Posted on 6/6/2004, 11:51:58 PM by wagglebee
By now a new cliché has been added to the time-worn lit, but I know of no other way of comment on the election than to open with the by now familiar — "Well, it's over and we lost."
Yes, we did; we lost a battle in the continuing war for freedom, but our position is not untenable. First of all, there are 26 million of us and we can't be explained away as diehard party faithfuls. We cross party lines in our dedication to a philosophy.
There are no plans for retreating from our present positions, but we can't advance without reinforcements. Are reinforcements available? The answer is an unhesitating — "Yes!" They are to be found in the millions of so-called Republican defectors — those people who didn't really want LBJ, but who were scared of what they thought we represented. Read that sentence very carefully because in my opinion it tells the story. All of the landslide majority did not vote against the conservative philosophy; they voted against a false image our Liberal opponents successfully mounted. Indeed it was a double false image. Not only did they portray us as advancing a kind of radical departure from the status quo, but they took for themselves a costume of comfortable conservatism. Read again their campaign fiction and you will find their normal flamboyant Liberalism hidden under the protective coloration of "the great society," or as Hubert Horatio Humphrey (who can't ask what time it is without conducting a filibuster) put it: "We don't want a planned society — we want society planning."
Unfortunately, human nature resists change and goes over backward to avoid radical change. It's a head shaker, I know, but the whole Liberal apparatus which can be quoted ad infinitum on "the wave of the future, the need for new approaches to old problems, adopt new rules for complex new problems, forget the Constitution," was able to campaign in a last-year's model, singing, "The old songs — the old songs are good enough for me."
Very shortly, though, they'll bring the show into town for a four-year run, complete with a new score — words and music by Reuther, Joseph Rauh, and the "Great Society Chorale." Time then for the music critics — that's us. We must dwell unceasingly on the change of tune. Our job beginning now is not so much to sell conservatism as to prove that our conservatism is in truth what a lot of people thought they were voting for when they fell for the cornpone come-on.
In short — time now for the soft sell to prove our radicalism was an optical illusion. We represent the forgotten American — that simple soul who goes to work, bucks for a raise, takes out insurance, pays for his kids' schooling, contributes to his church and charity and knows there just "ain't no such thing as free lunch."
I'll add a postscript — I don't think we should turn the high command over to leaders who were traitors during the battle just ended.
God bless you Ronald Reagan
another great find, wagglebe!
Thanks, it makes as much sense now as I'm sure it did 40 years ago.
Indeed.
The Gipper could be refreshingly blunt at times.
"When any beachhead is won: Plant the flag and move inland. Reagan Democrats and many who vote conservative, do so on principle as much as their wallets — no kidding! Many understand campaigning in tactical game board terms: “Take that bridge. Capture that hill. Storm that beach.” But after turning out for Republican adventures, the margin of voters that saved the day — often Reagan Democrats — cannot be expected to tolerate the equivocating and feeble attempts by the conservative political leadership to hold on to the land gained. It is no surprise that subsequent mis-adventures have a small following."
Do I hear "Duf Sundheim," "Dick Riordan," "Gerry Parsky..."?
Evidently Orrin Hatch and Arlen Spectral were lurking about even then--
My $0.02: he was writing abiut a guy whose initials were Richard M. Nixon.
I think everything through 1974 was a jab at Nixon. Nixon almost destroyed the Republican party for no good reason at all.
Surely the reference was to Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon, at the time, having lost to JFK in 1960 and to Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial race in 1962, and having conducted his "last press conference," wasn't in a position of doing much at all for (or to) the Republican Party in 1964. Rocky and his followers, on the other hand, didn't bother to disguise their disdain for the emerging conservative wing of the party.
You are most likely correct. Wasn't John Lindsey involved in that race?
Pinging the Encyclopedia of Conservative Republican Politics and Players for comment.
It was Lindsay, and I'm not sure of his role in the 1964 GOP Convention. Here's a brief bio:
So he was a Congressman representing the Upper East Side of NYC at the time, and a delegate to the 1964 Convention in San Francisco. I would have to assume he was a Rockefeller operative. Certainly he was the epitome of RINOdom, and of course later changed his party affiliation and ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972 (curious that the bio above leaves that out, but his candidacy didn't leave much of an impact), and then for the Senate in 1980.
bump
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