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Even Reagan Wasn’t a Reagan Republican
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Party
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP May 17, 2010 07:28pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Author | Andrew Romano |
| Media | Magazine - Newsweek |
| News Date | Tuesday, May 11, 2010 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Conservatives would claim that the Republican Party can only regain power by "returning to its roots" and banishing heretics. But a funny thing happened on the way to winning national elections again: the GOP has drifted so far right that it's retroactively disqualified the only Republicans since 1960 who've actually managed to, you know, win national elections. Based on their public statements, policy proposals, and accomplishments while in office, none of the modern Republican presidents—not Richard Nixon, not Gerald Ford, not George H.W. Bush, not even Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush—would come close to satisfying the Republican base if they were seeking election today.
The point is not that these guys were liberals. It's that the GOP is at risk of becoming so dogmatic that it would exclude even its most iconic members. Preemptively ruling out the sort of pragmatic policies that have worked in the past is a novel strategy, and it clearly plays to the passions of the moment. But unless the demographic evidence is wildly inaccurate and the country is, in fact, growing more and more right wing over time, it's probably not a strategy that's going to work particularly well in the future.
Click through to see why the past five Republican presidents wouldn't stand a chance in today's GOP. |
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