“A Time for Choosing” otherwise known as “The Speech” was delivered in a broadcast in support of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential election. The name of the program, “Rendezvous with Destiny” marked the beginning of Reagan as a national political figure. It turned out to be Reagan’s rendezvous with destiny…

Full text of the speech

Excerpts from “A Time for Choosing”
By Ronald Reagan
Broadcast October 27, 1964

…No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world.
…
There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
…
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down—[up] man’s old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people.But they’ve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century.” Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,” and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document.” He must “be freed,” so that he “can do for us” what he knows “is best.” And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”
…
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a “more compatible use of the land.”
…
Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We’re spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you’ll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

Now—so now we declare “war on poverty,” or “You, too, can be a Bobby Baker.” Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we’re spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn’t duplicated. This is the youth feature. We’re now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we’re going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.
…
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always “against” things—we’re never “for” anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Now—we’re for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we’ve accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary—his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due—that the cupboard isn’t bare?
…
I think we’re for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we’re against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we’re against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
…
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees—federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation’s work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man’s property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.
…
back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died—because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.

Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we’re to choose just between two personalities.
…
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly, there’s a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.
…
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits—not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

Reagan successfully battled back the forces of socialist progressivism in his time but the virus is a tough one to shake. It has now come back full force and with no Reagan on the horizon to put the genie back in the bottle.

Whittaker Chambers was a complex man, early in life, he became caught up in the idealism of Soviet Communism and its purported benevolence toward the common man. Whitaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers April 1, 1901. He was raised in a household with a mentally ill maternal grandmother that caused dissension and apparently drove his father to leave his family. His father supported the family with weekly checks of eight dollars from that time.

Whittaker attended Columbia University, but left school after creating controversy by writing and reviewing his own play, A Play for Puppets, as the editor of the school’s literary magazine Morningside; the play led to a controversy among faculty and students that eventually ended up in the New York City newspapers; the play was considered blasphemous and the notoriety eventually drove Chambers away from academia.

During this period Chamber adopted his mother’s maiden name Whittaker, he later used the name David Chambers.

In 1924, he read Lenin’s book, Soviet’s At Work, he found it to be a compelling book that reflected his family experience that reflected his family’s experience as he wrote “in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class.” He became a Marxist in 1925 and joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). He wrote for and edited The Daily Worker and The New Masses newspapers.

Chambers also supported himself by writing plays and working as a translator, his most famous translation is Bambi, A Life in The Woods, by Felix Salten.

In 1930 or 31 he married a Jewish artist, Ester Schemitz, 1900-1986.

In 1932, he was recruited by the Communist Underground and became a Communist spy.

A son John, was born in 1936, after demands by his Communist handlers that the baby be aborted. Chambers perceived this as Anti-Semitism by the Communists and began to become disillusioned with the Communist Party. Later on, a daughter was born, an event Chambers described as the most important event of his life.

Chambers admitted in a letter to J. Edgar Hoover, that the lifestyle of a spy with the constant traveling allowed him to carry on a gay lifestyle of “cruising” in New York City and Washington, DC. He also revealed numerous heterosexual affairs during this same period from 1933, revealing that the heterosexual affairs were accepted and informally condoned by all the Soviet sympathizers. The revelation of the gay lifestyle resulted in a hostile reaction to his later court testimonies.

In either ‘37 or ‘38, his accounts varied, Whittaker broke with the Communist handlers that directed him. Stalin’s Great Purge, begun in 36, was increasingly disturbing for Chambers, the tipping point was reached in 39 with the Hitler Stalin Non-Aggression Pact. He was also shocked by the murder in Switzerland of Ignatz Reizz, a high ranking Soviet Spy that disagreed with Stalin and the disappearance of fellow spy and close friend Juliet Poyntz, Soon Chambers became concerned for his own life.

Stalin asked for Chambers to come to Russia several times, but Chambers was in mortal fear of being killed and refused.

After secreting rolls of microfilm that were pictures of stolen documents as insurance against a Soviet attempt on his life, he took his family into hiding.

In September of 39, Chambers was convinced to meet with Secretary of State Adolf Berle at Berle’s residence, by Russian born journalist Issac Don Levine. Chambers insisted on Berle’s home because he was afraid he would be compromised by Soviet Agents if they met at the State Department.

Berle showed Roosevelt the information from Chambers and FDR dismissed it with indifference.

Berle showed the information to the FBI and they had two interviews with Chambers, in May of 42 and June of 45. It is assumed that because of the political situation of being aligned with the Soviets and since the Soviets were not considered a threat, no further action was initiated.

Walter Krivitsky, a fellow spy, was found dead in his hotel room and his death was ruled a suicide, but speculation was rampant in Washington that he was killed by the Soviets.

In 45 another Soviet spy, Elizabeth Bentley, defected in November of 45 and corroborated the information supplied by Chambers; suddenly, the FBI began to take Chambers seriously.

In the mean time, Chambers came out of hiding after one year and joined the staff of Time reviewing books and film; at this time there was an internal struggle at Time between Soviet sympathizers and anti-Communists. The magazine’s founder, Henry R. Luce fell in with the anti-Soviet group and Chambers became a Senior editor in 43 and a member of Time’s “Senior Group” the staff that oversees editorial policy. Chambers was at the height of his career and drew international attention with his scathing review of the Yalta Conference, “Ghosts On The Roof” where Alger Hiss was a key participant.

In 1932, Chambers was recruited by the GRU, Red Army General Staff of The Soviet Army, by Alexander Ulanovsky, aka Ulrich, acting as main controller. Later his controller was Josef Peters, whom CPUSA (Communist Party USA) General Secretary, Earl Browder, replaced with Rudy Baker. Chambers claimed that Peters introduced him to Harold Ware who directed this particular Soviet cell.

This is a partial list of Government officials and state department employees that Chambers implicated as being part of the Harold Ward Communist cell.

Henry Collins employee National Recovery Administration, later Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

Lee Pressman assistant general counsel of AAA

Alger Hiss attorney for AAA and the Nye Commission, later with the State Department, key component for the Yalta Conference and the Formation of the UN, working both for the State Department and the UN at the same time.

John Abt Chief of litigation for the AAA, later assistant General Counsel for Work Progress Administration, in 37 pecial Assistant to US Attorney General

Charles Kramer Department of National Labor Relations Board
Nathan Wit employee of AAA, later National Labor Relations Board

George Silverman employee rail road retirement board, later Federal coordinator of Transportation with the US Tariff Commission, later with labor advisory board of National Recovery Administration

Marion Bachrach sister of John Abt office manager Representative John Bernard of the Minnesota Farm Labor Party

John Herman author, assistant to Harold Ware, employee of AAA, courier and document photographer for the Ware Group, introduced Chambers to Hiss

Nathaniel Wey author, would later defect from Communists and give evidence against the others in the Harold Ware Group

Victor Perlo chief of Aviation Secretary of War Production Board, later joined office of price administration, Department of Commerce and division of monetary reserve with the Department of the Treasury

Except for Marion Bachrach, these people were all members of FDR’s New Deal Administration, that is probably why FDR feigned disinterest when presented with the evidence by Berle.

Chambers also implicated:

Noel Field Department of State
Harold Grasser Treasury Department
Ward Pigman National Bureau of Standards for the Treasury
Vincent Reno Mathematician Aberdeen Proving Grounds
Harry Dexter White Director Monetary Research, for Secretary of the Treasury

Chambers was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He gave the names included in the Ware group and gave Hiss’s name as a Communist but not for committing espionage. Hiss denied it and was later convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison.

The Leftist press defended Hiss to the utmost even when it was obvious that the charges were true and to this day maintains his innocence. They maintained that Hiss was sophisticated, impeccably dressed and a Harvard Law Graduate. While Chambers appeared disheveled, was overweight, a terrible dresser and a college dropout. Facts that would have condemned many of us.

Hiss’ first trial in a hung jury voting 8 to 4 for conviction. The second trial brought conviction on two counts of perjury, despite the Hiss Defense producing a psychiatrist who charged that Chambers was a psychopathic personality and a pathological liar.

Of course many of these charges were confirmed by the Venona Cables and by the declassification of Soviet Secret Documents, yet the Left still maintains that there was never a spy network in the State Department and that it was all McCarthyism. The arguments are of course less than weak, they are outright lies.

These State Department jobs have been passed on to the typical Ivy League types hired by the same people who were Soviet Agents in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50‘s and surely the trend has continued; the Ware group was the only cell that was outed, but surely not the only cell in the State Department; the loyalty of the present State Department employees and of the Democrat party has to come in to question, especially among those who try to still argue against Alger Hiss and the Communist past of others.

The Venona Project revealed and confirmed that a huge percentage of US security had been compromised by the Soviets; however, the NSA was reluctant to reveal the facts for fear of tipping off the Soviets that their code had been broken. Refer to, Body Of Secrets, Anatomy Of The Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford, it is truly an eye opening book that takes you through the Cold War to the 21st Century. I doubt that you will ever view politics or our politicians the same way after reading this book.

Chamber left Time in 1948, he wrote for periodicals like Fortune ad Life utl hiring on with William F. Buckley in 1955 at National Review. He was once again controversial after writing a provocative review of Ayn Rand’s, Atlas Shrugged.

Chambers died of Angina at his farm in Maryland in 1961.

Ronald Reagan credited Chamber’s book Witness as being the single most contributing factor in his conversion from being a New Deal Democrat to becoming America’s most famous Conservative. President Reagan awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal Of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

Witness was a New York best seller for over a year. His second book, Cold Friday, was published posthumously in 1964; it predicted the fall of Soviet Communism through problems with its satellite countries.

Remarks by President Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day
delivered 6 June 1984 in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

Full text here.

Mata has the video below.

More photos:

President Reagan greeting former U.S. Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France. 6/6/84

Former first lady Nancy Reagan wipes a tear as she stands with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in front of the newly-unveiled statue of her late husband, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Capitol Hill in Washington June 3, 2009.

My Favorite Reagan Photo

I took the above on October 12, 1984 when President Reagan took one of the last “Whistlestop” train tours through Ohio. Somehow, the bus tours of today just don’t have the same feel as the classic whistlestop using the Ferdinand Magellan, or Car One. Train buffs may find the history of the Ferdinand Magellan here.

The speech (sixth item here) was classic Reagan and it’s themes are just as valid today. Just substitute Obama for the name Mondale:

…[T]he American people are getting the full flavor of the very clear choice that is facing them. It’s a choice between two fundamentally different ways of governing and two distinct ways of looking at America.

My opponent, Mr. Mondale, offers a future of pessimism, fear, and limits, compared to ours of hope, confidence, and growth. Now, I know that his intentions are good, and I know that he’s sincere in what he believes. But he sees government as an end in itself, and we see government as belonging to you, the people, and only a junior partner in your lives.

My opponent and his allies live in the past. They’re celebrating the old and failed policies of an era that has passed them by, as if history had skipped over the 4 Carter-Mondale years. On the other hand, millions of Americans join us in boldly charting a new course for the future.

~~~

All this year he’s lavished his campaign with promises that staggered even his Democratic opponents. But, of course, there is a predictable answer by one who makes so many promises. The answer is higher taxes, and massive new tax increases are precisely what he proposes.

~~~

You know, in our debate I got a little angry at all those times he distorted my record. And on one occasion I was just about to say to him very sternly, “Mr. Mondale, you’re taxing my patience.” [Laughter] And then I caught myself. Why should I give him another idea? That’s the only tax he hasn’t thought of. [Laughter]

Four years later I had the privilege of working for President Reagan in the White House Political Office as we set about electing the first President Bush. Description of that experience is found in “Salute to the Gipper.”

Reagan’s Humor

The “Great Communicator’s” gift was his naturally upbeat and humor filled personality. He could even make partisan speeches about Democrats funny. Here are two short examples:

Jason Gelernter in the Weekly Standard:

Ronald Reagan was one of the few who looked straight at this pitiful wreck, grasped the big picture, and refused to accept it. He was no genius like Churchill, no all-conquering statesman-politico like Roosevelt, but his depth of vision and sheer courage were comparable to theirs, and he belongs with Roosevelt and Churchill among the world-changers. He was even attacked in the same ways they were: He was supposedly a charming lightweight bubble-brain like FDR and a fanatic warmongering ideologue like Churchill. Today we have another president who aspires to look the world in the eye and change it, and all we can say is God help him and may he prove to be as big a man as Ronald Reagan.

Paul Kengor at American Thinker:

More than any aspect of George W. Bush, I know his faith — having written a book on the subject. I know he acutely identifies with Christ’s passion. He understands that one who stays true to principle, who tries to do right, and who stumbles on the way to his destination, sometimes cannot earn his rewards until his earthly life is finished.

Such, too, is pure leadership. Americans, whether they realize it or not, have just witnessed eight years of remarkable presidential leadership, especially compared to the poll-driven president who preceded Bush. Sure, there’s much George W. Bush should have done better. As someone who has studied Ronald Reagan, I wish Bush had a sliver of Reagan’s communication skills to win hearts and minds, to shape public perception. I wish he had better people working for him on Iraq in the bad years. Still, this was leadership.

What was the mission? What was the reward that must wait?

As an effective primer, I direct readers to November 2003, when Bush gave the best speech of his presidency, the text of which ought to be required reading in every Poli Sci class, and by Bush friend and foe alike. In that speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush invoked Ronald Reagan’s June 1982 Westminster Address, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and FDR’s Four Freedoms, in concluding: “The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country…. We [Americans] believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history…. [T]his is, above all, the age of liberty.”

Bush sought to take liberty to the area of the world where it has been most resistant: the Arab-Muslim Middle East. He sought to sow a long-term democratic transformation in the worst of regions, before it went nuclear. He looked to take Reagan’s “March of Freedom” into the region with the starkest “freedom deficit.” He endeavored to initiate a “democratic peace” in that cesspool of terror.

He pursued that most commendable task knowing he will not live to witness its fruits, if they occur, and with no political gain for himself and his party — precisely the opposite. If the sacrifice works, Bush will have changed the course of history, but only after he leaves this world.

There is another Bush speech I find somewhat profound in retrospect — a witty but forgotten commencement address to his alma mater, Yale University, on May 21, 2001. Recalling his life after Yale, where he had studied history, Bush averred:

When I left here, I didn’t have much in the way of a life plan. I knew some people who thought they did, but it turned out that we were all in for ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story, and along the way, we start to realize we are not the author. We begin to understand that life is ours to live but not to waste and that the greatest rewards are found in the commitments we make with our whole hearts — to the people we love and to the causes that earn our sacrifice.

Bush said that four months before September 11, 2001, and roughly two years before he sent troops into Iraq — the unexpected causes that earned his sacrifice. It was his plan for Iraq that began his descent into the worst disapproval ratings in the history of Gallup’s presidential polling.

It should be noted that an FA reader (a Bush critic) left a link to a Vanity Fair piece which I find useful here, in light of the reference to his Yale speech:

Mrs. Bush congratulates me on my recent graduation. Then the president asks in which direction my chair was facing. At the ceremony, Yale had given him an honorary degree, and during his speech, in a remarkable act of disrespect, a large portion of my graduating class had turned their seats 180 degrees, facing their backs to the president.

“I’m really sorry about that,” I say. “It was an embarrassment to our class and to the university.”

For a moment, the president—a Yale man from a family of Yale men—looks down at his plate, like a child who’s been scolded. “Yeah, that was a tough one.”

Bush, the man who refused to be a weathervane president making policy decisions based upon popularity polling, is not unaffected nor out of touch with public opinion. But he understands the fickle nature of opinion polls. He took his lumps then, with grace, as he does today:

Bush, for his part, met his largely hostile crowd face on with self-deprecating remarks and a playful tone that endeared some audience members and offended others.

Here’s the way WaPo reported it:

As Bush, in blue academic robes, accepted his award and rose to speak, the graduates raised a sea of yellow protest signs with slogans such as “Conservation, not Consumption,” and “Execute Justice, not People.” Students booed, hissed and heckled the president, and some turned their backs on him, made gagging sounds or shouted “Go away!”

Students from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies wore miniature power plants on their mortar boards, burning incense through tiny smokestacks. Scott Hedges, whose power-plant graduation cap even had a toy coal car, joked that “emissions requirements were waived” for his polluting cap under Bush’s new energy policy.

More than 170 Yale professors boycotted the ceremony because they said Bush was not worthy of his honorary degree. Students wore stickers declaring “Got Arsenic?” and “5-4,” a reference to the Supreme Court decision that essentially handed Bush the presidency. A banner flying from a dorm room window portrayed Bush as Mad magazine’sAlfred E. Neuman wearing a pin that said “Worry.”

The angry reaction to a GOP president was no surprise on a liberal campus

He had been in office for only 5 months.

Some critics say they gave President Bush a fair shake and a decent chance; they point out his high approval rating right after Sept. 11th.

I don’t buy it. I think most decent Americans who call themselves patriots would have rallied around the sitting president by default no matter who it was. From DAY ONE, many of Bush’s staunchest critics never accepted him as their president.

Recall the protests in 2000 against his inauguration. Was it just about the Florida recount fiasco? Recall some of the fear and protests against Reagan’s election to the presidency and how protesters worldwide thought he’d plunge us into a nuclear holocaust:

When he traveled to Europe in 1982 he faced massive protests in France, Britain, Italy, and especially Germany. Historians and philosophers of history will be faced one day (when they wake up) with a puzzle. Compare Reagan’s trip to Europe in ‘82 with JFK’s two decades earlier. Both arrived bearing the same message: America will stand by Europe. America and Europe will face down the Soviet threat together. But Europe loved Kennedy to pieces and did not love Reagan at all. Why? The answer must lie, at least partly, in a sign waved at Reagan by a European peace-marcher in 1982: “I am afraid.” As Europe steadily disarmed and her enemies did not, she grew (not surprisingly) steadily less bold and more scared. ‘63, ‘82, ‘03; the deterioration is sad and clear.

The answer also lies in the “D” and the “R”.

President Bush #43 has endured more worldwide hysteria and distortions to his character and policies than any president before him. Given the growth and evolution of the internet these last 8 years, perhaps the volume of vitriol and conspiratorial beliefs is in part a reflection of the information and disinformation super highway [sarcasm] (created by global warming climate change alarmist, Al Gore) [/sarcasm].

It amazes me that there are still liberals out there who fail to recognize and concede that the overall mainstream media tilts left of center. I suppose some of them are so far to the left, they think center-left is “right wing”.

Note some of the whining from liberal elites in regards to the cost of the Bush 2004 inaugural. How many of those same journalists today are deploring the disproportionate escalation of inaugural price-tagging during a time of troubling economic downturn?

The same happened for another GOP president’s re-election inauguration:

4. Less is more?
After criticism for his first inauguration in 1981, which cost $16.3 million for nine white-tie balls, President Ronald Reagan attempted to scale back the budget and have a more “for the people” celebration. However, the budget ballooned from $12 million to $20 million, and there were 10 balls instead of nine and two galas instead of one. Apparently, “scaling back” meant that the balls were black tie instead of white and the entertainment was less high-brow than at previous events, according to the Washington Post.

Kengor concludes:

George W. Bush took up his cross, walked the walk, and then silently let his persecutors enthusiastically carry out his political crucifixion. He committed his whole heart to a great reward earnable only much later.

I miss President Bush already!

There seems to be a civil war going on. Hard to the right Conservatives who reluctantly jumped aboard the straight talk express- not because they were for McCain so much as they were against Obama (and for Palin)- are now angrily throwing McCain under the straight talk bus.

A small camp of conservatives blame the Palin pick. She rejuvenated the base but turned off independents, whether through legitimate concerns of competence, or fabricated, pro-Obama media irrationality. Nevertheless, by Sept 10th, she helped McCain come up 8 points from behind, only to lose that groundswell with the timing of the economic collapse.

Patrick Buchanan:

Why did John McCain lose?

Let’s start with those “headwinds” into which he was flying.

The president of the United States, the leader of his party, was at Nixon-Carter levels of approval, 25 percent, going into Election Day.

Sixty-two percent of the nation thought the economy was the No. 1 issue, and 93 percent thought the economy was bad. Two-thirds of the nation thought the war McCain championed was a mistake, and 80 percent to 90 percent thought the country was on the wrong course.

As a political athlete, measured by charisma and communications skills, McCain is not even in the same league with Barack Obama. He was outspent by vast sums, and his political organization was far inferior.

It is a wonder McCain was even competitive, dealt such a hand.

8 years of President Bush and the relentless media drumbeat pounding into voter consciousness the myth that it’s been nothing short of 8 years of absolute failed policies from Bush lied, people died, Hurricane Katrina, to today’s economy, the legacy of Bush as it stands today, was an albatross around the neck of the McCain campaign. McCain offered up more of the McSame, if you vote him into office.

If movement activists within the Party wish to throw CINOs under the bus, don’t just end it there with McCain. Throw President Bush under there, as well.

Bruce Walker:

President Bush, admired for his personal honor and deep faith, was respected by many conservatives, but he was hardly a conservative himself. No man who nominated Harriett Meiers to the Supreme Court could be considered a true conservative. Anyone who could embrace the vision of Ted Kennedy for our national education policy was not a true conservative. Anyone who could create a new entitlement for prescription drugs was not a true conservative.

Bush was simply a decent man who was not a Leftist Democrat. As McCain found out, being a decent man who is not a Leftist Democrat means nothing at all to the Left. Both men, like Bob Dole and like George H. Bush, are good Americans, admirable people, and men blissfully unaware that the Left is not just waging battles on issues like more socialism but are rather waging war on our entire way of life. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Bush Sr. were not wicked failures because they were not conservatives. They were more like Chamberlain at Munich: They did not grasp the true depth and nature of their adversary and, they thought, their adversary might be reasonable.

Jonah Goldberg:

For some liberals, this is clearly just a tactical pose. Bush is unpopular, so they hope to discredit conservatism by marrying it to Bush, just as Barack Obama succeeded by painting John McCain as a Bush clone. This is the moment, as Obama might say, to permanently block the right-hand fork in the road so the country can only move leftward.

The view on the right is very different, and the debate about the Bush years will largely determine the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

Bush’s brand of conservatism was always a controversial innovation on the right. Recall that in 2000 he promised to be a “different kind of Republican,” and he kept his word. His partner in passing the No Child Left Behind Act was liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. Bush’s prescription drug benefit — the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society — was hugely controversial on the right. He signed the McCain-Feingold bill to the dismay of many Republicans who’d spent years denouncing campaign-finance “reform” as an assault on freedom of speech. The fight over his immigration plan nearly tore the conservative movement apart.

This is not to suggest that Bush was in fact a liberal president. Politics is not binary like that. There were conservative triumphs — and failures — to the Bush presidency. He appointed two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court. He tried to privatize Social Security, though that failed for sundry reasons.

His much-touted “compassionate conservatism” was rejected by many on the right as a slap to traditional conservatives and an intellectual betrayal of Reaganite principles. It was a rhetorical capitulation to Bill Clinton’s feel-your-pain political posturing and an embrace of the assumptions that have been the undergirding of liberalism since the New Deal. That is, the measure of one’s compassion is directly proportionate to one’s support for large and costly government programs.

And Bush admitted as much. In an interview with the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, Bush explained that he rejected William F. Buckley’s brand of anti-government conservatism. Conservatives had to “lead” and to be “activist,” he said. In 2003, Bush proclaimed that when “somebody hurts” government has to “move.” This wasn’t a philosophy of government as much as gooey marketing posing as principle. Ronald Reagan would have spontaneously burst into flames if he’d uttered such sentiments.

Dissent from Bush was muted for years, in large part because of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Conservatives, right or wrong, rallied to support their president, particularly in the face of shrill partisan attacks from Democrats who seemed more interested in tearing down the commander in chief than winning a war. But the Bush chapter is closing, and the fight to write the next one has begun.

Conservatives have criticized Bush for straying from conservative principles of fiscal responsibility, smaller government (when will Republicans begin walking the talk? Did even Reagan?), and on the issue of immigration. But they have also rallied to his defense against the political onslaught of those on the left who have inexplicably painted him as a far right conservative.

David Brooks examines whether traditionalists or reformers hold the magic formula to winning future elections.

Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.

Ann Coulter sees Brooks as part of the problem.

Hugh Hewitt is more level-headed and pragmatic about it:

It is a fine column and sure to get e-mailed around, sparking snarky comments along the way.

But it vastly understates the complexity of the situation within the conservative movement and the GOP today, and largely because most of the names it names are Manhattan-Beltway media or organizational elitists. Many of these folks are my friends and colleagues and they do great work, but they don’t and can’t drive a movement or a party. Leaders and activists do that, and they do it from outside of New York or D.C.

More analysis

Some have had it “up to here” with the Republican Party as a whole and are ready to kick the GOP to the curb, as well, going independent.

The argument goes that the reason we lost is because we, as a political party, abandoned our conservative principles and ran too far to the center; not only this, but the Party itself has diluted itself of conservatism. Some purists seem to want to purge the Party of RINOs (laughably inaccurate label…what they should really mean is “CINO”: Conservative in Name Only. But I digress…) and wishy-washy center-right conservatives (like myself).

The thing is, most purists angry about the watered-down brand of conservatism they’ve been getting for the last decade, still came out against Obama if not exactly for McCain. Purists alone inhabit too small a tent to win elections. They need the center-right moderates as well as the independent voters to win in elections where the country is evenly divided. The Democrats this year, simply had the superior-packaged candidate who campaigned against Bush-fatigued Americans (Conservatives tired of defending a good president who’s governed too much to the center but has kept us safe; Liberals on the relentless assault who blame a fascist president for endangering us, taking away civil liberties, torture, credibility and standing in the world, etc., etc.) as well as the illusion of being a centrist moderate with promises of bipartisanship and “reaching across the aisle”.

2008 was not a landslide victory, nor indictment of conservative ideology.

An ideology that has been allowed to be defined by the opposition as a movement of racists, bigots, religious zealots, close-mindedness, selfish, for the rich and against the poor.

Hispanics and blacks share some of the same values as echoed by conservatism; yet they still vote against the Republican Party which has been characterized by Democrats as racist, xenophobic, and against the middle class and poor folk.

Liberals know what ideas they believe in. Does the right?

Regarding the label RINO:

Those who make war on RINO’s, however, ought to confront an obvious question: would you really prefer that such people drop the Republican designation? How does it help if politicians or office-holders with whom you disagree leave your party and join the opposition? When alleged “RINO” Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the GOP and joined the Democrats, it gave them control of the US Senate. When another RINO, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, lost his Senate seat in 2006, it also gave the Democrats control; if Chafee had won, we’d still have a Republican majority and GOP committee chairs. The truth is that no successful political party has ever been built on ideological purity. You can construct a majority coalition by bringing people into your party, not by driving them away. It’s childish and self-destructive to wage war based on some notion of “real conservatism” with those who want to align themselves with your side. Ronald Reagan himself used to say that “if somebody agrees with me 70% of the time, rather than 100%, that doesn’t make him my enemy.”

The definition of what constitutes a “RINO” seems to have expanded in 2008 by the angry right who lionize Reagan and claim ownership of his legacy. For many of these so-called, self-fashioned “Reagan footsoldiers”, Ronald Reagan would not be Reagan enough for them today, by their own measuring rod standard of conservatism.

Hugh Hewitt’s 2004 book, If it’s not Close, They Can’t Cheat, is a primer on how to win elections. And it doesn’t advocate for rooting out RINOs or movement activists and fanatics. It does advocate for a strategy on how to win elections by building a coalition of regulars, occasionals, principled pragmatists, movement activists, and fringe fanatics.

….insistence on personal taste is disastrous for political parties. There are only two real choices in America- Republican or Democrat. To demand more is to be disappointed before you begin, and to hand a victory to the set of choices most repellent to you.

Let me emphasize that if you walk away from politics because you can’t have everything your way, you are helping the people win who are least like you and most opposed to your views.

~~~

Majorities matter. Majorities matter. Majorities matter.

Sometimes when a purist Republican calls my show and denounces thir or that RINO (Republican in name only), I despair of ever teaching anyone the importance of majorities. For some reason, conservatives and especially evangelicals are stubborn when it comes to the importance of majorities.

These conservatives will talk sanctimoniously about voting on principle, or sitting an election out to “teach the Republican Party a lesson”.

These purists cannot bring themselves to vote for Republicans who don’t share their particular views, even if the election of a Republican majority in Congress hangs in the balance.

~~~

In short, the loss of one vote- even though it was the vote of the most liberal Republican senator- caused enormous damage to the Republican agenda, the president’s agenda, and the conservative agenda. Confirmations stalled. Bills died. The platform from which the agenda could be spotlighted and sold collapsed.

That’s how government operates. In a majority rule system like ours, either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party is in charge.

~~~

Some conservatives put fingers in their ears and make noises in an attempt to avoid the message, as though shouting ever changed words printed on a page. They don’t like the system. They want it their own way.

Just as there’s no dealing with tantrum-throwing two-year-olds, there’s no dealing with some voters. No appeals to reason and no number of repeated demonstrations of basic math matter to them.

These are not real conservatives. These are not even real single-interest voters. These are self-centered and selfish voters

~~~

you should always ask yourself if the candidate you support in a primary is electable in a general election. You have to look ahead to the general election’s likely opponent and ask if your candidate has the capabilities to win the contest that matters. It is no victory to support a candidate who wins a primary, only to lose the general election.

Yet those who don’t take into consideration a candidate’s electability can smugly feel good about themselves, “at least I stood on principle.”

Another lesson:

From Hugh Hewitt’s 2004 book, If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat, pg77:

Republicans need to keep a majority of Senate seats in Republican hands; thus, we need liberal GOP senators as well as very conservative GOP senators and all those in between.

Which brings me to the subject of incumbents, especially those of your own party that you don’t like much.

Throughout 2003, a small group of conservative activists attempted to rally support to the insurgent candidacy of Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey, who declared against incumbent Republican Senator Arlen Specter- a liberal Republican.

The Toomey candidacy came very close to unseating Specter, but it failed by a few thousand votes because serious conservatives understood that Specter keeps the Senate in GOP hands. Even had Toomey won in the primary, he would have been left open to withering attacks in the general election- with no money and Specter “moderates” practicing paybacks- as well as leaving disaffected the GOP voters who have stood with the iconoclastic Specter for many years.

Similar efforts have been launched in the recent past, including one against John McCain by Arizona conservatives who believe McCain to be insufficiently pure.

All such efforts against incumbents of all ideological shades are ill conceived and harmful, with one exception: where an incumbent is too weak to win reelection.

This happened in 2002 in New Hampshire where Senator Bob Smith, the Senate’s oddest Republican duck and an unreliable Republican- he bolted the party once, only to return later- was trailing the likely Democratic nominee in polls. A congressman, John Sununu, took on Smith in a primary and won, and he went on to hold the seat for the GOP in the fall 2002 elections. It was the sort of challenge to an incumbent that made sense, but it is rare.

Neither Specter nor McCain is a weak incumbent in general elections. Conservative purists should not only leave both men alone; they should enthusiastically support their reelection efforts. All the money and effort that goes into campaigns to push them out would be far better spent on helping folk like John Thune in South Dakota, a more conservative candidate than either McCain or Specter, but also a Republican running against a powerful Democrat- Tom Daschle.

Please absorb this basic fact about American politics: majorities, not individuals, govern. Without an understanding of this, the GOP’s return to near permanent minority status- and the powerlessness it includes- is all but guaranteed.

John Hawkins has had enough of Mitch McConnell. Many movement conservatives have long had enough of John McCain and were absolutely livid when he won the Party nomination. Still, most of them were smart enough to come to bat for him as a vote against Obama, if not for McCain. But since he lost the election, rather than sharing collective blame, the fingers are pointed to where the buck stops.

Ann Coulter reignites her disdain for McCain:

How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that “moderate,” “independent,” “maverick” Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?

~~~

After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities.

We’ll start with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Then we shall march through the states of New Hampshire and South Carolina — states that must never, ever be allowed to hold early Republican primaries again.

Personally, I’d rather throw Ann Coulter under the bus (but won’t, because I’d rather have her within the Party even more than she wants wishy-washy moderates out of it). She’s an uber-conservative who oozes purist ideology. Yet rather than successfully get across the conservative message, her system of delivery only succeeds in alienation. Anyone think she could win an election? For the most part, I see her as part of the problem, not a solution. It’s not that I don’t share in much of her conservativism; it’s her intolerance for those who don’t live up to her standards and interpretation of it. If she wants the perfect presidential candidate who she can agree with on 100% of the issues, she should run for office. If she only wants those in her party with whom she agrees with 100% of the time as the only true conservatives, then she will inhabit a lonely small tent of election losers, relegating the Republican Party to an irrelevant 3rd, 4th, or last party (What was McCain’s lifetime ACU ranking again? Around 82%. Apparently not good enough for the party purists).

Read:
Poking my thumb in the eye of conservatives for their own good
John McCain: Republican Apostate?

Michael Medved:

No movement in U.S. political history has ever benefited from a purification process; purges always weaken or destroy a party’s vitality and viability, as even 1930’s Communists could attest. Nothing is more obvious in the American political process than the proposition that you win elections by attracting wafflers, moderates, dissenters, and independent spirits to your side; you lose elections by driving away such uncertain souls.

Of course, far right conservatives want to attract such voters in order to win based upon conservative ideas; for some inexplicable reason, though, they don’t seem to want them within the Republican Party. Not unless they are turned on by conservative ideology to the degree that they too become conservative purists.

Purists ruin movements, though. They lose elections. There just aren’t enough voters out there who think narrowly enough to satisfy the Party purists. It’s unlikely, too, that they will ever find their dream presidential candidate because the only way to find someone who will agree with them 100% of the time, would be to run for office themselves.

The following point is going to find disagreement amongst those who are hard to the right, like Coulter and Limbaugh and who fashion themselves as “Reagan conservatives”, claiming we’ve strayed from his brand of conservatism:

The greatest conservative of them all, Ronald Reagan, always understood this principle. At the moment of his greatest triumph, when he finally captured his party’s nomination in 1980, he didn’t turn to a “pure conservative” or a “true conservative” as his running mate. Instead, he chose party unity and selected George Herbert Walker Bush, a prime example of the Ivy League, country club Republican many right-wingers instinctively despised. Reagan also used Bush’s friend and aide, the notorious moderate James Baker, as his chief of staff. Unlike his mentor Barry Goldwater (who lost in a landslide), the Gipper understood throughout his career that a party that achieved “pure conservative” status would become a “pure loser” in competition for swing voters.

Moreover, history shows conclusively that a bitter defeat never pushes a conservative party farther right, or pushes a liberal party further left. Instead, political organizations that experience harsh rejection from the electorate move instinctively, inevitably toward the center in quest of precisely those middle-of-the-road voters who abandoned them in the previous contest. After outspoken conservative Barry Goldwater led the GOP to an overwhelming defeat in 1964, the nominees that followed (Nixon twice and then Gerald Ford) clearly represented the more moderate wing of the party. When unapologetic liberal George McGovern brought the Democrats a ruinous 49-state drubbing in 1972, they followed with a long series of relatively centrist, purportedly non-ideological candidates (Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore), reliably shunning the strong leftist contingent within their coalition.

There’s been some disagreement between me and others regarding how Senator Obama ran his campaign. I agree that his big spending proposals and party platform were not “centrist” by any means; and anyone who looked at his skimpy voting record in the U.S. Senate, his record in the Illinois State Senate, and his history of associations to radical activists and gravitation toward Marxist ideology, would fear him as a radically far left liberal. Furthermore, I don’t see the Democratic Party as moving toward the center to win elections, but more and more, being overtaken by Moveon.org… and becoming the party of Michael Moore and George Soros.

However, Obama’s image in how he portrayed himself to the American public- in how the media was complicit in suppressing anything that suggested differently, for the most part- was as a radically “centrist” liberal candidate. (Consider his inflexible record on abortion; you’d think Catholics would overwhelmingly vote against him; McCain’s record on supporting conservative judges and protecting the unborn is solid).

Here’s a useful checklist of Obama’s campaign promises, btw.

There is simply no historical model for the process of party defeat, purification and rejuvenation that some deluded conservatives recommend. Consider the sad state of the Republican Party during the 1930’s and ‘40’s. In 1928, Herbert Hoover represented the most moderate, or even progressive, nominee since Teddy Roosevelt in 1904. When Hoover got crushed by FDR in 1932, the Republicans didn’t turn back to solid conservatives in the Coolidge tradition. Instead they kept nominating moderates (Alf Landon, former Democrat Wendell Wilkie, New York progressive Tom Dewey twice, and then the non-ideological General Eisenhower) in the often forlorn hope that they could woo wavering independents or conservative Democrats away from the New Deal coalition. Not even five consecutive defeats on the Presidential level led the Republicans to shift to a more conservative, ideologically rigorous posture.

I believe in conservative ideology. I don’t believe the American public rejected conservatism; nor did they reject the watered-down brand of conservatism that McCain represents to so many angry conservatives (for those who argue there wasn’t a conservative- other than Palin- in the bunch). After all, Palin was on McCain’s ticket; and although she energized the base and gave us our own rock star, she failed to attract the all-valuable independent votes as her character was savagely dragged through the mud and she was portrayed as not only ignorant, but as a far right Bible-thumping conservative hillbilly nut rather than the outside-the-beltway reformer willing to take on and weed out corrupting influences from her own political party. She, more so than Obama, is a true Washington outsider, living amongst the Joe Six-Packs and Joe the Plumbers; not the Joe Six-Terms.

Michael Medved:

Some of the nation’s most influential conservatives (on talk radio and elsewhere) have begun promoting the odd idea that John McCain lost the election because he ran as a “moderate” and a “maverick” rather than a “true conservative.” According to this argument, the GOP nominee could have won the White House had he only “taken the gloves off” and run to the right, without apology. This logic suggests that candidates fare better when they display ideological rigor and consistency, and that Republicans can never succeed by going after moderate and independent votes.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to test this theory. McCain appeared on the 2008 ballot with some of the nation’s most outspoken, hard line conservatives, who won nomination for governor or US Senator. If the argument is true that you can win more votes by appealing to right-wingers, rather than aiming for the center, then conservative Senate and gubernatorial candidates should have out-performed McCain, particularly in solidly Republican Southern or Midwestern states.

In fact, the results from Tuesday show that McCain did better than his conservative running mates—and in some cases, much better. In New Mexico, for instance, the Presidential nominee ran three points ahead of the hard-line, anti-immigration candidate Steve Pearce, who ran for an open Senate seat. McCain also drew three points more than incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, six percentage points more than Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, five points more than re-elected Senate leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, two points more than Senator Roger Wicker in Mississippi. The McCain-Palin ticket also drew twelve points more in Virginia than former governor Jim Gilmore, running for an open Senate seat, ran thirteen points ahead of conservative challenger John Kennedy in Louisiana, and three points more than impassioned, eloquent right-wing Congressman Bob Schaffer in Colorado (running for another open Senate seat). Joel Dykstra, a militant pro-life leader in the South Dakota legislature, challenged ailing Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, and drew only 38% of the vote, in a state McCain carried easily with 53% — a huge fifteen point difference in their strength at the ballot box.

In fact, McCain ran well ahead of Republican nominees for Senate and governorships almost everywhere – except in those cases when statewide GOP candidates had cultivated their own reputations for independence, centrism, and ideological flexibility.

For instance, Senator Susan Collins of Maine beat back a well-financed Democratic challenge and drew an amazing 61% in her state – where McCain got only 40%. Likewise, Gordon Smith in Oregon (who may still retain his seat after the long tabulation process concludes) advertised his willingness to work with Democrats (including Barack Obama) and ran four points ahead of McCain. Lindsey Graham (derided by anti-immigration activists as “Lindsey Graham-nesty”) won easy re-election with 58% — four points ahead of McCain’s own strong showing in the Palmetto State. And in Minnesota, in a complicated three-man race, independent-minded Norm Coleman seems to have earned a squeaker victory in a state that McCain lost by a full ten points.

In other words, uncompromising “movement” conservatives performed far worse than the GOP’s “maverick” Presidential nominee—even in some of the nation’s most conservative states (Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota). On the other hand, Senators (and gubernatorial candidates like Washington’s Dino Rossi) who stressed their independence, bi-partisanship and non-ideological approach to the issues (Collins, Graham, Smith, Coleman) drew more votes than McCain in their states – even when those states were as conservative as re-elected Senator Graham’s South Carolina. In any event, there’s scant evidence that McCain (who generally ran more strongly than his statewide counterparts) in any dragged down local candidates in his losing but gallant campaign. If anything, some of those local candidates seem to have dragged down McCain.

In other words, the undeniable facts about the recently concluded election offer a complete, consistent, and powerful rebuttal to the misguided notion that running to the right as a “true conservative” pays off more than going after moderate and independent voters. In every state of the union, no matter how bright red its hue, comparisons between McCain’s results and those of statewide Senate and gubernatorial candidates suggest that Republicans do better when they target the rich cache of votes at the center of the political spectrum. The exit polling for 2008 showed that only 34% of voters called themselves “conservative” (and McCain won an overwhelming 78% of those votes). Meanwhile, 45% of this year’s voters said they were “moderate.” This means that even if a candidate secures every available conservative vote he’d still lose in a landslide without a strong showing among moderates and independents. (McCain lost self-described moderates to Obama by a modest margin, and thereby lost the election).

Old Soldier makes a solid rebuttal point to Medved’s comparison of Congressional seats to campaigning for the presidency:

First of all, the comparison is drawn between McCain’s bid for the presidency, and senator’s and representative’s bids for congressional seats. This is an apples and oranges comparison in that congressional politicians have a localized base to which they must appeal; be it a state or a district. A presidential candidate must appeal to the whole nation or at least enough to garner 271 electoral votes. There is a world of difference between local and national level constituency bases.

There is a difference, but I’m not sure if there is a “world of difference”.

Medved concludes:

Appealing to the quirky, restless, independent-minded voters who see themselves traveling down the middle of the road shouldn’t require compromising core conservative principles. Appealing to the political center shouldn’t involve abandoning ideals but it may require adopting a more cooperative, pragmatic, non-ideological tone. Conservatives have already found the right substance on the issues but they still need to learn to adopt the right style in presenting it.

Of course, John Hawkins asks 15 good questions of those who think the GOP should campaign toward the center:

#1) If both the GOP and the Democrats support bigger government, how does the country survive long term given the size of the debt we already have and the deficits we’re running right now? In other words, how can running massive deficits possibly be sustainable over the long haul?

#2) If the GOP were to officially become a big government party, wouldn’t there be a real danger of having a large third party spring up that would represent the considerable number (I’d say a majority, at least in the abstract) of Americans who do want smaller government and less spending?

#3) If the GOP becomes a big government party, how do you see us differentiating ourselves from the Democratic Party? Do we spend almost as much as they do, but not quite as much? Do we spend even more? Do we favor deficit spending, but just on different things? Isn’t there a real danger that Democrats — since their base tends to generally be OK with excessive spending — could simply outbid us on anything we offered to the American people?

#4) Since the majority of the GOP’s core supporters don’t agree with “moderate” positions like big spending or amnesty, feel very strongly about it, and feel those positions harm the party politically, how can the party continue to hew to those positions over the long term without being permanently at odds with the people who should be their strongest supporters?

#5) Let’s do the math on amnesty: there are roughly 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are Hispanics. Hispanics broke 70/30 for the Democrats in 2006 and 69/31 for the Dems in 2008 according to the latest exit poll data. If the split stayed at 70/30 and 12-20 million new illegals were made citizens, that would mean the Democrats would add another 4.8 to 8 million potential new voters as a result of amnesty. The top end of that scale is a larger margin than what Barack Obama won by in 2008.

Additionally, even if the GOP improved our numbers with Hispanics — which we certainly need to do — we’ve never come close to getting 50% of the Hispanic vote. With all that in mind, isn’t amnesty political suicide for the GOP?

#6) Some people tend to assume that Hispanics vote almost entirely on the illegal immigration issue, but I would assert that there is very little objective evidence for that. George Bush and John McCain are the two biggest proponents of amnesty in the Republican Party and neither of them is particularly popular with Hispanics today. In fact, according to exit polls, against a candidate who was thought to be weak with Hispanics, John McCain only got 31% of the Hispanic vote. So, what objective evidence convinces you that Hispanics vote largely on illegal immigration and that if the GOP supports amnesty, it will get us over the 50% threshold with Hispanics?

#7) Given that the mainstream media overwhelmingly supports the Democrats, it’s extremely important for the GOP to have the support of conservative talk radio hosts, magazines, and the RightRoots. Since the new media is overwhelmingly comprised of conservatives, how does a moderate GOP gain their genuine support over the long haul?

#8) Follow-up question to #7: If the GOP can’t get the new media back enthusiastically on its side — which is likely to be the case unless there are changes on spending and illegal immigration policies — how does the GOP get the base fired up? In other words, if Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, etc., etc., are telling everyone who’ll listen that the Republicans stink, how does the Republican Party work around that?

#9) Setting aside the conservative media, obviously the conservative movement is lacking energy and passion right now. Many people, myself included, would say that this has a lot to do with the position that the GOP has been taking on immigration and spending issues. How does the GOP get conservatives supporting the GOP again, instead of just opposing the Democrats, if the party continues to pursue big government policies and amnesty?

#10) If amnesty, big government, and deficit spending are winning issues for the Republican Party, why did we take such a huge beating in 2006 and 2008 despite pursuing those very policies?

#11) Over the last two elections, moderate Republicans haven’t quite been wiped out, but percentage wise, they’ve suffered much higher losses than conservative Republicans. If moderate Republicans can’t even win elections in moderate districts now, why would we want to adopt that losing philosophy across our whole party when conservatives are winning at a much, much higher clip across the country?

#12) As moderate columnist David Brooks has said,

There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers. National candidates who begin with reformist records — Giuliani, Romney or McCain — immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base.

So, there are no moderate think tanks, no moderate donors, the new media is overwhelmingly conservative, the Republican base and activists are overwhelmingly conservative — shouldn’t that tell people something about whether the idea of a moderate GOP is workable?

#13) Follow-up question to #12: If a moderate Republican Party is workable, how do you make it work without the new media, think tanks, money, or an excited base on your side?

#14) John McCain was the most moderate candidate the GOP has run since Richard Nixon. In fact, he’s the standard bearer of the “moderate Republican” wing of the party and yet the media trashed him, he had trouble raising money — and other moderates, including prominent moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley, voted for Obama. In the end, McCain received almost 4 million less votes than Bush did in 2006. Doesn’t that suggest that moderate Republican candidates may have trouble raising money, retaining moderates, and generating the enthusiasm from the Republican base that will be needed to win?

#15) When the Democratic Party was out of power, the party moved to the left, not to the center. They obstructed the GOP at every opportunity, put hard-core left-wingers in charge of everything, and ran an extremely liberal candidate in 2008. Granted, they also had moderate Democrats that they ran in states and districts that leaned red, but those people are almost completely locked out of power and their agenda is largely ignored. Since that strategy worked so well for the Democrats, doesn’t it make more sense for the GOP to pursue the same strategy instead of continuing the move to the center that has done so much damage to the party over the last two elections?

There were a number of reasons why conservatives lost this election (glass ceiling of the first non-white president, campaign money, biased media, 8 years of Bush); I don’t think blaming RINOs and moderates is the answer to our woes. I’m not so sure this self-bleeding is necessary, although introspection is usually beneficial. The GOP definitely could use a makeover. In terms of physical image (more Palins and Jindals and Steeles and a few less “old white men”, as superficial as it may sound), and in terms of ideological image. Basically, that WE should be the ones defining who we are; not the opposition party. Through the media, through Hollywood and pop culture, through k12 and university indoctrination, liberalism has saturated the hearts and minds of many Americans while stifling and distorting conservative ideology.

Matt Lewis offers up a few suggestions:

One thing we probably can all agree on is that to win elections again, the GOP must embrace the Internet and technology. As such, I have joined in an effort to encourage the next GOP Chairman to modernize the party and to embrace technology.

Both Barack Obama and Ron Paul took full advantage of the internet as a vehicle to spread their message and gather campaign contributions.

But tactics are not enough. To win the future, conservatives must — in my opinion — also find ways to make our timeless classical liberal principles relevant to the 21st century. This, in my estimation, is the most important intellectual discussion we can engage in for the next months (or possibly years). And since we are in the brainstorming phase of this process, let me throw it open to you: If we were creating a new contract with America, what 10 bullet points would you include?

Following are a few of my thoughts…

- The GOP must become the Party of science and math. This might include new energy ideas, a major investment in educating our children to compete with China in science and math, space exploration, etc.

- The GOP simply cannot continue to lose the Hispanic vote to the degree we lost it in 2008. I am not suggesting we support Amnesty. Instead, I am making a factual statement based on math.

- The GOP must embrace the future. Part of this means accepting that some industries and jobs will go away as high-tech jobs and industries arise. We must develop smart ideas regarding how workers can be re-trained and given the technological information to improve their lives — not just survive the changes.

Some voters smugly brag about how they don’t vote for any party; that they vote on principle, and vote for the individual. I believe that of the two parties, the Republican Party is the one that best represents my politics. I vote on principle as well by voting Republican, top to down, on a general election ticket. That’s because I believe that my party is what’s best for my country (Hence, the title of this convoluted post.). That is, until such times as the opposition party becomes more conservative than the one I’m currently in. It takes a majority vote to influence legislation in Congress, and the Party with which I agree with most of the time, is the Republican one.

Hugh Hewitt, If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat, pg 74:

it is much easier to remind voters why they want to hold their noses and vote for the party despite misgivings over the individual.

When you explain the importance of majorities, use a familiar example, like a church congregation or a homeowners association. Ask your friends if, faced with a vote of a congregation to keep or dismiss a pastor or of an HOA to allow or reject a home addition or other remodeling project, they want to be on the winning side of the vote. They will answer “yes” if they are anything other than permanently irascible.

Once they say they want to have a majority on their side in any particular situation, then ask them if they care about the various motivations behind the votes of those who agree with them.

Most people might pause, but in practice the answers are almost invariably “no”. If your friend wants the pastor to get tossed out, he doesn’t care why others are voting for the pastor to get the boot. It doesn’t matter why others in the majority are voting no. What matters is the tally that conclusively ousts the minister.

If you want to add an upstairs level to your home, it doesn’t matter a bit if the three votes on the five-member homeowners association board denying your plans are cast for different reasons. The result is a unitary one: no building that second story. The majority dictated the result.

52 second excerpt

Ronald Reagan has been in the news again lately. Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama has attempted to redefine the Regan legacy to suit his foolish idea of direct presidential negotiations with the Iranians and other tyrants without preconditions.

So, on this 21st anniversary of the speech where Reagan laid out his vision for peace with justice and freedom in Europe it’s worthwhile to reflect on the true legacy Reagan left and how it can be a roadmap for the future.

The Story Behind “Tear Down This Wall”

In 1978, two years before he was elected President, Ronald Reagan was visiting Berlin. Along with him was Richard V. Allen, who would later serve as President Reagan’s first National Security Advisor (1981-1982). Allen tells of driving to the Berlin Wall along with Reagan and his wife Nancy. Looking out over the wall, Reagan turned to Allen and said: “You know, Dick, we’ve got to find a way to knock this thing down.”

Throughout his life and throughout his presidency Reagan was determined that the Iron Curtain, which Josef Stalin drew over Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, was an injustice that could not be accepted if real peace was to reign in Europe. Unlike the left of Reagan’s day and today, Reagan understood that peace was more than the absence of conflict. And the tyranny of a Soviet imposed captivity on half of Europe was a threat to peace. The status quo was not acceptable.

Common themes on the power of freedom, a strong U.S. military and a thriving U.S. economy were central to Reagan’s vision to change the world for the better and leave behind a legacy of real peace, not stalemate and injustice.

Writing in How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, Peter Robinson, a thirtysomething speechwriter assigned to write the speech describes a trip he took to Berlin to get a feel for what people there thought was important to say and hear:

In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the Brandenburg Gate address, I spent a day in Berlin with the White House advance team, the logistical experts, Secret Service agents, and press officials who went to the site of every presidential visit to make arrangements. In the evening, I broke away from the advance team to join a dozen Berliners for dinner. Our hosts were Dieter and Ingeborg Elz, who, after Dieter completed his career at the World Bank in Washington, had retired to Berlin. Although we had never met, we had friends in common, and the Elzes had offered to put on this dinner party to give me a feel for their city. They had invited Berliners of different walks of life and political outlooks—businessmen, academics, students, homemakers.

We chatted for awhile. Then I explained that, earlier in the day, the ranking American diplomat in West Berlin had told me that over the years Berliners had made a kind of accommodation with the wall. “Is it true?” I asked. “Have you gotten used to it?”

The Elzes and their guests glanced at each other uneasily. Then one man raised an arm and pointed. “My sister lives twenty miles in that direction,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?” Another man spoke. As he walked to work each morning, he explained, a soldier in a guard tower peered down at him through binoculars. “That soldier and I speak the same language. We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I am never certain which is which.”

Our hostess broke in. A gracious woman, Ingeborg Elz had suddenly grown angry. Her face was red. She made a fist with one hand and pounded it into the palm of the other. “If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika,” she said, “he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall.”

Robinson returned to the White House and wrote a draft of the speech that included the memorable phrase “tear down this wall.” Important foreign speeches by the President are always reviewed by many departments throughout the government and this was no exception. Soon after Robinson circulated his draft it seemed that most of the Washington foreign policy and national security establishment, including Secretary of State Schultz, White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker and Asst. National Security Advisor Colin Powell wanted to remove that line.

Throughout the drafting process alternative drafts, perhaps seven in total, were submitted with the now famous phrase omitted. But Reagan persisted. He finally told Deputy Chief of Staff Duberstein he would leave it in because “it’s the right thing to do.”

At the time, no one thought much about the speech. Or, if they did, they thought the now famous line was just a stunt without any meaning. But those critics did not wish to understand how powerful the symbolic value was of having President Reagan say those words in that place at that time in concert with all the other moves he had and was taking to give America a position of strength upon which to force change in the mindset of those who would have happily left half of Europe enslaved.

Years later, Secretary Schultz reflected on the matter this way:

“I guess the point I’m making here is that ideas matter a lot, the underlying ideas that stand behind policies. When you don’t have ideas, your policies are flip-flopping all over the place. When you do have ideas, you have more consistency. And when you have the right ideas — then you can get somewhere.”

Reagan had the right ideas and he had a clear unwavering vision based not on polls but a lifelong understanding of what was “the right thing to do.” And he achieved that vision through a patient policy that combined economic and military strength with diplomacy.

That is the lesson which some today forget.

Resources:

• Full text of the speech. Reagan Library.
• Reagan’s Address at the Brandenburg Gate—A Retrospective Look 20 Years Later,
  The Miller Center for Public Affairs (Univ. of Virginia).
• Ronald Reagan Library photos from the Berlin Wall speech.
• Time Magazine interview with former Secretary of State George Schultz. Jun 11, 2007.
• Reagan’s famous line nearly clipped from Berlin speech, The Washington Times.

If you only watch part of this, start from about 7 min 30 sec. But it’s worth 10 minutes of your time.

Memo to Mr. Obama: This is the America your preacher damns. We ARE the good guys and sometimes, when talking doesn’t work, you just have to go kill the bad guys. Learn your history.

America does not forget her heroes.

H/T Media Mythbusters