“...this is not your father’s FR.”
Good thing, too.
MY Father didn’t HAVE FR, and HIS Republican Party spent 40 years in the political desert sucking the tailwind of GOP Establishment types who would make equivocating statements like, “A one-winged bird won’t fly far,” in order to excuse their perpetual “go along to get along” subjugation to the Dems.
Jim,
For all you do...this [virtual] Bud’s for you.
Bingo.
I was born and raised in Michigan, growing up as the son of a Republican politician. I know what those days were like from firsthand experience. Gerald Ford certainly wasn't the worst thing in the world, and I personally believe he did the best he realistically could do in an incredibly difficult situation as House Minority Leader, but the Republican Party of his generation was headed toward extinction. Back then, we saw no hope of ever becoming a majority and thought the only thing we could do was build coalitions with moderate Democrats to keep the leftists from making things even worse.
Ronald Reagan, the Christian conservative movement, and then later Newt Gingrich's “Contract with America” coalition did things nobody thought were remotely possible under the old Republican paradigms. Let's not forget that.
I said in a different post today how helpful things like Free Republic are to the conservative movement by giving us something comparable to a mass media organ. We need that to have an effective conservative movement, so we can disseminate our ideas, attack our enemies, rebut attacks on us, and discuss our own differences.