I have been thoroughly amused by all this talk about a "civil
war" within the Republican Party, supposedly due to divisive
"conservative" factions who, going rogue, are disturbing the
Newtonian equilibrium of "mainstream" party regulars. What
balderdash.
The present tension between conservative, moderate and
liberal branches of the GOP, not to mention the differing
relative priorities of the components of the Reaganite triad of
economic, national security, and social conservatives, is at
least as old as the struggle between the old Taft and Eisenhower
struggle, and even more relevant to today's discussion, Ronald
Regan's challenge to Gerald Ford, then a sitting president,
albeit by appointment of the departing, defeated Richard Nixon.
Reagan then followed up his defeat with a victory over George
Bush, Senior, in 1980, another classic contest between
conservative "insurgents" and mainstream, blue-blood
Republicans.
As a young politico in St. Louis in 1976, serving as a kind
of pro bono legal counsel for the major
Reagan fundraiser in Missouri, the late William McBride Love, I
was active in the caucus process in which Reagan challenged
President Ford in the Show Me State.
What was novel in those primary caucuses was the
recruitment of formerly Democratic Baptists and Catholics,
primarily motivated by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions
legalizing abortion for all nine months of pregnancy in every
state of the union, and the mobilization of existing conservative
constituencies -- Cold Warriors, Second Amendment advocates,
free-marketeers and the like. Some of these people would
eventually make up the as yet unheralded cohort, "Reagan
Democrats." These would coalesce with the older, long-standing
conservative factions into the tripartite Reagan
coalition.
Reagan barely lost the primary to Gerald Ford, who went on
to run a very close but losing campaign to the feckless Jimmy
Carter. However, the Great Communicator lived to fight another
day, defeating George H. W. Bush in the 1980 presidential
primary.
It should be recalled that both the 1976 and 1980
Republican primaries were hard-fought, bare-knuckled battles to
the death, metaphorically speaking of course. Yet, recall that
Reagan did choose Bush for his vice-presidential candidate.
Eventually, the Bush campaign manager, James Baker, became his
chief of staff.
Looking at the smashing Republican victory here in my
adopted Commonwealth of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, the new
Governor-Elect, won a campaign focusing on the most pressing
issues du jour, jobs and economic growth.
Moreover, he is a military man and solid social conservative.
There is not single person in either the right-to-life or
pro-family movements who doubts McDonnell's credentials on these
matters. The man prudently addressed the overwhelming concerns of
the majority of Virginians while remaining grounded in the other
two constituencies of the conservative coalition. It seems to
have been a winning combination.
So we have all seen this picture of "civil war" within the
herd of pachyderms before. With the benefit of hindsight, none of
these kerfuffles have permanently damaged the party. In fact,
these political struggles appear, in retrospect, to be quite
civil.
Most of the prattling about division in the Republican
ranks comes from those who wish the GOP only harm or actually
favor one faction over another, i.e., the center-left over the
center-right. Their views should be severely discounted.
Moreover, the fact that one set of issues or one leg of the
three-legged stool of the conservative coalition might be under-
or over-emphasized in any given time or place or jurisdiction is
entirely defensible on prudential grounds. Democrats do it every
day depending on whether they are running in west Texas, San
Francisco, Montana or Missouri.
The best thing the Republican Party can do is to follow my
Grandfather's advice: Age quod agis ("Do
what you're doing")!
topics:
Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford
