Would Reagan Today be Reagan Enough for Movement Purists?

To those who entertain jumping over to a third party, threatening to sit on their hands rather than hold their noses when they don’t get their dream candidate; and for those “all-or-nothing”, inflexible conservative purists out there who think they have the secret formula for winning future elections (basically, what would amount to shrinking the party of votes)….

Take a listen:

Mike’s America:

It’s time we finally bury this suicidal idea that we will dump on our own team just because they don’t meet some impossible standard of ideological purity. Now that we’ve seen the tremendous cost to our liberty and freedom of following such a destructive path I hope we have heard the last of it.

I had the idea in 2008 of a pledge whereby we promise to support ALL the nominees of our party. That doesn’t mean we have to give them all money, but that does mean we don’t openly trash them and threaten to boycott their election just because we disagree on one or two points.

The pledge is founded on the notion that if you want to be part of this party and have your conservative ideals taken seriously and given a full hearing then you have to be willing to support the eventual nominees of the party even if you disagree in part.

People who get mad and threaten to take their marbles and go home if they don’t get their way 100% of the time have no place in a successful political party and should not be given any consideration whatsoever.

In my book, any Republican in the House who votes to unseat Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s Chair and any Republican Senator who votes to unseat Harry Reid as Majority Leader is worthy of our support.

A number of conservatives have fumed over always having to choose “the lesser of two evils” and with claims of not seeing a difference between the two parties; or accuse the GOP of being “Dem lite”. Even when the GOP behaves in ways we approve of (all 178 Republicans in the House stood together to cast votes in opposition to passage of last Sunday’s healthcare vote), some hold GOP leadership in contempt over past grievances and for future grievances they suspect will occur again….or simply find it easier to judge them by past action, however accurately or inaccurately, rather than current action.

When McCain or Graham and other “despised” Republican Congressmen behave in ways we approve of, this should be acknowledged, welcomed, and encouraged just as vigorously as when we criticize them for they do things we don’t approve of.

Some conservative idealogues insist they aren’t asking for GOP purity tests, or that they expect anyone to agree with them 100% of the time on 100% of the issues; yet in some of their criticism, that’s exactly how they come across- as conservative purists on a RINO witch-hunt.

Palin campaigns on behalf of her former running mate and she gets ostracized and disowned by the intolerant members of the conservative movement.

The tone and the tenor of the partisan divide seems to have increased in shrillness within the last decade (What is it? The internet? Saturation of information-flow?). We on the right,in some degree or other, are becoming to Barack H. Obama what Daily Kos and Moveon.org were to George W. Bush. I’m guilty of it, too. Just wait and watch: After I post this up, I will be tarred and feathered as a CINO.

Some of us should pause and take the time to ask ourselves, “Am I on the fringe of mainstream American society?” “Am I a partisan Wingnut?”

Michael Medved is one of those center-right conservatives who can sometimes drive the hard-line conservatives nuts for being too close to the center.

Medved:

Ronald Reagan never abandoned conservative positions, but his genial approach to political combat won him the moderate voters he needed for two landslide victories. Similarly, the George W. Bush slogan “compassionate conservatism” (much derided on the right) allowed him to contest moderate votes with Al Gore and John Kerry and to win two hard-fought victories.

Courting the moderates

The point to remember about those citizens in the political middle who decide every national election is that they’re the least philosophically committed, issues-oriented voters in the electorate. Interviews and conversation make it obvious that many citizens describe themselves as “moderate” because they feel uncertain of their place on the political spectrum, less engaged with the roiling controversies of the day. Moderates famously respond to personalities or atmospherics (“hope and change” or “compassionate conservatism”) more than they react to nine-point plans or detailed position papers. They also dislike strident, the other-guy-is-Hitler rhetoric because such appeals seem like a rebuke to their own uncertainty.

Republicans can’t win without rallying the plurality of Americans who prefer conservatism to liberalism, but they also can’t triumph (anywhere) with that group alone. Like Democrats, the GOP needs moderate votes for victory, and the only way to get them without sacrificing principle or core conservative voters involves deploying the same combination that has worked before: maintaining clearly conservative positions, but with those values presented in a manner that’s optimistic, constructive, reasonable and, yes, moderate.

Medved again:

For some fifty years, presidential elections have been mostly close – with ten out of the thirteen winners held to 54% or less of the popular vote (and five of them actually winning with less than a majority). Only three times since 1960 did candidates win in one-sided blow-outs, and in each of those races (LBJ’s triumph in ’64, Nixon’s in ’72, and Reagan’s in ’84) the opposing nominee looked like an impractical, reckless, wing-nut extremist. Barry Goldwater even embraced the title extremist (“extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”), George McGovern’s anti-war crusade offered an unapologetically leftist platform, and Walter Mondale proudly promised in his convention speech that he would raise the nation’s taxes. Their pathetic performance as major party nominees (winning 39%, 38% and 41%, respectively) showed the powerful national reflex against any candidate or party perceived as out of the mainstream, tilting too far in one direction or another.

By contrast, all three of the Democrats who have won the presidency since 1968 (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) campaigned as level-headed centrists, who pledged to build bi-partisan coalitions and to bring the country together. All three, however, governed with progressive tendencies and leftist associates that undermined their carefully crafted moderate images. Jimmy Carter in particular emerged as a sanctimonious scold, favoring impractical, inflexible liberal nostrums in both foreign and domestic policy that made him an easy target for the amiable, common sense appeal of Ronald Reagan. Though rightly embraced as a great conservative hero, Reagan’s 1980 campaign went to great lengths to appeal to the wary middle-of-the-roaders who decide every election. He chose a conspicuous moderate as his running mate (George H. W. Bush) and framed the campaign’s key question (“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”) to make the other guy look scary, extreme and dogmatic. In the end, Reagan won an election in which self-described conservatives made up only 28% of the electorate (according to exit polls), while “moderates” were 46%. In fact more than 60% of the voters who placed The Gipper in the White House called themselves “moderates” or even “liberals,” showing the classic inclination to support an impressive candidate who seems to transcend ideology rather than to exemplify it.

Despite pipe dreams of an unwavering right wing majority ruling the electorate, the highest percentage of voters who actually call themselves “conservative” occurred in 2008, when 34% chose that description (Exit polls showed precisely the same percentage in 2004 and 1996). Meanwhile, the number of “moderates” who cast ballots ranged from a low of 42% (in 1984) all the way to 50% (in 2000).

Bill Clinton tried to appeal to these swing voters by emulating Reagan’s optimistic “I’ll-fix-the-mess” campaign when he ran against the floundering George H. W. Bush in 1992, posing as a sensible “New Democrat” rather than a by-the-book liberal in the McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis mode. In his first two years, however, miscues like the clumsy push for gays in the military and the “Hillary Care” disaster gave the lie to his pretensions of centrism, leading to the historic sweep for Newt Gingrich and his resurgent Republicans. The Contract With America that made that political earthquake possible (giving the GOP 55 more seats in the House and eight new Senators) was a cunningly devised document that emphasized reformist “good government” promises (Balanced Budget Amendment, Congressional Term Limits, Welfare Reform) and scrupulously avoided polarizing (if worthy) pledges that might have seemed extreme (abolishing the income tax, a human life amendment, eliminating major government departments).

After this smashing Republican victory in ’94, perceptions of the two parties quickly switched, With the government shutdown (widely if unfairly blamed on Gingrich, rather than Clinton) over budgetary struggles, the triangulating President won the image battle as more flexible and pragmatic, while the professorial Republicans (both Gingrich and his chief deputy Dick Armey had backgrounds as brilliant academics) came across as more interested in principles than practicality. In his re-election bid, the chastened Clinton (remember “The era of big government is over”?) easily sailed to victory, and also blithely triumphed over his seemingly rigid prosecutors during the protracted impeachment crisis.

George W. Bush succeeded Clinton not as the fire-breathing right wing purist his opponents tried to caricature but as a self-styled “compassionate conservative” pledged to bring a new spirit of cooperation to the divided capital. In debates and on the stump, he offered an aw-shucks, ordinary guy appeal (paradoxical for the son of an ex-president) that contrasted with the stiff, self-righteous, shrill persona of Al (“Prince Albert”) Gore. His decisive response to 9/11 allowed him to win re-election as “a uniter, not a divider” (over John Kerry, a humorless Massachusetts patrician and unwavering liberal). But ceaseless Democratic attacks on Bush as “the most extreme conservative president in American history” finally combined with GOP Congressional scandals to give Nancy Pelosi the speakership in 2006, and Barack Obama the presidency in 2004.

The GOP’s Obama Opportunity

Obama used the classic winning formula in 2008: seeking the nation’s highest office as an open-minded problem solver, willing to use conservative as well as liberal ideas to address the nation’s woes. The 2004 convention keynote speech that made him a national figure overnight promised no more “red states” or “blue states,” but only “the UNITED States of America.” In his presidential campaign, the imprecise and soothing talk of “hope” and “change” did little to impress conservatives (who voted for McCain by a ratio of four to one) but drew a decisive 60% of the self-described “moderate” vote. The polls show that those same moderates and independents have now turned against President Obama with a vengeance, giving Republicans their historic opportunity.

In contrast to his gauzy promises of hope and healing, Obama and his Congressional allies have governed as divisive devotees of the hard left — willing, for instance, to risk economic and budgetary disaster for the sake of realizing the leftist dream of “universal health care.” Pollsters show mounting opposition to Obamacare not because the public rules out every form of governmental activism as a solution to major problems but because the people distrust big, dogmatic schemes to remake reality all at once.

Why Like Ike?

The Republicans can win back the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012, if they highlight the Democrats’ fanatical commitment to liberal orthodoxy, and if they avoid seeking to replace it with a rigid orthodoxy of their own. In preparation for the coming political combat the GOP should continue to learn from Reagan (who never sanctioned purges or tests of doctrinal purity when it came to party building) but should also recall the triumphant example of an comparably popular Republican leader, Dwight David Eisenhower.

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The American electorate will respond approvingly in 2012, as it did sixty years before. The people, with their conservative temperament, rightly fear attempts to impose purist, doctrinaire solutions on their own fragile, painstakingly assembled, practically constructed businesses and families. They therefore instinctively prefer modest, pragmatic leadership and will almost always avoid those public personalities who look ruthless, uncompromising and, potentially, irresponsible in their commitment to ideology – whether that system of ideas tilts left or right.

It’s much too early to select one presidential contender who can most effectively advance in the Republican cause in 2012, but any thoughtful conservative who’s asked to express a preference at this point would do well to recall one of the most successful campaign slogans in U.S. history: “I LIKE IKE.”