Posted on 02/02/2008 1:57:13 PM PST by vietvet67
"We are at the end of the Reagan era." Or, at least, that is the claim of voices as diverse as Newt Gingrich and Ed Rollins on the right and Sen. Chuck Schumer and pollster Stanley Greenberg on the left. It is true the Republican Party is having difficulty retooling its message for the 21st century. But so is the Democratic Party.
Every presidential election is about change, and no more so than at the end of a two-term president's time in the White House. Parties have to constantly update themselves if they hope to remain relevant. The difficulty for both Republicans and Democrats is that our political system is at a point where more than the normal amount of party growth and development is needed. Both parties are suffering the consequences of seeing substantial parts of their 20th-century agendas adopted; both parties are struggling to fashion new answers to the new challenges of a young century.
But that's not to say that the Reagan legacy is exhausted. Ronald Reagan's legacy was not simply that he was "a campaigner and orator of uncommon skill," as Don Campbell argued last week in USA Today. President Reagan's gifts to the Republican Party were ideas: growing the economy through tax cuts, limiting government's size, forcefully confronting totalitarian threats, making human rights a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, respecting unborn human life, empowering the individual with more freedom. Those ideas endure. They give Republicans a philosophical foundation on which to build. The Reagan coalition has a natural desire to stick together. Fiscal, defense and values conservatives have more in common with each other than with any major element of the Democratic Party's leadership.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
EXACTLY!!
Lets not forget that Reagan also protected American industry from unfair offshore trade practices.
Karl Rove for president!
Only if he brings his weather machine with him!!!!!
Could he just say that in Spanish.
How can he write this with a straight pen? The federal govt. grew at a faster rate under Bush/Rove than any other time in recent history.
Dead on right. Whatever happens in the elections this time (and it doesn't look good for us now), conservatism will be a force. It does need to be updated, though. We've been pushing the same buttons, the same way for too long. Newt's been on talking about this for a while. We have to show how enduring principles are relevant. Otherwise, in 50 years we'll end up sounding like Teddy Kennedy does now when he talks about Camelot and the Great Society.
President Reagan's gifts to the Republican Party were ideas: growing the economy through tax cuts, limiting government's size, forcefully confronting totalitarian threats, making human rights a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, respecting unborn human life, empowering the individual with more freedom. Those ideas endure. They give Republicans a philosophical foundation on which to build. The Reagan coalition has a natural desire to stick together. Fiscal, defense and values conservatives have more in common with each other than with any major element of the Democratic Party's leadership.
Conservative principles are more in line with nature than liberalism. There will thus always be an appeal to conservatism in the Reagan mold.
President Reagan's gifts to the Republican Party were ideas: growing the economy through tax cuts, limiting government's size, forcefully confronting totalitarian threats, making human rights a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, respecting unborn human life, empowering the individual with more freedom.
It’s a little more than retooling your 21st century thinking.
The conservatives have been robbed of our choice of candidates and our vote. The candidates have already been selected for us.
The last few presidential election margins have been razor thin. Rove and Bush’s importing of 20 million new Democrat voter through amnesty will kill the Republican Party faster than any other single thing.
I'd say the Reagan era ended with the nomination of George W. Bush. :(
Hehe. In the midst of all this, the Dem congress has infuriated their base by not giving them ANYTHING on the war...the reason they were elected.
Even if McCain gets into the Oval conservatives might be very happy with the congress they get next time around when much of this congress gets thrown out.
If you want to go that route, I’d say it ended in 1988, not 2000. 2000 was just more of the same.
There is no end point for how far they are willing to go to the left. They just want to stay one tick to the right of the Democrats all the way down to the bottom of the abyss.
LOL...make the global warming crowd extinct?
GOOD START!
Good point Rob. I might even say two years.
It seems to me that the 1994 GOP congressional successes (Newt, Contract w/ America, etc.) would arguably be still in the spirit of Reagan.
Ah, I see Rob already made that point.
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