The core of the Reagan revolution was lower taxes, stronger defense, and opposition to Communism.
Social Con and religious issues really weren't the center of the Reagan revolution.
"The core of the Reagan revolution was lower taxes, stronger defense, and opposition to Communism.
Social Con and religious issues really weren't the center of the Reagan revolution."
The Reagan revolution unquestionably included a commitment to cultural conservatism. He was the first President to publish a book in office, and his book was about life. He started the Mexico City policy. He routinely spoke to the NARB and other religious organizations. In fact, I would argue that without religious and cultural conservatives, Reagan would not have been elected.
Of course you could say that about several groups that made up his efforts: Wall Street, small business, Reagan democrats, post-Wallace populists, anti-communists, and evangelicals helped put this great man into office. Each piece is crucial. No candidate since him has been able to hold the entire coalition together. Which is why he was a revolutionary GOP leader. As he often said, there is not a fiscally conservative party and a morall conservative one, but, rather, one movement and that is a conservative one, through and through.
Now...all that said...let me quickly add that the embrace of the GOP and this President in particular of unlimited government disgusts me beyond belief. And the idea that this President can still have evangelical support by giving us lip service on key issues and a little piety sickens me. The end product of that way of thinking was the Harriett Miers nomination, which was profoundly un-conservative.
What we need is a new generation of conservative leaders, committed to the principles of Reagan through and through, not selectively. Only then will the GOP once again be the truly conservative party...and I believe a continually victorious party.
He WAS socially conservative, but that wasn't his main focus. Same with me. I am a social conservative, libertarian on some issues. I'm more like Reagan than anyone else.
Reagan was a healer, a balm for the self-inflicted wounds we made sore from licking in those embarrassing post-Vietnam years; somehow he got us off our butts and back on our feet, and for eight, short years, he made us proud to be Americans.
But we're trying to save the bridge, not all the water that has long since passed underneath.