Today’s
column on Joe Scarborough was written before I
saw his
piece this morning in Politico.
It is stunning to see such muddled cluelessness in print.
Joe begins by comparing the GOP’s current woes to the collapse
of the Whigs in the 1850s, then moves on to Herbert Hoover and the
“20 years in the wilderness” that followed. Mentioning the
Democrats losing five out of six elections after the 1968
“radicalization of their base” he ends his beginning by noting the
“GOP lost the popular vote in five of their last six runs for the
White House in part because they couldn’t keep pace with the rapid
change in demographic realities.”
Huh?
Where to begin?
The Whigs collapsed indeed precisely as Scarborough
notes — because they didn’t have the spine to stand against
slavery. They were the “moderates” of the day and they deserved to
lose and fade away.
Herbert Hoover, inheriting the conservative legacy of Calvin
Coolidge immediately moved the GOP left. A Progressive Republican
with a capital PR, Hoover was so popular with liberals of the day
that Franklin Roosevelt had hoped the Democrats would
nominate him in 1920 — with a young FDR as Hoover’s running mate.
Hoover instead announced he was a Republican. While FDR did make it
onto the Democratic ticket as the vice-presidential candidate,
Harding and Coolidge won the day and Hoover went into the GOP
Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.
Where, eight years later, Coolidge noted that Hoover had spent
his time giving Coolidge advice — “all of it bad.” Be that as it
may, in an election that presaged the Reagan-Bush transfer in 1988,
the popular Hoover was chosen as Coolidge’s successor and carrying
Coolidge’s conservative flag into the election won in a
landslide.
Four years later, having run the country in his Progressive
Republican way replete with a tax increase from the mid-20s rate to
63 percent and a host of new regulations, plus signing on to the
Smoot-Hawley tariff, he gave us the Great Depression. Hoover
lost in a landslide to FDR, the conservative legacy of Coolidge
lost. For the next 20 years the GOP turned incessantly to
progressive — or as they came to be called “moderate” Republicans.
From Hoover they went to Alf Landon to Wendell Willkie to Tom Dewey
twice, each and all “moderates” of the Colin Powell variety. They
struck gold in 1952 — only because the great hero of World War II,
Eisenhower, was a moderate. The Eisenhower victories were personal,
embodied in his slogan: everybody “liked Ike.” Trying the same
schtick with Nixon in 1960 — Nixon opening the first and most
famous of his debates with John F. Kennedy by saying that he and
JFK agreed on many things — Nixon lost.
The move to bring the party back to its Lincoln conservative
roots was on. In a massive struggle, the moderates lost control of
the GOP to Goldwater.
Did Goldwater lose in a landslide? Yes. For all manner of
reasons, not the least that the country was still horrified by
JFK’s brutal assassination and had no intention of having a fourth
president in four years. Moderate Republicans, sulking as moderates
do, simply refused to support Goldwater.
But one Republican famously went all out for Goldwater — Ronald
Reagan. He understood the message — and he knew how to communicate
it. And as was noted by no less than the New York Times at
the time of Reagan’s televised October speech, “A Time For
Choosing,” it was Reagan who emerged as the best communicator of
conservative principles. It might do Morning Joe well to spend some
time going back to watch Reagan’s speech again — here’s the
link for it.
The rest — the great, the good and the bad is known. But not,
apparently, understood by Joe Scarborough. The “dreadful collapse”
he mentions in his Politico piece this morning didn’t come
about because the GOP was faithful to conservatism. To the
contrary. These abysmal defeats came about because conservatism was
abandoned. Specifically, first by President George H.W.Bush — a
great and wonderful man but a moderate first, last, and always.
Like Hoover with Coolidge, Bush ran on the record of his
predecessor, won a third GOP landslide in a row — and immediately
abandoned conservatism on taking the White House. Like Hoover, Bush
raised taxes, infamously breaking his “read my lips” pledge. Like
Hoover, he got clobbered as a result.
Ever since the GOP has nominated one moderate Republican after
another — Dole, Bush 43 twice, McCain, Romney. In each and every
case these nominees ran as the next Hoover, the next Bush 41 —
chanting Reagan’s name as if it were some sort of necessary but
painful ritual. But conservative policies? Nah. From tax increases
(Dole) to “compassionate conservatism” and Medicare Part B (Bush
43) to McCain-Feingold to RomneyCare the resulting fraternity
Republicanism has indeed either gotten clobbered or won by the skin
of its teeth.
It is precisely this Hoover-Bush school of moderation to which
Colin Powell belongs. That was my impression in the day when I
introduced General Powell to our White House briefings for Reagan
supporters. My former colleague Peter Robinson, a speechwriter for
Reagan who wrote the famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”
Berlin speech, recalls how Powell made it a point to repeatedly
oppose keeping that line in Reagan’s speech — overruled finally
only by Reagan himself. A typical moderate was — and is —
Powell.
In short, what Scarborough and Colin Powell are saying is that
if only the GOP would be more like — pick your favorite loser —
the GOP would win. Sure.
Ronald Reagan himself never believed that — as I certainly can
say. He himself was called an “extremist” by all manner of GOP
moderates from the moment he appeared on the political scene.
California moderate Republicans couldn’t stand him. Notably
then-former President Ford went to the Times with the
“Reagan is an extremist” line in 1980. Ford insisted a conservative
couldn’t win — this, like all the other moderate nominees, after
losing himself. To Jimmy Carter.
The problem, Joe, is that moderates have been running this party
for too long — straight into the ground.
Once again, it’s a Time for Choosing.
