Has The GOP Turned Its Back On Reagan And Lincoln?
 

An interesting OpEd for modern conservatives to reflect upon from Paul Brandus.

An award-winning member of the White House press corps, Paul Brandus founded WestWingReports.com (@WestWingReport) and provides reports for media outlets around the United States and overseas. His career spans network television, Wall Street and several years as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for NBC Radio and the award-winning business and economics program Marketplace. He has traveled to 53 countries on five continents and has reported from, among other places Iraq, Chechnya, China and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Richard :munchin

The GOP Has Turned Its Back On Reagan And Lincoln
TheWeek, 28 Jan 2013

Republican heroes of yesteryear would be personas non grata in today's increasingly radical party

To borrow the name of one of the better movies of the '90s, the Republican Party needs a few good men (and women) who can tell the truth about today's GOP. But for many rank-and-file Republicans, engaging with reality may be very difficult. As the tough-as-nails Marine colonel (played to perfection by Jack Nicholson) bellowed: "You can't handle the truth!"

Indeed, the Republican Party is now so badly out of touch with the majority of voters, and so far to the right with most of its policies, that it can no longer be considered the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and the first George Bush. In some respects, it has even moved beyond George W. In doing so, it has shunned its rich past and dismissed the legacies of its greatest heroes. All of those Republican presidents did things, reasonable things, that would render them toxic and unelectable with today's unreasonable, untethered-from-reality brand of Republicans. In November, Republicans lost women by 11 points, voters between 18 and 29 by 23 points, and voters between 30 and 44 by 7 points. Who did the GOP win? Those closest to death. They won the 45 to 64 group by 4 points and those 65 and older by 12.

In an age in which education is more important for securing decent employment than ever before, Republicans generally did best among voters with the least education, and poorest among those with the most. They won conservative voters by an overwhelming margin, but that's only one-third of the electorate. They lost the other two-thirds — moderates and liberals — by wide margins. They cruised among people who go to church at least once a week, but that group is just two-fifths of the electorate; it wasn't close among the other three-fifths. They lost the youngest, and fastest-growing, voter bloc — Latinos — by 44 points, even worse than the 36-point embarrassment of 2008.

Demographics are moving against Republicans, and conservatives are going to have to change their tune if they want to better identify with the citizenry of tomorrow.

Republicans: Pick up a history book. Study the centrist, level-headed, cooperative inclusiveness of past GOP presidents. If you can handle the truth, here are some of the things they did that endeared them to voters:

* Ronald Reagan supported an assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill on background checks and, in 1986, signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which was hailed by gun rights activists for its numerous protections for gun owners. But it also banned ownership of any fully automatic rifles that wasn't already registered on the day the law was signed.

* Reagan was the first cap-and-trade president, using the concept to attack unleaded gasoline and pollutants that cause acid rain.

* Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act cut taxes for individuals (by shifting the burden to businesses) to the tune, in 2012 dollars, of $750 billion. He also signed off on higher gasoline taxes and jacked up taxes on investment income. What a socialist!

* Richard Nixon, one of Reagan's mentors, signed off on the 1969 Tax Reform Act, which cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans, but also created the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax, designed to make sure that rich folks pay, as Barack Obama says, their fair share.

* Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, which has worked for 40 years to — egads! — make sure the water you drink and air you breathe are clean.

* Dwight Eisenhower supported big government spending on infrastructure programs, notably the interstate highway system.

* The former five-star general, who led the D-Day invasion of France, also warned in his last speech to the nation in 1961 that military spending was too big and threatened the health of the U.S. economy.

* Abraham Lincoln asked Congress for the first-ever income tax in 1861 — a 3 percent tax on income — to help finance the Civil War. Lincoln believed that Americans should pay for their wars as they fought them. What a concept.

None of these ideas would pass muster in today's Republican Party. Today's GOP, inexplicably, has turned its back on these heroes, denied its own history, buried its collective head in the sand. This isn't your grandfather's Republican Party. It's not even your father's Republican Party. It's something else entirely, and should have a new name: perhaps the "Know-Nothing Party" of the 1850s fits the bill. The Know-Nothing Party was formed to oppose immigration and to guard against what was perceived in the day as a threat to the economic and political security of white-Protestant America. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, next to no one in the Republican Party (or whatever it should be called today) is speaking these truths. Bobby Jindal, the Oxford-educated Louisiana governor, dipped a toe in the water last week when he said the GOP "must stop being the stupid party." He added: "The Republican Party does not need to change our principles — but we might need to change just about everything else we do."

Finally, some truth. But in a broader sense Jindal's criticism was muted: "I am not one of those who believe we should moderate, equivocate, or otherwise abandon our principles," he said. Jindal's comments can be seen as trying to nudge, as opposed to shove, a chastened party toward the center, where elections are won.

But can Republicans accept even this mild rebuke from one of their own? Many seem to live in an alternative universe, consuming content from only a handful of media outlets that tell them only what they want to hear. This meets the classic definition of bias, yet it's everything else that's slanted in their world view. Facts don't matter. Data and science? Irrelevant.

It is this detachment from reality that is killing the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan. If the GOP is to survive, its leaders must not only handle the truth — but act on it.

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/23...an-and-lincoln

That's were the trouble started.

Brings up some great points.

Lincoln is not a President worth emulating.....

That's a rather blanket statement that assumes conservatives are a subset of Republicans. While the GOP needs to evaluate how they approach the future, conservatives (are we talking Social Conservatives, Economic Conservatives, or both) are pretty fixed in their view.

Which political ideology do most teachers identify with? Those who write the curriculum and control the delivery form the discussion and opinions of the students.

I guess liberal journalists only love Republican Presidents that act like the stereotype liberal big spenders and taxers..or at least their actions that support liberal and Democrat goals.

Which is it? How is it that the GOP should retain its principles while at the same time 'move toward the center' to win votes? Any politician that panders to voters is compromising some principles. They all do it but do not call Jindall's statement that conservative principles should not be altered 'truth' and then suggest they need to alter those principles to win elections.

If you look at the platforms of the two parties circa 1980 it's the Democrats that have moved further to the extremes than the Republican's. The Democrats as a party wouldn't touch gun control in 1980, they wouldn't have pushed partial birth abortions, they wouldn't even have discussed gay marriage, they wouldn't have supported gays in the military or women in combat, and when they were faced with what scientists said was the impending coming of the new "ice age" their response wasn't to issue economy crippling regulations to "save the planet". I don't know how this author could look at Reagan's platforms from 1980 and 1984 or Nixon's in 1968 and 1972 and call the current Republican party extreme. In fact I could claim that the party has drifted closer to the old Democrat positions than they were with Reagan's.

The big difference between now and then is that The Gipper was the most gifted communicator of any politician in my lifetime, whereas Romney and McCain were two of the most ineffective communicators that have ever run for that office and frankly they were pathetic candidates. Reagan would have eaten Obama's lunch in both races.

And how does GWB fit into such a scenario?

Richard :munchin

Conservatives, or Republicans? They're not synonymous. He uses "conservative" only twice.

His main point seems to be that the "legacies of [the Republican party's] greatest heroes" was appeasing the Left, as if today's Republicans don't do that. Maybe he missed the fiscal cliff deal.

A 3rd party is needed. A party of true conservatives, for true conservatives.

Not conservatives...Constitutionalists.

He sucked too. Love the man personally but he wasn't a conservative nor was he a particularly effective communicator. He was much closer to this authors ideal Republican than the Gipper. All to often he allowed his opposition to define him and wouldn't try to correct the publics misperception of his positions. He also got us heading down the road of big deficits with his unfunded prescription drug plan for Medicare, no child left behind, our involvement in Iraq and the idea of too big to fail. All positions that would have made Reagan vomit. He also would have gotten his clock cleaned by Obama. Hell he almost lost to Gore.

He was no Reagan. He was no Obama, either. I'd take him back in a heartbeat.

Interesting POV. Mine differs.

Richard :munchin