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Title: Tear down this icon: Why the GOP has to get over Ronald Reagan
Source:
WaPo
URL Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini ... 2-a198-99893f10d6dd_story.html
Published: Apr 25, 2013
Author: Jennifer Rubin
Post Date: 2013-04-27 13:02:28 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 2615
Comments: 6
The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party. But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific. The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era. Today’s Republican Party, however, faces legions of voters and candidates who came of age politically after Reagan’s eight years in office. An entire generation recalls him vaguely as a genial, optimistic president who stood up for America in the Cold War. The Republican Party can remain a Ronald Reagan historical society, or it can try to endure as a force in national politics. But it can’t do both. The choice matters greatly, for there is no guarantee that the GOP will retain its ability to win national elections or that conservatism has a future as a national governing philosophy. The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them. The public face of the GOP can no longer be aging, ill-tempered Reaganites such as John McCain and Jim DeMint but must give way to a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in. Only then can the essence of conservatism — the promotion of personal liberty — survive, and the GOP along with it. “We’re winning everything imaginable in off-years,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told me recently. “The governors are still going strong. We’re winning the war in issue-driven races.” However, he conceded that Republicans have lost their ability to connect with average Americans in the wider electorate: “We are not relating to people at an emotional level.” The 2012 presidential election should have been an opportunity to make that connection. The party seemed to have everything it needed in its nominee: an intelligent and experienced candidate with a tax-cutting agenda, a defense of traditional values, a commitment to maintain U.S. supremacy in the world — and an adoring wife, too. Unfortunately, Mitt Romney seemed to be campaigning for the 1980 election, with attacks on welfare recipients and promises of greater defense spending and getting government off our backs. In the months since Romney’s defeat, there has been a great deal of angst about the party’s future. Some Republicans, such as Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC, are certain that the GOP has a personnel problem and are determined to weed out self-destructive candidates. But the problems are more serious than simply who is winning primary races. This is not a matter of individually competent candidates but of the GOP’s outdated worldview. Poster Comment: Jennifer Rubin is a jew's jew, a radical neocon whore, so bear that in mind while reading this.
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#1. To: All (#0)
Jennifer Rubin’s Infantile Conservatism by Patrick J. Buchanan, Feb. 25, 2013 Regularly now, the Washington Post, as always concerned with fairness and balance, runs a blog called “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin’s Take From a Conservative Perspective.” The blog tells us what the Post regards as conservatism. On Monday, Rubin declared that America’s “greatest national security threat is Iran.” Do conservatives really believe this? How is America, with thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, scores of warships in the Med, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, bombers and nuclear subs and land-based missiles able to strike and incinerate Iran within half an hour, threatened by Iran? Iran has no missile that can reach us, no air force or navy that would survive the first days of war, no nuclear weapons, no bomb-grade uranium from which to build one. All of her nuclear facilities are under constant United Nations surveillance and inspection. And if this Iran is the “greatest national security threat” faced by the world’s last superpower, why do Iran’s nearest neighbors—Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan—seem so unafraid of her? Citing the Associated Press and Times of Israel, Rubin warns us that “Iran has picked 16 new locations for nuclear plants.” How many nuclear plants does Iran have now? One, Bushehr. Begun by the Germans under the shah, Bushehr was taken over by the Russians in 1995, but not completed for 16 years, until 2011. In their dreams, the Iranians, their economy sinking under U.S. and U.N. sanctions, are going to throw up 16 nuclear plants. Twice Rubin describes our situation today as “scary.” Remarkable. Our uncles and fathers turned the Empire of the Sun and Third Reich into cinders in four years, and this generation is all wee-weed up over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “For all intents and purposes, (Bibi) Netanyahu is now the West’s protector,” says Rubin. How so? Because Obama and Chuck Hagel seem to lack the testosterone “to execute a military strike on Iran.” Yet according to the Christian Science Monitor, Bibi first warned in 1992 that Iran was on course to get the bomb—in three to five years! And still no bomb. And Bibi has since been prime minister twice. Why has our Lord Protector not manned up and dealt with Iran himself? Answer: He wants us to do it—and us to take the consequences. “With regard to Afghanistan, the president is pulling up stakes prematurely,” says Rubin. As we are now in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan, and about to leave thousands of troops behind when we depart in 2014, what is she talking about? “In Iraq, the absence of U.S. forces on the ground has ushered in a new round of sectarian violence and opened the door for Iran’s growing violence.” Where to begin. Shia Iran has influence in Iraq because we invaded Iraq, dethroned Sunni Saddam, disbanded his Sunni-led army that had defeated Iran in an eight-year war and presided over the rise to power of the Iraqi Shia majority that now tilts to Iran. Today’s Iraq is a direct consequence of our war, our invasion, our occupation. That’s our crowd in Baghdad, cozying up to Iran. And the cost of that war to strip Iraq of weapons it did not have? Four thousand five hundred American dead, 35,000 wounded, $1 trillion and 100,000 Iraqi dead. Half a million widows and orphans. A centuries-old Christian community ravaged. And, yes, an Iraq tilting to Iran and descending into sectarian, civil and ethnic war. A disaster of epochal proportions. But that disaster was not the doing of Barack Obama, but of people of the same semi-hysterical mindset as Ms. Rubin. She writes that for the rest of Obama’s term, we “are going to have to rely on France, Israel, our superb (albeit underfunded) military and plain old luck to prevent national security catastrophes.” Is she serious? Is French Prime Minister Francois Hollande really one of the four pillars of U.S national security now? Is Israel our security blanket, or is it maybe the other way around? And if America spends as much on defense as all other nations combined, and is sheltered behind the world’s largest oceans, why should we Americans be as frightened as Rubin appears to be? Undeniably we face challenges. A debt-deficit crisis that could sink our economy. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, Africa, Arabia, Iraq and Syria. North Korea’s nukes. A clash between China and Japan that drags us in. An unstable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. But does Iran, a Shia island in a Sunni sea, a Persian-dominated land where half the population is non-Persian, a country whose major exports, once we get past fossil fuels, are pistachio nuts, carpets and caviar, really pose the greatest national security threat to the world’s greatest nation? We outlasted the evil empire of Lenin and Stalin that held captive a billion people for 45 years of Cold War, and we are frightened by a rickety theocracy ruled by an old ayatollah? Rubin’s blog may be the Post‘s idea of conservatism. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize it. www.theamericanconservati...ennifer-rubins-infantile- conservatism/ 
-Alex Kurtagic
#2. To: X-15 (#0)
Eight years, eight dreary, miserable, mind-numbing years, the years of the Age of Reagan, are at long last coming to an end. These years have surely left an ominous legacy for the future: we shall undoubtedly suffer from the after-shocks of Reaganism for years to come. But at least Himself will not be there, and without the man Reagan, without what has been called his "charisma," Reaganism cannot nearly be the same. Reagan’s heirs and assigns are a pale shadow of the Master, as we can see from the performance of George Bush. He might try to imitate the notes of Reagan, but the music just ain’t there. Only this provides a glimmer of hope for America: that Reaganism might not survive much beyond Reagan. www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html
#3. To: X-15 (#0) (Edited)
I don't understand why this society looks up to Reagan as a "Conservative" or a hero as our former president. I see no good in this man at all. All I remember of him is his involvement in the smuggling of contraband and drugs to Iranians in the 80's along with the assistance of Oliver North. Both these men should have been tried for high treason, war crimes but instead are given medals of honor, and their own radio show. Furthermore, it was Reagan who along with Bush Senior made NAFTA what it is today for the purpose of making it easier for the Mexican drug cartels controlled by the US. government, to smuggle their illegal drugs into the U.S. without pat downs at security points. Even the U.S. Attorney Generals Office covers for these cartel shipments coming in.
#4. To: bush_is_a_moonie, X-15 (#2)
The actor, having achieved at last the stardom that had eluded him in Hollywood, reads the lines and performs the action that others – his script-writers, his directors – have told him to follow. Yeah, like the time he kept putting the line about tearing down the wall back into the speech after his (I bet Jewish) aides kept removing it. Rothbard's full of shit. Reagan's real sin in the eyes of the kike is that, like any strong soft-spoken goy of his generation, he never took critique per se seriously. So he didn't take kikes seriously, never mind libertarian kikes. On the other hand, Rothbard was frank about racial differences, which all anti-white "libertarians" would like to forget. So nobody's all bad.
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
#5. To: purplerose (#3)
No surprise there. His time was an Indian summer for the white man. I see no good in this man at all.
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
#6. To: X-15 (#0)
That's actually correct. Since the GOP would rather die than appeal to whites, die it will. There never really was a place in real politics for "conservatives". The good news is the dark folk are figuring out they no longer need white anti-white spokesmen, so it's not just anti-white "conservatives" that are in trouble. The libs will get theirs. This is not a matter of individually competent candidates but of the GOP’s outdated worldview.
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
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