Thank you!
The problem with noblesse oblige is that it always entails droit de seigneur.
He makes good points. Romney’s post-election musings seem to indicate that he doesn’t really believe in the power of free market capitalism and traditional values to pull people out of poverty and government dependence. If you don’t really believe in the conservatism and the Republican platform, can you please step aside and make room for a leader who does?
I blame the MSM almost entirely.
Nothing will ever work again in American politics as long as we have a ONE PARTY MEDIA-with a criminally free hand in determinging our leadership for us.
Good post, thanks. Erickson has an astute take on the false ‘heirs’ to Reagan. GHWB was forced on RR by the GOPe and actually did as much damage as possible from within the Administration. The Bush bastards and their camp followers should be throw under the bus/train/garbage truck!
Stoopid, stoopid compassionate commie-crats!
Well written article - thank you for posting this sanity.
I caught a lot, and I mean A LOT, of flack on here for predicting that Romney wouldn’t win for several reasons, not the least of which was his attitude of entitlement.
“...will have formed their world view during Ronald Reagan’s America.”
Whenever I go off on a rant my kids tell me “Dad - YOU should run for President!” I tell them that there already was a president with those ideas - RR.
In other words, I assumed Romney believed what I believe — many of those people are good people who fell on hard times and are not of the same class of people who will vote for Barack Obama for free stuff. I was absolutely wrong. Romney not only believes completely what he said as he said it, he reinforced it with his post election analysis of his defeat blaming gifts to various classes of people. If that was true, as Newt Gingrich pointed out, Romney had plenty to gift to plenty strapped to the back of marching elephants.
Excellent point, though the last sentence looks garbled.
What does this have to do with Ronald Reagan? As Dan McLaughlin pointed out, every Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan opposed Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election except John McCain. Think about that for a minute. Every nominee of the party cast by the media as an insane fringe of conservatives actually opposed, from the left, Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Each of those candidates ran successfully as heirs to Reagan or, when they failed, as rich Republicans who believe in some sort of noblesse oblige. George H. W. Bush, embracing his own identity outside the shadow of Reagan in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012 all ran as patrician aristocrats who intended to make government more efficient to help the poor. There really was no theme of elevating the poor from poverty or the middle class to the rich. The theme was the care and comfort of men through the technocratic efficiencies of government and a conservative disposition. Romney did that this time too, going so far as to put his more conservative running mate in a witness protection program for candidates.
Not so much. It sounds like he's twisting things to fit his interpretation, fitting all the winning candidates in one pattern and all the losers in another.
It doesn't work. Dole was no "patrician aristocrat." George W. Bush did his share of promising social programs.
Romney may have been a "patrician" in some ways, but the attitude expressed in his 47% quotes is very different from the standard "patrician aristocrat" approach.
One possible counterargument to all this: not every candidate can do the Reagan thing, just as not every candidate can do the FDR or JFK thing. Imitations don't always produce the same results as the original.
Erick has some good ideas, but he ought to have somebody read his stuff over before publishing it.
The lapdog Obama media would have manufactured “something” out of anything Romney said, labeled it a “gaffe”, and beat him senseless with it. The lamestream media fancies itself relevant; and aims to use what’s left of its influence to assure that no Republican, and certainly no Conservative will EVER be elected again if they can help it.
RINO File.
I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but we had a president with one of the worst records ever. Maybe the worst. He's been awful. And we couldn't beat him. I'd like to see a Reaganist candidate next time, but there's no guarantee that candidate will win. Sure, Romney should have raised the banner of conservatism, but he's not far wrong saying there's just too many parasites now.
We may not like what Romney said. It may have cost him, and us, the election. It may have cost us the Senate. But was he lying? I’ve seen people mad, but I haven’t seen anyone dispute his claim. The election would seem to prove his point. The first step in defeating the Democrats in the next election is to be true to ourselves. Romney may be entirely wrong, but let’s see the proof.
“If you understand yourself and you understand your opponents, then in one hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
Yep.
I supported Mitt, wanted him to win, thought he’d win. We’ve had, I think, an unspoken agreement to disagree about that the way we had a spoken agreement to disagree about McCain.
But I think Erickson is right here. Mitt was part of the problem. It’s time for Generation Reagan to get in there and be part of the solution.
Horse manure. Romney’s mistake was not taking that “47%” remark and elaborating that yes, there is a huge contingent of eaters and moochers who will vote for Ubama simply to get more of the “free stuff” confiscated for them from working taxpayers by their rat politicians and handed over in exchange for votes. Instead, Romney ran like a coward and tried to distance himself from his own (accurate) remark.
There’s a reason the African communist Ubama never brought up the “47%” remark in the debates.
None of them got very far. None of them actually was Ronald Reagan. None of them brought all the qualities he did into the ring. Some of them had voting records in Congress that made it hard for them to play the Reagan part convincingly (as President Reagan might have had if he'd been a senator, rather than a governor before being elected president).
Another problem is that you don't see classic conservative vs. moderate (or liberal) races in the Republican primaries any more. There will be one candidate who appeals to religious conservatives (Robertson, Huckabee), one supply-side, tax-cutting economic conservative (Kemp, Forbes), maybe one fiscally conservative deficit hawk, maybe one neoconservative war hawk, maybe one "constitutionally conservative" libertarian (Paul), maybe an old fashioned populist (Buchanan). They all split the conservative vote.
And with all those players in the game it can be hard to sort them out. It's easy enough in retrospect to say, "Bob Dole lost. He must not have been conservative enough," or "Poppa Bush wasn't conservative enough. That must be why he lost," but that's with a lot of hindsight.