Posted on 04/28/2016 10:52:33 AM PDT by winoneforthegipper
Yes, says Bill Galston, contending that “Donald Trump is waging and winning the third major revolution in the Republican Party since World War II.” First there was Eisenhower reconciling the GOP with the New Deal. Then there was Reagan, who wrought a “remarkable fusion of supply-side economics, anti-Soviet internationalism and social conservatism.” And now? Excerpt:
Mr. Trump’s candidacy has showed that the cadre of genuine social conservatives is smaller than long assumed, that grass-roots Republican support for large military commitments in the Middle East has withered, and that the business community is politically homeless.
So it has come to this: A mercantilist isolationist is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. Whether or not he goes on to win the general election, the Republican Party cannot return to what it once was. The Reagan era has ended, and what comes next is anyone’s guess.
Read the whole thing. Well, he’s right about that, but instead of giving Trump credit for killing Reaganism, I think we would do well to think about the extent to which Reaganism died a natural death from old age, and the extent to which its heirs killed it.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
"The business community." That's a term so broad as to be meaningless. Big businesses (USCofC) have totally different issues and interests. I own a business in Washington State, and my interests are 180° out from Boeing.
Period.
Baloney.
Care to discuss?
You take issue with an accurate character comparison between President Ronald Reagan, and The Don (a man I am being forced to crossed finger vote for as our least worst choice).
Do you really believe the quote you cite in your FR homepage profile?
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Thomas Jefferson”
The fact that Mr. Trump is even a candidate, along with this race’s other fools and liars is evidence of our collective ignorance, low expectations and moral fall.
Mr. Reagan is and was head and shoulders above most presidents we’ve had.
Period.
RE: “Trump is cannot hold a candle to Ronald Reagan’s virtues, honesty, intellect, communication and moral conviction.
Period.
.
.
Baloney.”
Care to discuss?”
“And by God if Trump doesn’t work out, he will at least have broken up the logjam, the embargo on the political process imposed by the bipartisans and maybe we can get some other new blood in there.”
Yuhp, populist rebellions happen every generation. Jackson, Bryan, Fdr, Goldwater etc. We are seeing the money changers being chased from the temple. They will be back and take over but they are going to be very wary of we the people for a while.
My first presidential vote was for Reagan back in 1984. He did want America to be great again, substantially by returning to what he believed it used to be. But he didn't want America to be great at the expense of other countries, to defeat them in some kind of global contest between nation-states. (The Soviet Union conspicuously excepted.) He generally did not believe that international commerce, to take a current example, was a zero-sum game between nations. Instead he wanted our country to be an example to follow, a "shining city upon a hill." He wanted opportunity for all, with free markets its greatest friend and government economic mismanagement its greatest enemy. (Read both his writings and speeches, most notably his first inaugural address, to get some sense of this.)
There's very little of that kind of "conservatism" in evidence these days, although the elimination of the Soviet empire is vivid testimony to the power it once held in people's minds. Conservatism now seems to be more and more about disengagement from and commercial conflict with a hostile world, not about the dignity of the individual (emphatically including the unborn) and what he could do if government would just let him.
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