This split in the GOP isn't new. It so happens that Lt. Col. Allen West is going to run for Governor of Texas, but he is opposed by moderates, so I've read. It has to be the case that anybody worth looking at is going to opposed by one faction or the other. But Reagan was said to be quite conservative, and he was able to garner the support of all of the GOP. Why is that so hard to do anymore? What was it about Reagan? Why would Col. West be so objectionable by the so-called moderates of the Party?
There are a lot of theories about that. The late Rush Limbaugh once wrote that the Democrats believed that it was "marketing and packaging". Whatever it was, it worked a lot better than what is going on before or after his time. Barry Goldwater was pretty conservative too, but he lost in a landslide to LBJ in 1964. Conservatism can win, but only with the right kind of candidate. Colonel West is said to be not the kind of candidate that would win in Texas. How can that be?
Certainly the image was in Reagan's favor. He didn't come across as a fire-breather, or did he? If you go back to his speech in 1964, it seemed pretty much of a barn-barner. But his manner was generally non-threatening. He could be firm, but at the same time, he could gain the confidence of the so-called moderate wing. Gerald Ford was quoted as saying that a man as conservative as Reagan couldn't win, but in the end, Ford was on Reagan's side.
It doesn't appear that Trump can unite the factions, sadly. There is little doubt in my mind that his inability to do this is what contributed to his defeat. His defeat, regardless of how the vote actually went, was more of a elite veto than anything else. If he could have gotten them on board, he would have won.
Reagan must have gotten the support of the elites, or he would have gone down also. How did he do this? Anyway, this piece is about how to unite the warring factions in the party, because if that doesn't happen, it is straight down to the anthill that Reagan warned about in 1964.
Republicans need to get that back, and soon. To get it back, a good start might be to study how Reagan did it. Reagan's success has to be considered phenomenal, because it has been the exception, and not the rule for the GOP. Reagan united the factions and united the country. It hasn't been the same since. It isn't the conservatism, it must be the man.
Winning an election isn't enough. We've seen that with Trump. He spent much of his time just trying to survive. Some might argue that he did a lot, but in terms of legislation, he did not get much done.
Reagan did, but some of that had a down side. Whenever you can get an alleged conservative like Dick Cheney say that Reagan's years proved that deficits didn't matter, then you've made a policy error with unfortunate precedent for the future. You can see that now with massive deficit spending. Maybe deficits WILL matter when they get big enough. When that happens, look out. This is why I never voted for Reagan. I figured that all this would happen a lot sooner than what it did. I figured hyperinflation. That may pan out, but it may take awhile to get there.
Reagan wasn't perfect, but he was definitely the best at the time. The question maybe is this: is the best going to be good enough anymore?
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