I'd love to see them define this pic of Reagan.
Posted on 03/06/2010 11:49:19 AM PST by Al B.
Sarah Palin invokes him. Mitt Romney glorifies him. The "tea party" movement hopes to recapture him. And the Republican Party still can't get over him.
Six years after his death, and almost a century since his birth, conservatives are more transfixed than ever by Ronald Reagan, so much so that I fully expect a Gipper anxiety disorder to appear in the next edition of the psychiatrists' diagnostic manual.
"What would Reagan Do?" is a leading motto for the right. You can get the slogan -- or its WWRD acronym -- on a bumper sticker, a T-shirt, a coffee mug, a thong. There's even an iReagan app for your phone. And having renamed Washington National Airport for Reagan in the 1990s, last week congressional Republicans started agitating to have the Gipper replace poor Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill.
Such obsessions are not unique to the right: Writing three years after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, historian Richard Hofstadter noted that FDR so thoroughly monopolized the liberal imagination that his passing "left American liberalism demoralized and all but helpless." But today, conservatives are the helpless ones.
Reagan was the most popular and successful Republican president of the past century, so it makes sense that he would be the shining model for conservatives, just as FDR has been the gold standard for liberals. (No small irony, since Reagan voted for FDR four times and modeled his statecraft after the Democrat's.) But as the current occupant of the White House could warn, measuring yourself against historical icons is a recipe for disappointment. These days, President Obama is more likely to draw comparisons to Jimmy Carter than to Lincoln or FDR.
Yet ambitious conservatives are undeterred.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Mitt Romney glorifies him [Reagan]”
The author kinda loses me with this statment. Everyone is very familiar with Mitt’s disowning Reaga in the presence of Ted Kennedy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pVqZzHm3Z4
No executive experience and has not run for elective office but... she has 10 times the experience of what is in the Oval Office now and can talk without a teleprompter.
She is already under attack so somebody is afraid of her. Google her.
see my tagline. That’s the other part of his quote!!
:)
I like that.
I'd love to see them define this pic of Reagan.
TIME magazine: Can Palin Be Elected?
For several decades, it has been an article of faith among politicians and political analysts that no candidate can win a U.S. presidential election unless he can dominate the broad center of the spectrum, that all candidates on the edges of the left or right are doomed. Barry Goldwater's "extremism . . . is no vice" campaign of 1964 provides the classic evidence, reinforced by George McGovern's 1972 defeat in 49 out of 50 states. And since G.O.P. Front Runner Sarah Palin relies upon a base of support that is on the far right wing of the Republican Party, some experts have long declared that if she wins the nomination, the G.O.P. would simply be repeating the suicidal Goldwater campaign.
(...)
National opinion polls continue to show Obama leading Palin by an apparently comfortable margin of about 25%. They also show that more moderate Republicans like Romney would run better against the President. This suggests that Palin is not the strongest G.O.P. choice for the 2012 election and that she clearly faces an uphill battle.
(...)
If popular unhappiness with domestic and world problems finally comes to rest at Obama's doorstep, voters may begin to see all sorts of previously invisible virtues in Sarah Palin.
(...)
Palin cannot hope to win, however, unless she moves beyond the hard-line conservative base that has sustained her since she first appeared on the national political scene as a spokesman for McCain himself. She has no experience in Washington politics or foreign affairs. Both Congress and the federal bureaucracy are as unfathomable to her as they were to Obama. Indeed one of Palin's major supporters in the Senate notes that the Alaskan is uncomfortable even visiting Washington.
(...)
Worse perhaps than the verbal gaffe is Palin's relentlessly simple-minded discussion of complex problems.
Full disclosure:
I may have changed a few names here and there. It's not actually Gov. Palin this Time Magazine article's talking about here, but Ronald Reagan. Yes, the Gipper was really running 25 points behind Carter as late as March 1980 - a mere eight months before the election. Simple statements, no experience in DC politics or foreign affairs, supported only by the rightwing fringe - completely unelectable, that Reagan fellow, wasn't he?
“But while the parallels between them are evident, it is far from clear that Palin appreciates Reagan’s discipline and substantive grand strategy.”
I agree that Palin is not a carbon copy of Reagan. But one of the knocks on Reagan were his lack of discipline, his refusal to moderate his positions to suit the Establishment. The other component of the lack of discipline charge, which was unfair, was that Reagan was not well prepared and lazy (Reagan used to joke about that himself) and was given to simplistic, but easy to grasp, answers, such as, “Trees cause more pollution than people do.” I don’t think Palin is unprepared, and her facebook posts and speeches show otherwise. I think she believes, with Reagan, that a President should sound broad themes: smaller government, low taxes, energy independence and lifting America’s spirits. The details can easily be filled in later.
Second, as far as a “Grand Strategy”, I think She is sounding the same themes as Reagan and doing them with style and panache. Her political strategy is, I believe, superior to Reagan’s. Reagan’s campaign manager, John Sears, was a conventional Establishment operative , much like Steve Schmitt. He ran cautious campaigns in both 1976 and 1980. Although he took credit for Reagan’s near nomination in 1976, his rope a dope strategy in Iowa led to Reagan’s upset loss to Ford there which ignited a string of defeats in NH, Illinois and Florida that had Reagan on the brink of elimination. It was Jesse Helms’ assistance in North Carolina that brought Reagan back from the dead, not Sears. In 1980, Reagan again turned to Sears, lost Iowa using the same failed 1976 strategy and, at this point, Reagan demoted and then got rid of Sears just in the nick of time.
Palin, having had the benefit and experience of running on a national ticket, something that Reagan never had before 1980, is wise to the Schmitt/Sears brand of GOP operative and She will not repeat the mistakes Reagan made in 1976 and early in 1980. She is is already following a playbook which I would call “post Sears/Schmitt”. I would say that at this point her political grand strategy is ahead of Reagan’s based upon her invaluable experience on the 2008 ticket and her knowledge of how the RINO establishment works.
Excellent find. Funny thing is, the lamestream media sold the sheeple a hard left wing candidate by sufficiently dumbing them down and spending eight years demonizing Bush. Three more year of ObaMao and the media’s reputation should follow their chosen one into the crapper. It can’t happen soon enough.
Those pix of Reagan and Romney just show that Romneys are good poseurs. They pose as conservatives when it serves their purposes.
I think that Reagan was ONE of the most popular and successful Republican Presidents of the 20th Century. He was certainly the most successful President of the second half of the 20th century. I believe that Theodore Roosevelt was the most successful President of the first half of the 20th Century. He was most certainly the most successful president of the first half of the 20th century.
She is getting noticed. Liz Cheney is on the front page of the Christian Science Monitor online today, for one thing, and already the most publicized speaker at the upcoming Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, April 8-11. Any chance you will be attending?
Love you guys. Thanks for adding sanity.
Sarah Palin has the same talent of eviscerating her opponents, while being so nice about doing it.
I wish! ...but circunstances beyond my control...
George Romney didn't run in 1964. Gerald Ford entered his name in nomination because he didn't want to support any of the real candidates.
Romney didn't support Goldwater and he was vocal about that, but I haven't seen any evidence that he "stormed out of the convention, young Mitt in tow and worked with the Democrats."
Mitt was groomed by George to be president and this was part of his early training...hatred of the conservatives in the Party...
That looks like more hyperbole. Mitt went into business. He would have taken a different path in life if his family had made him go into politics. George supported and advised Mitt when he ran for Senator, but where's your evidence that he was "groomed" early on and that hatred was "part of his early training"?
Mitt acts and speaks against conservatives much like George did in the 1960s...
It looks like some conservatives have it in for Mitt a lot more than he has it in for them. Romney follows his own path but I haven't seen any evidence that he refused to support Republican candidates in their races against Democrats.
I have real doubts about Mitt, but all this animosity isn't good for the party.
I wouldn’t try to define the picture, but forgive me if I imagine what the Dialogue was:
Ted Kennedy: Mr. President, you won’t believe this but there is this idiot in Massachusetts who plans to try to beat me by disowning you.
President Reagan: Oh yea. Who is it?
Kennedy: Mitt Romney
President Reagan: This I gotta see. How does one DIS-own what one has never owned. I have been battling the Romney clan for 25 years. There is not a conservative gene in that pool.
I agree with everything you posted. And would add Michelle Bachman to my list of potentials. And would add Romney to my list of people I won’t vote for.
I remember that. I think it was during a debate with Dead Kennedy. Now, this past week, he says that Mike Huckabee is a conservative. He endorsed McCain in his battle with JD Hayworth. He has kissed his own ass goodbye and since he expected to endorse McCain this time around and be endorsed by him in the Presidential election (or Republican primaries) in ‘12, I’m kissing him goodbye, too.
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