Gerald Ford. He accused Ford, who had then been president just 19 months, of presiding over “the collapse of American will and the retreat of American power,” and said Ford “must be held accountable to history for allowing this to happen.” He said Ford lacked “vision,” that he found it “difficult” to trust his leadership. He accused the president of favoring “pre-emptive concessions” in talks with the Soviet Union, and said, “I fear for my country when I see White House indifference to the decline in our military position.””

Not exactly calling him a ‘liar’, but an attack none the less.