Posted on 04/28/2008 10:23:59 AM PDT by The_Republican
On May 3, 2007, ten aspirants to the Republican presidential nomination kicked off the long campaign with a debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The candidates disagreed about the issues and their respective qualifications--but each claimed Reagan's mantle.
"I think it's important to remember," said Mike Huckabee, "that what Ronald Reagan did was to give us a vision for this country, a morning in America, a city on a hill." John McCain talked about Reagan's fiscal austerity: "Ronald Reagan used to say we spend money like a drunken sailor." Tommy Thompson threw in a stilted but apposite observation: "We forgot to be coming up with new ideas, big ideas like Ronald Reagan."
Given the venue--and with Nancy Reagan in the front row--the candidates were being polite. They were also being sincere. Chiefly, though, they wanted to gain legitimacy with Republican factions that believed their politics were unsound. Tellingly, the candidates only once mentioned George W. Bush, who, until his popularity collapsed during his second term, had been touted within the party as a born-again Reagan. Instead, they all looked backward, beckoning to the restoration of a conservatism that had somehow lost its way.
What some experts envisaged, only three years ago, as a permanent Republican majority now looks like an illusion. The Democrats, despite their internecine battles over the presidency, remain in a potentially strong position and ought to win substantial majorities in both the House and Senate. Having claimed his party's nomination, John McCain must persuade many on the right that his campaign will not, as the radio polemicist Rush Limbaugh has predicted, "destroy" the Republican Party. As his remedial actions demonstrate, McCain cannot count simply on reassembling, yet again, the old Reagan coalition. "It's gone," Ed Rollins, Reagan's White House political director, has said. "It doesn't mean a whole lot to people anymore."
If Rollins is correct, we have reached the end of an extraordinary era in American history. After Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat in 1964, the conventional wisdom held that a liberal consensus thoroughly controlled American politics. That consensus began to unravel in the late '60s, but it was by no means obvious that the right wing of the Republican Party would replace it. Even after Reagan won the presidency, many commentators regarded him as a fluke. David Broder of The Washington Post wrote off Reaganism early in 1983 as a "one-year phenomenon" and declared that the Reagan administration had reached its "phase-out."
Yet, by 2008, the surge of conservative politics that Reagan personified had survived brief interruption and temporary reversal and, like it or not, defined an entire political era--an era longer than that of either Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson, longer than the Gilded Age or the Progressive Era, and as long as the period of liberal reform that stretched from the rise of the New Deal to the demise of the Great Society.
Any periodization of history is, of course, arbitrary and debatable. And, to be sure, the age of Reagan--the most sustained conservative political era in American history--does not, at a glance, seem as significant as other major periods. Reagan fell far short of eradicating either Franklin Roosevelt's revolution in government or the reforms of the 1960s. Contrary to the heroic portrait painted by his admirers (and, more recently, by some liberals with second thoughts), his presidency either caused or indulged enormous damage, ranging from the savings and loan catastrophe to the Iran-Contra affair. His success owed as much to continued confusion and division among Democrats as it did to his own strength.
Still, like Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt, Reagan took over a political order in crisis, powerfully pronounced the principles of a new order, and, on some crucial issues, bent the nation to his will. He took ideas that had once been relegated to the ideological margins and carried them into the very core of American politics. By hastening the end of the cold war and altering some of the basic instruments of liberal reform (above all the federal courts and progressive taxation), the Reagan era changed the sum and substance of government at home and abroad. Given the era's longevity, the question is when and why it ran out of steam.
All history is shaped by the unexpected--yet, to an unusual degree, contingency has altered American politics since 1960. If not for the assassination in Dallas, a liberal age of Kennedy might have dawned. Without Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson could well have emerged as the overshadowing figure of the '60s. Had the crimes of Watergate been left unexposed, the '70s and after might belong to the age of Nixon. Instead, out of crises that upended both parties, Ronald Reagan and the right came to power.
The Democrats never fully recovered from their divisions over Vietnam. Likewise, the Republican establishment never fully recovered from Watergate, another unexpected consequence of Vietnam. Overwhelming Democratic victories in the midterm elections of 1974, followed by Jimmy Carter's election two years later, seemed to inaugurate a rebirth of the liberal consensus. But it was a mirage. Carter's blend of high-minded morality and Southern Progressivism alienated him from the party's left wing, which in turn hampered his efforts to rescue a failing economy. Finally, Carter's inability to master world events-- particularly the breakdown of cold war realpolitik in Iran, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan--doomed his administration.
Given the historical illiteracy and incoherence presented here, I see no need to read the rest of it.
no, no, no
They don’t teach actual history in the gubmint skewls anymore.
Any time I want to know more about The Gip, I turn to The New Republic.
These propagandist or all of us better remember we stood in the streets, on bridges, in parks to honor, PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan’s funeral from Washington DC to the Reagan Library. We are alive, well, and LIVID.
Ed Rollins is a know-nothing RINO. The only thing the Reagan coalition is missing, is someone who actually believes in it and someone who can articulate it.
I like to read more positive things. Not negative things. I don’t think it’s sunset in America. Not yet, anyway. This nation has plenty of greatness left in it before the liberals ruin it all together.
I am not sure about the age of Reagan, but I do, unfortunately believe, the age of the Republican Party being the champion of "Constitutional Conservatism" is indeed over.
Again I don't take solace in the fact nor wish to start an argument with you or any of the remaining faithful in the GOP.
Just stating a response, heartfelt, to the article.
It is time to move past quoting Ronald Reagan, and to implementing what he stood for.
I get so annoyed by the Juan McAmnesty’s quoting Reagan, that it has become tedious. They don’t believe a word of it. Their actions speak louder than their words.
Reagan believed in conservatism. He stood with America’s Founding Fathers and agreed with those basic concepts they set forth in the US Constitution. The ideas of freedom and liberty will never die. The major problem has been the opposition to a limited federal government over the last 40 years by America’s liberal establishment.
Reagan may be gone, but the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land. The great ideological battle between the politics of rightwing and leftwing isn’t over. The war for the heart and soul of America continues.
Like Washington, Adams and Jefferson, Reagan is still with us today.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
LOL! Yeah, it's a conservative powerhouse alright...but it appeals to some pubbies, I suppose.
Why am I not surprised he believes the age of Reagan is over - he's held that belief since before Reagan became President.
I understand your desire for this to be the case given your cheerleader status for McAmnesty, but I have news for you, this author’s analysis and your fondest desires are much further removed from reality than you realize.
I get so annoyed by the Juan McAmnesty’s quoting Reagan, that it has become tedious. They don’t believe a word of it. Their actions speak louder than their words.McCain, or any RINO, quoting Reagan is like Hillary or Obama saying they believe in a strong military.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.