Today’s GOPers always invoke the name of Ronald Reagan — but anyone who has truly read about Reagan or who was alive and followed his time in office knows full well that they’re not emulating him. Indeed, in August, some former Reagan advisors did an op ed that laid out the case how the party’s presumptive nominee, showman and populist-nationalist Donald Trump, is no Ronald Reagan, in a piece that is said to have been written at the request of Nancy Reagan. Reagan’s son Michael Reagan has also written a series of columns blasting Trump and other Republicans for wrapping themselves in his father’s mantle when they don’t understand the mantle. Reagan’s younger, more liberal, son Ron Reagan has also made it clear today’s GOPers are no Ronald Reagans.
Now Jacob Weisberg (chairman of the Slate group and author of a new book on Reagan) in the New York Times tries — most likely fruitlessly — to remind all and sundry that the current crop of Republicans aren’t following the playbook Reagan successfully used in a)building his original coalition of support b)getting some of his programs in place and doing it in a way that built consensus and, historians say, changed many of the assumptions behind American politics which had been based on the New Deal-New Frontier-Great Society democratic eras.
He supported the biggest amnesty bill in history for illegal immigrants, advocated gun control, used Keynesian stimulus to jump-start the economy, favored personal diplomacy even with the country’s sworn enemies and instituted tax increases in six of the eight years of his presidency.
He was Ronald Reagan.
The core beliefs that got Reagan elected and re-elected were conservative: lower taxes, smaller government and a stronger, more assertive military. But Reagan was also a pragmatist, willing to compromise, able to improvise in pursuit of his goals and, most of all, eager to expand his party’s appeal.
I need to add: I was a reporter on The San Diego Union when Reagan’s amnesty bill was being implemented. My JOB was to cover the bill locally, and also on some stories talk to some of the Senators instrumental in setting up the program. I went to INS press conferences, often talked with Reagan’s regional INS Commissioner Harold Ezell (who was a great quote machine and loved doing interviews with blunt and peppery quotes). interviewed immigrants at the U.S. Mexico border, did daily stories and longer analysis pieces. Reagan was trying to enlarge his party’s tent — not purge it of those who didn’t share his views. And while he tried to enlarge his tent, and he aggressively defended his views and his world view (sometimes using anecdotes that were factually challenged).
The current field of Republican presidential candidates invokes Reagan as a patron saint, but the characteristics that made him a successful politician seem lost on them. Instead, they’ve turned his party into a swamp of nativism, ideological extremism and pessimism about the country’s future, in direct opposition to Reagan’s example. And they’ve transformed primary season into a reality show of insults, betrayals and open feuds, defying the so-called 11th Commandment that Reagan espoused: Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
And here’s the key quote from Weisberg that those who lived through the Reagan era can confirm and countless books confirm:Once in office, Reagan said that anytime he could get 70 percent of what he wanted from a legislature, he’d take it. Today’s congressional Republicans won’t settle even for 99 percent: Their mentality has shifted away from having policies and governing and toward a kind of bitter-end obstructionism.
As someone who was in the news media, this longtime independent voter and former fulltime journalist has finally have concluded: no it is NOT accurate now to blame it on both parties. The bulk of the obstructionism and willingness to jettison longtime political and Congressional norms is largely coming from the Republican Party, most notably from the 21st incarnation of conservatives, who (to use a trite phrase) aren’t your grandfather’s conservatives or your fathers’ conservatives. Conservatism has morphed, just as the GOP brand is morphing with the impending hostile take over of the party by Donald Trump. Today’s conservatives are the antithesis of what Reagan (who often met with Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill) did to try to get a program through and build support for it that was larger than his existing choir. MORE
In the early days of the presidency of Bill Clinton, congressional Republicans essentially went on strike, treating any legislative accomplishment as a Republican defeat, but they came to the table for a budget deal in 1997. With President Obama, they have largely refused to accept the basic legitimacy of a Democratic president. The tactical obstinacy of the 1990s has curdled into the belief that any compromise constitutes betrayal, a dynamic now playing out in the primaries.
To many of today’s conservatives, the importance of consensus (a priority that started dying in the late 20th century) is seen as surrender or a sign of weakness. Compromise is seen as political treason or a sign that the person willing to compromise is the dirtiest kind of politician — a moderate.
The issue that shows the divide most sharply between Reagan and the current crop of presidential hopefuls is immigration. In the past, Republican candidates have been justly criticized for deploying racially coded messages around crime and welfare. But in the main, the party has for decades embraced Reagan’s notion of American identity based on immigration, assimilation and economic opportunity. Every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan has been a moderate on immigration, and has wanted to bring Latinos into the Republican fold.
How did the inclusive, forward-looking Republican Party of Reagan become the crass, xenophobic party of Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz?
The rise of super PACs and the right-wing media has disempowered the party’s gatekeepers, while wage stagnation has widened the opening for populist demagogy. This year’s primary candidates have learned the lesson not only that exploiting prejudice around immigration and terrorism works politically, but so, too, does defying the party’s elders and its official apparatus. Thus Mr. Trump thrives and the establishment favorite, Jeb Bush, is already out.
A more surprising reason for the shift? Money. In economic terms, Republican politicians see increasing returns to extremism.
He ends with this:
The examples of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee underscore the point that a no-hope presidential run has more upside than downside. A career as a right-wing celebrity — a stint on Fox News, speaking fees, book advances — is more profitable than one in the Senate. These incentives have helped to shift the Republican Party from a party of opportunity to a party of opportunists.
The loser could be the party itself. Unless it repudiates the inflammatory rhetoric of the primary, it will lose Reagan’s claim to the center and become more like one of Europe’s chauvinistic right-wing parties. In the 1980s, it was said that the Democrats looked for heretics while the Republicans looked for converts. To watch the spectacle in the 2016 primaries is to see those tendencies reversed.
Read the entire piece.
For those who truly care to research the validity of his point who a)didn’t live through the Reagan era b)want to see what Ronald Reagan was about, there are many books to read but several MUST READS and MUST OWNS, plus a series of books by a historian that anyone interested in how today’s conservationism could create the disgraceful spectacle of Republicans overtly trying to delegitimize a Democratic President by refusing to take up his Supreme Court nomination — something (sorry talk show hosts) that has not been seen in the manner in which this has been done in American history. It is not longer politics and policies and world view that seems to be motivating conservatives (William F. Buckley was oh so 20th century) but power plays and out political spite.
CRUCIAL BOOKS:
The first DOES include Ronald Reagan in its list. Why? Because of what Weisberg noted: Reagan’s willingness to reach across the aisle and compromise to get a large chunk of what he wanted (as he did):
The second is Rick Perlstein’s incredible “The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan” which recreates an entire era and carefully trace how Reagan began to change conservatism and the Republican Party. It details how he took on President Gerald Ford, and gives huge chunks of Reagan’s combative speeches. It’s part of a trilogy on the rise of modern conservatism, and how it deep-sixed many of the assumptions of the mid-60s about Democratic Party and liberal dominance.
And, again, for those who wish to do some actual reading into what conservatism was and how it grew, Pearlstein’s two other books are MUST OWN AND MUST READS:
Before the Storm again recreates an entire era in a way that the book reads like a novel and traces the rise and fall of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s political hopes — and how the seeds were planted for future conservative victories. Winner of the LA Times book prize for history.
And his most recent: Nixonland
It’s best to read these in the order of Before the Storm, Nixonland and then The Invisible Bridge. He’s basically chronicles and entire error, with exhaustive research, and puts it all within an exiciting context of the time (TV shows, letters to the editors, news events breaking at the time).
However, it’s clear many don’t want to do take the time to find out what Reagan was really all about and conservatism’s growth. It’s much easier to read and comment on websites you agree in advance, or repeat what a favored talk show host or cable commentator says.
I haven’t yet read Weisburg’s new book on Reagan but I will. It came out in January and once more offers real data for those who want to know who Reagan really was and what the brand of conservatism he espoused was really about:
The historical record is there for those interested, and many today clearly aren’t as they praise Reagan and repudiate many of the ways in which he dealt with his foes and got much of his program not just through but accepted by a larger part of the American public.
Photo: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=257850
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.