{"id":3634,"date":"2008-11-12T13:05:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T18:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3634"},"modified":"2008-11-12T13:43:31","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T18:43:31","slug":"the-reagan-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3634","title":{"rendered":"The Reagan Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, being a Republican feels like being a Bears fan.<\/p>\n

Over the years, there’ve been good seasons, and legendary seasons; there’ve\u00a0been plenty of\u00a09-7 and\u00a08-8 seasons, as well.<\/p>\n

Of course,\u00a0the past two election cycles feel a little more like that stretch\u00a0after\u00a0Gale Sayers and\u00a0Dick Butkus got too injured to play, but before the days of Peyton and Ditka and Singletery and Dent and McMahon; the Abe Gibron years; the years when Wes Montgomery led the team’s rushers with 240-odd yards (on the season<\/em>); the years when\u00a0quarterback\u00a0Bobby Douglass was the team’s top\u00a0gainer.<\/p>\n

The seasons where Bears fans\u00a0muttered “we’re rebuilding”, year in, year out.<\/p>\n

Of course, how <\/em>one “rebuilt” is always a dicey question – because so many people have so many wildly-different visions of what a team, or a political party, should be.<\/p>\n

Patterico tackles David Brooks’ take\u00a0<\/a> take on the GOP’s future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brooks:<\/p>\n

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep.\u00a0 Not even just “traditionalists”, but people who are Conservatives first, Republicans second.\u00a0 It’s one of the reasons we at True North <\/em>opted to distance ourself from the party, to base our message on “first principles”<\/a> rather than a party identifier.<\/p>\n

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patterico responds:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Cutting government, cutting taxes, and restricting immigration (at least illegal immigration) sound good to me.<\/p>\n

And by the way: \u201crally behind Sarah Palin\u201d is not a \u201ccore idea\u201d of the Republican Party, David. It\u2019s true that most Traditionalists have rallied behind her, and she may well be a Traditionalist candidate in some future race. But however much Traditionalists might like her, let\u2019s not load the dice by suggesting that supporting her is a \u201ccore\u201d Republican idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Maybe Brooks misspoke<\/strike> mis-wrote; Palin is, indeed, not a “core value”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But finding, or if needed cultivating, party leaders that put first principles first is in fact the big mission for “traditionalists”.\u00a0 Right up there is finding and promoting candidates that not only follow them, but can make the case for <\/em>them to the people.\u00a0 It’s something Reagan excelled at; it’s a trait at which Sarah Palin has great potential (which is why the media-industrial complex is spending so much energy trying to destroy her).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back to Brooks:<\/p>\n

\n

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Patterico:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t think the future of the Republican party is to be Democrat Lite.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There lies the Way of Sturdevant, the Way of Rockefeller.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The way to “appeal” to any <\/em>voter, young or Hispanic or Nigerian lesbian, for that matter,\u00a0 to show them how our beliefs are in synch with their own enlightened self-interest.\u00a0 I’ve observed this on the blog and on the show almost to the point of cliche:\u00a0if you could get people to strip away groupthink and tradition and just-plain-bigotry, the inner city should <\/em>be chock-full of conservatives.\u00a0 Nobody is more sour on the debacle in our educational system than inner-city blacks (and audacity and hope aside, the Obama administration isn’t going to change a thing there); Hispanic catholics (and the growing number of hispanic evangelicals) are socially-conservative right out of the box, and while the immigration issue polarizes the community now, there’s evidence that that peters out among Hispanics who’ve been in American more than a generation or two; Asians are, of course, stereotypically free-enterprise and strong on education.\u00a0 Why would they vote Democrat<\/em>?\u00a0 It’s a question Brett Schundler asked, and a code he cracked for three terms as the conservative mayor of Jersey City back in the nineties.\u00a0 The fact that the New Jersey GOP gundecked his further aspirations in favor of a series of gutless moderate hamsters proved the NJGOP should have nothing to do with engineering the national GOP’s road back.<\/p>\n

Patterico:<\/p>\n

\n

While I disagree with the Traditionalists on some issues \u2014 gay marriage, the environment, animal rights, and the like \u2014 I tend to fall into what Brooks calls the Traditionalist camp on the major issues.<\/p>\n

I still think people believe in cutting taxes and limiting government. They just want a party that is actually going to do it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And that’s part of the key right there:\u00a0 not only do we need a party that can translate Hayek for the NASCAR crowd and<\/em>\u00a0 sell Friedman to the “soccer moms” and convince Mainstreet that we’re better for the pocketbook and <\/em>the safety of this nation (which we can <\/em>do, and have done!), but we need to actually deliver.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which is something that Reagan did, and where Gingrich fell a little short, and where the post-2000 GOP was an abominatal failure.<\/p>\n

Which is why I support Michael Steele in the battle for the GOP leadership with Newt Gingrich.\u00a0 There’s no denying Newt’s place defining the roots that the party needs to return to<\/em>; I just believe that Steele is a clean break with the baggage of the past (ignoring Gingrich’s personal baggage completely, by the way), and a nod to the bench of new talent that the GOP has neglected for far too long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, being a Republican feels like being a Bears fan. Over the years, there’ve been good seasons, and legendary seasons; there’ve\u00a0been plenty of\u00a09-7 and\u00a08-8 seasons, as well. Of course,\u00a0the past two election cycles feel a little more like that stretch\u00a0after\u00a0Gale Sayers and\u00a0Dick Butkus got too injured to play, but before the days of Peyton and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}