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Would Reagan recognize the GOP?
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Candidate
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| Contributor | COSDem |
| Last Edited | COSDem Aug 05, 2005 04:12pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - New Republic, The |
| News Date | Sunday, August 29, 2004 10:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | ***subscription needed. use bugmenot***
"The party of George W. Bush is very much the party of Ronald Reagan," declared Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican Party, in September 2003. It's a contention that one speaker after another will echo at the Republican National Convention. But they will be largely wrong. While there is continuity between the Reagan and Bush GOPs--as evidenced by Bush's tax cuts, for example--the outward similarities conceal a deeper truth: Bush's Republican Party is far more conservative than Reagan's ever was.
U.S. political parties are not like tightly organized European parties. They contain different levels of formal and informal leadership and membership--ranging from elected politicians to local and state party officials to partisan interest groups to core voters. On each of these levels, the party that will gather in New York City to renominate Bush is different from that of Reagan. In Reagan's party, moderates, and even liberals, retained a strong voice; in Bush's, they are barely audible. In Reagan's party, conservatives complained of being ignored, and the religious right was shut out of the party establishment; in Bush's party, conservatives and the Christian Right no longer grumble. That's because, today, they are the Republican Party.
Reagan's GOP brought together Sun Belt conservatives, such as Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who were hostile to labor unions and the New Deal but who also opposed government interference in citizens' lives; Deep South conservatives, such as Strom Thurmond, who had turned Republican when the Democrats backed racial desegregation; a large group of moderates or "Old Guard" Republicans, such as Kansas Senator Robert Dole, who supported the New Deal but worried about budget deficits and welfare and who, unlike the Deep South Republicans, still identified themselves as members of the party of Lincoln; and a few Northeastern liberals, such as Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz. |
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