Reports of the coming crackup of conservatism as the Reagan regime winds down are, like Mark Twain’s famous quip about reports of his death, greatly exaggerated. The liberals are hoping that Reaganism is merely a passing phenomenon and so they are busily predicting that this is so, but that just proves the old adage that the wish is father of the thought.
A case in point is a front page New York Times article headlined “High Tide for Conservatives, But Some Fear What Follows.”
Probably every movement has some nervous nellies, but they are certainly not the conservative movement’s spokesmen today.
Conceding that the conservative movement “is more powerful than it has ever been,” the Times accused it of being beset by “frustration, division and discontent.” On the contrary, what we are seeing is simply enthusiastic competition for leadership in a movement that has a wealth of leaders from which to choose.
The Houston television debate of the six Republican Presidential hopefuls proved that the Republican Party offers six attractive candidates, all of whom manifest an extraordinary combination of personal leadership, ability, experience, voter appeal, plus a determination to carry forward the conservative agenda.
The Times falsely asserted that conservatives are “deeply divided over who should carry the standard of the coalition that Ronald Reagan helped build.” Conservatives are less deeply divided over who should be their standard bearer than in any contested nomination in our lifetime; conservative willingness to work for whomever gets the nomination is unique in the annals of Republican politics.
None of the extreme loyalties and bitter animosities that deeply divided the Republican Party in previous pre-Convention posturing are evident today. Today we see none of the emotional commitments for or against a cause or a candidate that characterized the battles of Ford vs. Reagan in 1976, Nixon vs. Reagan vs. Rockefeller in 1968, Goldwater vs. Rockefeller/Scranton in 1964, Nixon vs. Rockefeller in 1960, and Eisenhower vs. Taft in 1952.
Continuing, the Times asserted that the conservative coalition is straining under the weight of the contradictions inherent in any broad-based political alliance.
On the contrary, conservatives of all ancestries (economic, social, and foreign policy) have learned to co-exist with one another in harmony and to be tolerant of other groups that support the same candidate for other reasons.
The Times article then resurrected the hoary hypothesis that conservatives were divided on whether the Reagan Administration was right in its early years to emphasize its tax-cutting agenda over such social issues as prayer in schools and limitations on abortion. That so-called division was a media strawman when it was first invented in 1981 and it is completely irrelevant today.
The Reagan tax cut of 1981 was the most important and essential move of his Administration. The only thing wrong with it was that the Administration allowed a slippage of six months before it went into effect, which delayed the Reaganomics recovery.
It is true, as George Nash states in his book “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945,” that in the 1950s conservatives saw themselves as a beleaguered minority battling at the margins against a liberalism that was the wave of the future. Whittaker Chambers said that, when he left Communism and came over to our side, he believed in his heart that he was leaving the winning side and joining the losing side.
In those days, conservative activists were plagued with a self-image of defeat. Conservative defeatism was exacerbated after the 1964 election by the Goldwater Syndrome, which taught that Barry Goldwater was conservatism’s one and only chance and that conservatives could never hope to elect anyone to the right of Richard Nixon.
Then came Ronald Reagan who “mainstreamed” conservatism and proved that conservatives are a majority, after all! He transformed the political scene so that any aspiring young politician who wants to get ahead knows he must be conservative in order to win.
The Times article concluded by fabricating a dispute about which parts of the Reagan legacy are more enduring: economic conservatism/tax-cutting/deregulation/public mistrust of big government spending, OR cultural conservatism/reasserting traditional values/public mistrust of sexual and educational experimentation. The fact is that both are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and politicians who run against this conservative wave of the future will be washed up on the shoals of history.
