The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 15)

Jeffrey Lord's article, "Why Not Victory?" was an interesting, if flawed, history of Republican presidential politics since the New Deal. In tone, it reminds me of the lament of 1952's Taft-supporting conservatives in decrying Republican establishment figures such as Thomas E. Dewey and Henry Luce as being insufficiently conservative or failing to draw a strong enough contrast with Democratic candidates. "We followed you down the road to defeat," bellowed Senator Everett Dirksen to the establishment Republicans at the 1952 convention.

Mr. Lord gets a few points of history wrong, however. One is attributing Wendell Willkie's loss in 1940 to the third term seeking FDR as a result of Willkie's liberal policies. In fact, Willkie first came to prominence as a business critic of the more statist policies of the New Deal. Where he saw eye-to-eye with FDR was in recognizing the very real peril that Hitler and Imperial Japan represented to U.S. interests and to freedom everywhere. Events proved both Willkie and FDR correct on this fundamental issue, and demonstrated the shortsightedness of Senator Robert Taft and other Republican isolationists. Willkie's run against Roosevelt began to lose steam when he became more conservative and strident in criticizing the incumbent president, not earlier when he was more moderate.

p>Mr. Lord also tends to elide the ascendancy of Republicans by following the moderate course set by successful candidate Dwight Eisenhower. And he perpetuates a demonstrable error in saying that President Gerald Ford shared with Democrat Jimmy Carter a disdain for President Ronald Reagan. In fact, while Ford stated in his memoirs that Reagan's intra-party nomination fight in 1976 had undermined his race against Carter, during Carter's presidency Mr. Ford came to view his successor as perhaps the worst post-war president. Ford strongly supported Ronald Reagan's successful campaign against Carter in 1980, and the two Republican presidents maintained a cordial relationship for many years thereafter. br> -- Erik Axelson br> Santa Barbara, California /p>

Jeffrey Lord hits the question that has always bothered me. Why is it always conservatives that have to compromise their principles with liberals, and never liberals who have to "reach out" to conservatives? Conservatives, time and time again, get hit with the biggest guilt trip on the planet -- unless they give away the keys to the shop, all is lost and it will be their fault. I don't buy it, rolling over and hoping that a liberal will appreciate your sacrifice and bother to scratch your tummy with their foot once in a while -- well, it's demeaning and undignified. Staying at home and refusing to support a phony like John McCain is a real option and you don't need to feel guilty about it.

Sure, the price might be that a liberal gets elected, but that is democracy for you -- sometimes the worst guy wins, but there will be another election where maybe you get to turn things around. In the meantime, you get to fight another day and fighting always comes easier if you have your convictions.

p>The only time conservatives are taken seriously is when the "pragmatists" realize that their principles can't be bought. It worked fine for Margaret Thatcher; she wasn't called the iron lady for nothing. If conservatives had stuck to their principles and never bothered with the "reaching out" nonsense, McCain would never have gotten as far as he has, he would have been stopped dead in his tracks years ago. br> -- Christopher Holland br> Canberra, Australia /p>

While I agree with Mr. Lord that the GOP tends to do better in presidential elections in which its candidate represents a clear and unambiguous conservative alternative to the Democrat candidate, I find his analysis of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate to be flawed.

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