Posted on 08/31/2009 3:43:04 PM PDT by kingattax
Republicans are looking for a leader. Go to any right-leaning gathering, and at some point the conversation will turn to the party’s potential presidential nominee in 2012. Republicans were less consumed by that question in 1993, the first year of the last Democratic presidency. Even when Republicans aren’t talking about the 2012 race, they are debating who speaks for the party — sometimes explicitly, as when Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele feuded this spring. Or they are wondering who will form the next generation of Republican leaders: Eric Cantor? Paul Ryan?
The present-day question can be answered simply: The Republican party has no leader. Nobody should be surprised by this fact. A party without the White House and without either chamber of Congress is unlikely to generate an unquestioned leader. To the extent Newt Gingrich overcame those odds in 1993–94, it was because of highly unusual circumstances. He had led the fight against the previous Republican president’s tax increase in 1990, that president had lost his reelection campaign, and the party had concluded both that the tax increase was the most important mistake that had led to the defeat and that it was connected to all the other mistakes.
Ronald Reagan was to some extent the leader of the party after Gerald Ford’s 1976 defeat, although we tend to forget how tough a primary campaign Reagan had to fight in 1980. But he would not have earned that status if he had not challenged Ford in a two-man primary and Ford had not then lost the general election.
(Excerpt) Read more at nrd.nationalreview.com ...
Already have one, thank you.
Even if the squishes over at NRO steadfastly refuse to acknowledge her as such.
Great Minds Think Alike
Ping! ;)
Yikes!
Republicans or more generally the GOP has a hard time deciding what a Leader should be, so can’t latch on to one. We “Conservatives” however can spot one with ease. As an original Reagan Democrat, (read my FR profile), I will confirm that maybe half of the people in America that usually vote for the Democrat are not Leftist, - just good people that just happen to be uninformed. They get All of their view of what’s going on in the World from 30 minutes of the Evening News.
Those are the people a Leader must reach. Reagan knew it, and he knew how to reach them. And it is not by moving to the Center, but by getting those people in the center to identify with you.
Remember Reagan was way behind in the polls against Jimmy Carter until he came up with this clever slogan, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
I agree, but knowing the history of these clowns they will come up someone the likes of Dole and McCain.
It’s kinda hard to be a political party when you don’t believe in politics, or that gov’t can accomplish anything. Ya’lls only chance is to pray the Democrats screw up real real bad.
parsy, the former Republican
parsy,
Can’t you see it? In the GOP landscape with nary a soul who has an ounce of creativity or resourcefulness .... you would stand out like ... like a peach tree in Arkansas!
pete, who thinks parsy should hire himself out for $180/hour consulting fees.
I’ve been here longer than you dummy and will be here long after you are gone.
#14.
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