Posted on 11/14/2012 1:22:44 PM PST by jazusamo
The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century— Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories— bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat.
One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called "the great communicator," but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan's vision were things he had thought about, written about and debated for years before he reached the White House.
Reagan was like a veteran quarterback who comes up to the line of scrimmage, takes a glance at how the other team is deployed against him, and knows automatically what he needs to do. There is not enough time to figure it out from scratch, while waiting for the ball to be snapped. You have to have figured out such things long before the game began, and now just need to execute.
Very few Republican candidates for any office today show any sign of such in-depth preparation on issues. Mitt Romney, for example, inadvertently showed his lack of preparation when he indicated that he was in favor of indexing the minimum wage rate, so that it would rise automatically with inflation.
That sounds fine. But the cold fact is that minimum wage laws create massive unemployment among black teenagers. Conversely, one of the lowest rates of unemployment among black teenagers occurred in the 1940s, when inflation virtually repealed the minimum wage law passed in 1938, since even unskilled labor was paid more in inflated dollars than the minimum wage law required.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
To an extent, I agree with the talk of ‘uninspiring’. When I compare Romney’s talk with Obama’s though, the guy was very inspiring.
I very much agree with the comments about Reagan explaining his positions better. And we all know the reason for this. Romney was hawking new positions.
There were a number of times I found myself wanting Romney to say something that was an obvious powerful comeback to Obama, and it didn’t happen. That’s how you lose.
If you let the other guy have the point, when you’ve got plenty of great things you could say, you’re not going to do as well in the election as you could have.
And if you don’t capitalize on your adversary’s negatives, you’re just faking a run at the presidency to a varying degree.
Why couldn’t Tomas Sowell be president?
I listened to Levin a lot this past year and his explanations of policies and the Constitution are simple to follow. However, on Monday he stated that the only mandate a President has and is required by law to follow is the U.S. Constitution.
Coming home last night I hear a soundbite from Paul Ryan stating his belief why Obama does not have a mandate. Basically he said that since the people also returned the same House members to Congress, they people state they want gridlock.
Now here is a guy who states he listens to Levin, yet when given the chance to simply repeat what Levin said about the Constitution, HE CAN'T DO IT!! He either cannot or will not do it. And all these other politicians that give lip service to Rush, Levin, et al., never, never repeat what they say on their radio programs.
Why is that?
Too old, unfortunately.
Oh, they may once in a great while but for the most part they have other things to do if conscientious and if they're not they could care less.
” One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called “the great communicator,” but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan’s vision were things he had thought about, written about and debated for years before he reached the White House.”
Romney didn’t fight for his positions at all. He did not articulate what free markets are. He did not explain the Obama 16 trillion. He did not explain anything in detail. He sucked like a wimpy amateur. Obama painted him as a rich white Wall Street guy, who didn’t care about anybody. Romney brought a cap pistol to a gunfight. He was also a RINO with a bad paper trail. He lost.
” If you let the other guy have the point, when you’ve got plenty of great things you could say, you’re not going to do as well in the election as you could have.
And if you don’t capitalize on your adversary’s negatives, you’re just faking a run at the presidency to a varying degree.”
B I N G O
I’ve been saying this since I was 12. I think that the we need to wait for the establishment to just grow old and die so people who aren’t hopelessly obtuse and out of touch can take the reins.
That was a good thing.
Unfortunately, Obama is also an actor, and that's a bad thing. Yes, there are differences--Obama needs his script in front of him on a teleprompter. And, IMHO, he's a force for left-wing evil rather than conservative good. But, he is an actor. He pretends amused knowledge and friendly compassion, when in fact he's a selfish, personally cold, close-minded, rather lazy individual.
Because The Republican Party Hair Club for Men rarely gets off its high horse to spend time *reading our Constitution* and *studying its history.*
Instead, they consult “legal decisions” because they are intellectually lazy and don’t want to be bothered with the fact, that the U.S. Government does not own our Constitution.
It is ours - it belongs to the States and to the people who are American citizens. We created it. We can amend it.
We can amend it to utterly erase the turgid and wasteful tyranny that usurpers -— *who want to relegate our Constitution to some museum of ancient legends* -— wish to now quickly and forcefully end what limitations upon their power, our Constitution still holds over them.
The careless political egos (basically The Democrat Party for Lower Taxes Sub-Division formerly known as The Republican Party) ignore that -— they can barely tolerate the fact, that it is our Constitution, built and founded upon *history* that *includes* law and legal events and precedence, but it is not exclusively limited to an understanding of only law, legal events and precedence.
Many of our Constitution’s foundations, consist of building blocks constructed in response to events in history and modeled upon the lessons learned by such events.
So basically, as you read up on law *and* history, you *get* the essentials of both construction and maintenance required to preserve the principles by which government must be, and is, limited; such principles as “original intent” and “enumeration of powers” and “human responsible agency.”
The very same principles that you would be waving in the face of tyranny, in order to compel tyranny to step back; the very same principles that you use to restrain government and government agents, from their abusing the powers which *we* authorize thru our duly elected representatives sitting in legislative bodies, duly elected thru the democratic-republican process because *we are a republic,* and thereby we set forth the list of what government and government agents can do.
So much with which, we all must be equipped to protect and defend our people, our States, our Constitution, our liberty.
As it is with the operation of many types of complex systems that are made to run constantly and reliably, we have to always be training ourselves and others, in all the maintenance tasks.
Ronald Reagan had a long time to think about all this, and he was almost always communicating some piece of it: maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.
The very thing that bigshots cannot stand to address.
I don’t disagree with that. What I have a hard time believing is that Obama would appeal to anyone in large numbers after his four year record.
He didn’t want to run for office or even take an appointed position.
;^)
Thanks for another great column by Dr Sowell
Thank you for the ping. There is a lot of wisdom in what Dr. Sowell says, and in the comments on this thread as well.
” What I have a hard time believing is that Obama would appeal to anyone in large numbers after his four year record.”
I know, but the people had to actively SEARCH for the truth, and they were too lazy to do so.
You didn’t get the truth from
CNN
NBC
CBS
ABC
MSNBC
Newspapers(most)
Obama is the President of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC AND MSNBC News Divisions. He soon will take over the sports divisions too.
Reagan was much more than an actor, his degree was in economics, he was very successful in college politics, and he was a many times life saving hero (even a gun using hero) and a real man, before he ever entered acting, Reagan entered acting the very same year that he started his pre-WWII military career that came to be 8 years of active and active reserves.
Romney is mush, and a Mitten, and always has been.
Good to see ya!
Simple Paul Ryan is what I call a technocrat with slight conservative leanings. Above all Ryan is immersed in machinations of government policy. He has never internalized any underlying principles of limited government. He gives lip service to such, but his votes are mostly for bigger government.
Ryan will always in the end favor the State over the individual.
Does anyone believe that Reagan would have voted for: ethanol subsidies, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part-D and TARP? No! Paul Ryan did.
No true Conservative and believer in limited government would have cast such votes. End of story.
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