21st-Century Reaganism
Nov 27th, 2007 by Ted Pibil
The war for the soul of the Republican Party was won in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Presidential candidates who want to re-wage the conflict in 2008 will only weaken the GOP against the Democrats’ nominee.
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The candidate most likely to energize all the segments of the Republican grass roots against a Democratic opponent next year is one committed to making the Bush tax cuts permanent and fixing the entitlement spending crisis with free-market solutions, who insists on winning in Iraq and clearly sees Iran for the nuclear threat it is, and who would reverse the radical ACLU mentality on the federal bench.
Yet most of the GOP presidential hopefuls have refused to act as across-the-board Reaganites. There would be nothing, for instance, to stop a one-time Southern Baptist minister from claiming the mantle of Reaganism. But erstwhile man of the cloth and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose appeal among evangelicals has raised him to within striking distance in Iowa, has continually attacked the Club for Growth, a major champion of conservative economic policies, as the “Club for Greed.”
Calling capitalists Scrooges is straight out of the liberal Democratic playbook. A more helpful retort from Huckabee would be to address the Club’s concerns about his approving an income-tax surcharge in Little Rock.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson, on the other hand, has managed to gain the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee (a key stamp of approval from social conservatives) while at the same time espousing the boldest of economic solutions on both Social Security and tax reform.
Thompson would solve Social Security’s insolvency by giving Americans voluntary control of their own personal retirement accounts. He’d keep the Bush tax cuts, and he announced last weekend that he’d let taxpayers choose between the present, complex tax code and a simplified system with only two rates: 10% and 25%.
The movie star politician also proposes a Reaganesque rebuilding of our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
The Republicans running for the 2008 presidential nomination are often accused of being unconvincing actors in repeatedly invoking the name of Ronald Reagan. Funny how the one real actor among them seems to understand what Reaganism is.
