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Washington Post Column: Tear down this icon: Why the GOP has to get over Ronald Reagan
Washington Post ^ | 04/26/2013 | Jennifer Rubin

Posted on 04/26/2013 7:48:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific. The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

Today’s Republican Party, however, faces legions of voters and candidates who came of age politically after Reagan’s eight years in office. An entire generation recalls him vaguely as a genial, optimistic president who stood up for America in the Cold War.

The Republican Party can remain a Ronald Reagan historical society, or it can try to endure as a force in national politics. But it can’t do both. The choice matters greatly, for there is no guarantee that the GOP will retain its ability to win national elections or that conservatism has a future as a national governing philosophy.

The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them. The public face of the GOP can no longer be aging, ill-tempered Reaganites such as John McCain and Jim DeMint but must give way to a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: gop; reagan; ronaldreagan
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To: SeekAndFind

In December 2012, she proclaimed that the Heritage Foundation was becoming “a political instrument in service of extremism” by hiring Jim DeMint as its president.


41 posted on 04/26/2013 8:47:31 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: kcvl

She’s nuts.


42 posted on 04/26/2013 8:49:00 AM PDT by darkangel82
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To: Biggirl

No kidding! Tear down the one modern standard of America just so we can think more like Communist/Liberals? Don’t think so.


43 posted on 04/26/2013 8:49:58 AM PDT by CodeToad (Liberals are bloodsucking ticks. We need to light the matchstick to burn them off.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yeah, we’ll “get over” Reagan when leftists get over FDR, Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.


44 posted on 04/26/2013 8:51:03 AM PDT by IronJack (=)
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To: kabar

Don’t forget LBJ and Bubba.


45 posted on 04/26/2013 8:59:05 AM PDT by Free Vulcan (Vote Republican! You can vote Democrat when you're dead...)
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To: Free Vulcan

Yep. Bubba is at 71% approval rating now. The public has a short memory.


46 posted on 04/26/2013 9:04:48 AM PDT by kabar
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To: kabar

Yeah....right. One president in the past 50 years who got it right. Who came into a similar disaster as this president gave us and turned it around in 3 years. Let’s tear down that chapter. Brilliant success based on liberty is just a myth.


47 posted on 04/26/2013 9:10:37 AM PDT by Phillyred
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To: SeekAndFind

This broad doesn’t understand conservatism. RR’s policies and conservatism, in the main, are the same thing.

Since when does a Washington Compost Reporterette Democrat Stenographer get to say what the Republican Party must do?

Since when, Jennifer?


48 posted on 04/26/2013 9:20:41 AM PDT by sauropod (I will not comply)
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To: SeekAndFind

That will solve our problems, get over excellence.


49 posted on 04/26/2013 9:23:37 AM PDT by pfflier
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To: SeekAndFind

It seems a long time ago now that I served proudly in the Marines under Commander-in-Chief Ronald Reagan. I was actually proud to be an American back then. Today we have a sodomized, feminized, politically correct military that continues to slide down a slop hole under the America-hating, African communist Ubama. It makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

The Washington Posts’ faux Republican Rubin is, unfortunately, correct.

The United States of America is now nothing more than a large land mass populated by moochers, cretins, ingrates, and parasites who have absolutely no respect for the military and who vote for big government to confiscate money from their neighbors so that it may be “redistributed” to them in exchange for their votes. It is not an America worth defending anymore. That America no longer exists.

The parasites outnumber the hosts now, and there’s no going back. America is dead.
The Democrats have won.

Even most immigrants, legal and illegal, don’t come to America anymore to become “Americans” - - they come here to vote Democrat and steal whatever they can by proxy. It’s a shame. America had a great run but nothing lasts forever.

Rubin says the Republicans need to jump on board the socialism / depravity train in order to compete with Democrats “on a national level”, and obviously that means approving of turd poker “marriage”, higher taxes, more “redistribution” of wealth from the productive to the Democrat moochers, open borders, and an insistence that the Boy Scouts let homosexuals take little boys off into the woods.

Sure, America is dead but personally I would rather go down swinging with some dignity intact. If the Republican party leaves me, oh well.
Buh-bye.


50 posted on 04/26/2013 9:33:22 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes, lets tear down all those icons. You know, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Lincoln....tear ‘em all down. Put up Eugene Debs, John Dewey, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore, Mumia Abu Jamal...the latter all great Americans. (snicker)


51 posted on 04/26/2013 10:22:15 AM PDT by driftless2
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