Posted on 02/11/2007 10:46:19 AM PST by PhiKapMom
Edited on 02/11/2007 12:14:43 PM PST by Lead Moderator. [history]
In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis -- gratitude decaying into idolatry -- is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
George Will can move on, Ronald Reagans principles will live forever.
HEY... stop talking this trash to the true believers, the broken glass pubbies. They might spill their Kool Aid. Do you want THAT on you conscience?
Republicans enjoyed something Reagan never had, a majority in both houses and the White House. During that time, I saw little urgency to follow anything Reagan would have thought to do with the political majority. In fact Bush's presidency was started with an anti Reagan move. I cannot see any true Reaganite cozying up to Teddy Kennedy and throwing even more federal money down the toilet on an ever failing pubic school system with No Child Left Behind. I have often said that if Reagan would have had a majority in both houses the Department of Education would have been history. Whether that would have been true, I do not know, but an awful lot of bureaucrats and elected whores would have been put on the defense, burning energy and money on merely keeping the status quo. If someone is looking for a leader with some Reagan conservatism, then it will be someone talking about our failed public school system and the need for the federal gubmint to stop making the mess worse.
Thanks for reasoned comments! I intend to get his book and read it as George Will as piqued my interest.
What an incredibly apt question!
Wasn't that long ago that the same crowd was telling us that Bush was "the best we could get."
But move on to what??? Who is out there who is going to pull the reigns on government spending, nutty liberal do-goodism and be attractive enough to the public to get elected?
I'd vote for Ron Paul if it wasn't a wasted vote but, otherwise, nobody else on the campaign trail seems to give a whit about conservative values or conservative fiscal restraint.
It took two Bushes to fully dismantle conservatism. Now we need to get back to our roots.
Exactly! My sentiments exactly!
George Will really went off the deep end on this article. I do not understand the logic of this article. Nothing like trying to depress the base. This one must have been for his liberal buddies at the Washington Post.
Very well said!
Not easily fooled, are we?
That is the truth! I am so tired of growing government not limiting it that I could scream especially education.
Hear hear. Ive been saying much the same. It's been over 18 years since Reagan left the White House, and there has not been one truly conservative leader to emerge to take his place -- in 18 years! And I don't see any on the immediate horizon. The sorry truth is that conservatism isn't a viable political philosophy nationally at the moment because there isn't a viable national conservative leader.
The only wasted vote is one cast for a candidate with which you fundamentally disagree.
I am not a big George Will fan unless he is talking about baseball, but this article brought out some good points and I am big Reagan supporter but I also know that some people on here have him as an icon without knowing any of the facts and refuse to listen -- revisionist history I thought was a liberal deal but I am finding some folks on the right do it as well.
I read a lot of books from various authors and will add this one to the list just to see what he has to say.
I stopped listening to George Will a long time ago. We may not get another Reagan, but holding him up as an ideal is worthwhile.
I should have added that the implication of this is that conservatives, by necessity, must accept candidates for national office who may be less than ideal, less that ideologically "pure," or they run the risk of marginalizing themselves from national politics at a minimum, or consigning themselves to the outer darkness of irrelevancy entirely. This is the difference between conservatives who are pragmatic and who are engaged in national politics as its currently constituted, and those who live in some fairyland of idealism which doesn't recognize the realities of our political culture.
I agree and have spent months looking at who is waiting in the wings and I come up with no one to take that mantle. In fact at the Governor's level, we have been losing Governorships right and left over the last six years. We have Red States with Dem Governors that should never have happened including my own State.
What I see is too much pandering and too few people at the national level with optimism -- more like doom and gloom the sky is falling if I don't get my way types. That does not win elections.
You are correct, we won't move left with Rudy. He's solidly in our camp.
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