But I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan when he was a failed presidential candidate and derided by many as a "B-movie" actor who co-starred with chimps.
I remember the 1980 campaign very clearly as it was the first election I really paid attention to and voted in. At the time, Reagan's upstart candidacy (he entered the race late) was seen by the GOP establishment as a nuisance and an unnecessary distraction. Many in the Republican establishment were pushing the moderate George Bush and felt that Reagan was just too conservative to unseat an incumbent president.
The establishment (RINO) GOP were so upset when Reagan started gaining traction that some of them backed John Anderson to bolt from the party to run as an Independent. John Anderson actually marketed his campaign as a moderate alternative to the "right-wing extremist" Reagan.
Despite the third party effort (Anderson ended up with 6,000,000 votes and nearly 7% of the total vote), Reagan whipped the incompetent Democrat Jimmy Carter in an epic landslide.
It is important to note that since Ronald Reagan last ran in 1984 (in which he also won in a large landslide), the Republicans have not run a real conservative since then...to wit:
What I'm trying to say above is that since Reagan, the GOP has run a RINO in every election since and the result is that they either lose or when they win, they win only by the skin of their teeth with the exception of 1988, which can be attributed in part to Bush Sr. benefitting from the lingering goodwill of the departing Reagan.
I feel that had the GOP run a real conservative like Reagan in ANY of the elections subsequent to 1988, the races we lost could have been won and the ones we barely won would have been blowouts.
It is thus very important that Mitt Romney is prevented from securing the nomination as his candidacy will almost surely point to a re-election for Obama as previous election trends bear out. Many Americans will go out of their way to vote for a conservative president but for a RINO, they will sit on their hands.
Maybe. Reagan was conservative, but he won because he knew how to SELL conservatism, to help voters realize that conservatives weren't a bunch of rich, white, slave-owning corporate fat cats.
Excellent post.