As I blogged earlier today, in writing about the Grenell matter, the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward understood the delicate balance of the conservative coalition.  Given that social conservatives, who represent a key part of the Republican base, remained suspect of the presumptive nominee, his “campaign had to tread carefully in defending its hiring of a man who was not only openly gay but who also had agitated publicly for Obama to reverse his opposition to gay marriage.”

This perhaps explains why the campaign was wary of having Grenell speak in a recent conference call on national security.  They perhaps wanted to take a cautious (too cautious and counterproductive in my view) approach to rolling out Grenell, fearing they might otherwise antagonize social conservatives.

Yet, no matter what you do, certain social conservative leaders just won’t be satisfied.  (A few, but not all, just have this need to feel aggrieved.)  In this case, they decided to create an issue where there was none.  The Romney team had tapped Grenell as a spokesman on foreign policy and national security matters, not to advise the candidate on social issues.  And on such (national security) matters, Grenell had a record entirely in the mainstream of American conservatism.

To that end, a statement might not only have reassured Grenell, but also rank-and-file social conservatives (most, less intransigent than their leaders).

The campaign could have offered that they were delighted to have Grenell on board, given his experience and expertise in national security matters, but understood that the incoming spokesman and the candidate had differences on state recognition of same-sex marriage.  ”We welcome Republicans of all stripes to our team, even if we do not agree with them on all issues,” adding, “As Ronald Reagan said, ‘The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.‘” (more…)

Obama gets Reagan wrong on infrastructure

RELATED: No, Mr. President, Ronald Reagan didn’t campaign on raising taxes

No, Time Magazine, Obama does not “Heart” Reagan*

Barack Obama just can’t seem to get Ronald Reagan right.

Well, you can’t accuse Barack Obama of originality.  Today, the incumbent President of the United States trotted out that old Democratic talking point that Ronald Reagan “could not get through a Republican primary today.”

The Democrat uses that silly notion as he lambastes his partisan rivals for their supposed unwillingness to compromise:

These are solvable problems if people of good faith came together and were willing to compromise. The challenge we have right now is that we have on one side, a party that will brook no compromise.

. . . .

Think about that. Ronald Reagan, who, as I recall, is not accused of being a tax-and-spend socialist, understood repeatedly that when the deficit started to get out of control, that for him to make a deal he would have to propose both spending cuts and tax increases. Did it multiple times. He could not get through a Republican primary today.

If the newspaper editors (with whom he conducted the interview) did their homework, they would find that the party unwilling to brook any compromise sits in the White House, with the president, for example, having walked away from a a debt agreement last summer where Republicans has agreed to an $800 billion increase in “revenue.”

Oh yea, and Obama might want to remember that Reagan later regretted signing on the 1982 budget deal as the Democrats got their tax cuts, but the spending cuts never materialized.  Seems this guy just can’t get his facts straight about his predecessors.

Not just that, Reagan never ran for president promising to raise taxes.  Quite the contrary, in fact; in the 1984 campaign, he used his Democratic opponent’s support for such hikes against him. (more…)

Where, I asked in January, “is the conservative candidate at this conservative moment?” “In the current contest, . . . no candidate has emerged to take on Reagan’s mantle.”  In their search for a charismatic and principled conservatives who could rally the party faithful, many Republican voters, dissatisfied with the frontrunner and eager to find an alternative, have embraced, at various points during the campaign, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and now Rick Santorum.

Unlike Bachmann, Cain or Gingrich, however, Santorum has never really embraced the libertarian economic policies which defined the Gipper’s domestic policies — and now form the basis for the Tea Party’s agenda.  Moreover, as Ace observes, echoing John Podhoretz, Santorum lacks Reagan’s sunny disposition:

Santorum’s problem, again and again, is that he doesn’t want to make apositive uplifting case for things. He might have given a speech encouraging a newfound, recovered respect for the trades. He might have given a speech about the positive virtue of sweat. And it’s importance in America.

Instead he just brands those who wish their kids to go to college “snobs.”

Taking issue not with Santorum’s tone, but with the content of his recent robocall (faulting Romney for supporting TARP while opposing the auto bailouts), Jay Nordlinger seems dumbfounded, “And this is our guy? Santorum is the conservatives’ guy?”

Many conservatives supported the bank bailout and opposed the auto bailout. You can look up arguments within NR editorials. Conservatives all over the country, in all sorts of forums, made arguments for and against — for and against either bailout. Those arguments continue now, retrospectively.

But is there any thinking or respectable conservative who uses Rick Santorum’s language — the bank bailout was for Mitt Romney’s “Wall Street billionaire buddies” while Michigan workers got their faces slapped? (Santorum opposed the auto bailout, too. Was he slapping workers’ faces?) (more…)

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

–Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1975

I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I don’t think the libertarians have it right when it comes to what the Constitution is all about.

–Rick Santorum 2012

Normally, it’s uncanny how much Bruce and I see eye-to-eye.  Even though our perspectives differ slightly, we are often struck by the same stories and reach similar conclusions.  This campaign cycle seems to have upended things.  Bruce mocked Jon Huntsman on twitter; I endorsed him.  Bruce voted for Newt Gingrich; I just don’t see my former boss as cut from presidential timber.

That said, we both retain a commitment to the principles on which our nation was built, a reverence for the vision of the Founders and an appreciation for the greatness of Ronald Reagan.

And isn’t it fitting that we post our 9,000th post on the 101st anniversary of his birth?  Happy Birthday, Mr. President.  We could use a man like you about now.

Every now and again, you’ll run into an Obama supporter who professes to be a fiscal conservative. When you challenge them on the incumbent’s big-spending ways, they’ll reply that he had to do it because they mess that George W. Bush left him was so bad.  (Well, during the campaign, Obama did say that, there was “no doubt” that during the Bush era, we’d “been living beyond our means and [were] going to have to make some adjustments“?  Oh, yeah, but he made those adjustments would require reductions in spending:  ”Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”)

Even though these individuals dub themselves fiscal conservatives, they still contend that we needed the “stimulus” to jumpstart the economy; a couple have asked me, “What else can you do to get the economy going again?”

In such cases, I remind them of the economic booms of the 1980s and 1990s.  We didn’t need fiscal stimuli then.  It’s as if the 1980s never happened and we’re still taught about Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression — as if the New Deal succeeded in pulling us out of that era’s economic malaise.  They seem oblivious to the reasons for the Reagan rebound.

Oh, yeah, one more thing.  When your interlocutors start talking about the 1990s, ask them to thank Bob Dole for the success of Bill Clinton’s “stimulus.”

RELATED:  Glenn links “K.C. JOHNSON ON the ruinous reign of race-and-gender historians.“

It’s always good to study the record of a successful predecessor, particularly one whose economic policies worked pretty much as advertised.

In reading about this great Republican, the Democrat might realize that the policies he claimed never worked actually worked quite well.

For five days only, this handsome set is 50% off.  And the Reagan Library offers free ground shipping on orders over $100.

As diligent readers of this blog know, I have changed my opinion of Ann Coulter in recent years.  I used to think that she was a right-wing bomb thrower, saying outrageous things merely to get a name for herself.  But, when I met her, I put her “outrageousness” into context.

What Ann does, I wrote last April, “is just throw the left’s broadsides on conservatives back at them, returning with a playful smile what lefties send out with a self-righteous scowl.  She mocks in good fun and to make a point.”  Read the whole post for an insight into my shifting views of this conservative diva.

In short, I began to appreciate this particular diva by putting her comments into a cultural context.  Today, Mickey Kaus also takes a broader view of this conservative, finding “More evidence for [his] contention that Ann Coulter is really quite sensible if you don’t provoke her with liberal BS.: Here is a passage from her recent column on taxes and spending:”

As Reagan explains a little farther in his autobiography: He did accept tax hikes “in return for [the Democrats'] agreement to cut spending by $280 billion,” but, Reagan continues, “the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.” Maybe that’s why Republicans won’t agree to raise taxes in exchange for Democratic promises to cut spending.

For Americans who are unaware of the Democrats’ history of repeatedly reneging on their promises to cut spending in return for tax hikes, the Republicans’ opposition to tax increases does seem crazy. That’s why Republicans need to remind them. [E.A]

Read the whole thing.  H/t Instapundit.

In this Thanksgiving weekend, we acknowledge much for which we are thankful, including this great country.  I would add my wonderful family, including my very liberal sisters.  And a great number of other things . . .

Today, I feel like I should add Charles Krauthammer to the list of things for which I am most thankful.  I had sketched an idea related to the left’s latest, to borrow the expression of a GayPatriot reader, Emmanuel Goldstein, Grover Norquist, a man Democrats are now blaming for the alleged Republican obstructionism in debt reduction negotiations.

You see, Grover has succeeded in securing the signatures of a substantial number of Republicans on a pledge not to raise taxes.  And because, Democrats claim, Republicans won’t raise taxes, they can’t make a deal to cut the deficits.

The man to whom I am most grateful today (for making my task much easier) does a wonderful job of deconstructing (to borrow a term near and dear to the hearts of many academic leftists) the latest left-wing talking point:

So why does the myth of the Norquist-controlled anti-tax monolith persist? You might suggest cynicism and perversity. Let me offer a more benign explanation: thickheadedness — the inability to tell the difference between tax revenue and tax rates.

In deficit reduction, all that matters is tax revenue. The holders of our national debt care not a whit what tax rates yield the money to pay them back. They care about the sum.

The Republican proposals raise revenue, despite lowering rates, by opening a gusher of new income for the Treasury in the form of loophole elimination. For example, the Toomey plan eliminates deductions by $300 billion more than the reduction in tax rates “cost.” Result: $300 billion in new revenue. (more…)

Wonder if the White House has seen this poll:

Ronald Reagan beat out Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the former president Americans would like to see in the White House during these trying economic times, a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll finds.

Thirty-six percent of those polled said they wanted the Gipper to lead America out of the economic crisis, while 29 percent picked Roosevelt. Thomas Jefferson came in third place with the support of 14 percent of those polled, followed by Roosevelt’s successorHarry Truman at 8 percent. William Henry Harrison, who was inaugurated in March 1841 and died one month later, came in last with 1 percent support.

Maybe that’s because there’s actual evidence that Reagan’s policies worked, helping end an economic downturn and create an era of prosperity.  By contrast, FDR’s policies worked only in theory.

Yesterday, Michael Barone reported that the Baltimore Sun’s television critic David Zurawik lambasted the White House for excluding “local press from the pool coverage of Obama’s recent San Francisco fundraiser [and] Obama for appearing on Jay Leno’s program.”

Zurawik asks us to “check out” the “scripted video exchange about GOP challengers between Obama and his NBC straight man, Leno“:

I used to be merely annoyed by the way some of my colleagues in the press who were so savvy on so many other political matters fell for such phony TV scripted interplay designed to let the president score political points and reach a mass audience free and clear with his message.

But, you know what, with all the pain that so many millions of Americans are experiencing these days, it is way past annoying. It’s outrageous for our president to be playing these calculated, dippy, little TV games when so many of us are in such need of real leadership.

Yes, we are in need of real leadership and the president has failed to provide it.  And sometimes, alas, it seems that none of the candidates for the Republican nomination has demonstrated the intestinal fortitude and seriousness of purpose to lead at a time of economic uncertainty at home and increasing turmoil abroad.

“This country,” John Podhoretz reminds us, “is in terrible shape“:

The GOP electorate and the American people . . . know it. You know it. They want solutions. You’re providing comedy.

This is a serious time. It requires serious leaders. Where’s the gravity?

The reason that many on the Right have spent the year hunting somewhere, anywhere, for better candidates to challenge President Obama is becoming ever more plain with each passing day.

Thirty-six years ago, when Republicans were smarting from the shellacking they suffering in the 1974 mid-terms, the man who would later become the greatest domestic policy president of the century encouraged conservatives to be bold and forward-looking:

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people? (more…)

Appearing on CNN on Sunday, former Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman repeated one of his party’s standard talking points:

But the bigger issue is the fact that [Herman Cain is] able to get away with this just demonstrate how extreme the Republican Party has become today. The concept of Reagan mainstream conservatism is really an issue for the Smithsonian, because ultimately Reagan would be an outcast in today’s Republican Party because he raised taxes, he raised the debt ceiling and he negotiated with our adversaries.

Zimmerman here offers a talking point understanding of the GOP today presents a rather narrow view of Ronald Reagan’s overall vision and record  – as if hiking taxes and raising the debt ceiling* were issues which defined the Gipper.  Ronald Reagan always favored smaller government, reduced the federal tax rates in his first year in office, then, working with congressional Democrats and Republicans, simplified the tax code in 1986.

Income tax rates for all Americans were lower on January 20, 1989 (the day the Gipper left office) than they were on January 20, 1981 (the day he took office).

With Reagan’s reputation rising, liberals are attempting to recreate the Republican in their own image.  Mr. Zimmerman is just the latest Democrat striving to distinguish the current crop of Republican candidates from the successful conservative president.**

Now, given that the last Democrat to occupy the White House before Obama enjoys stellar ratings, with two-thirds of Americans having a favorable view of the former Arkansan, his favorability on the upswing even among Republicans, maybe we should be asking how the Democrats today compare with Bill Clinton.

Would, say, the president and his fellow partisans support taking spending back to the level of the Clinton years?

* (more…)

Well, if the president’s jobs bill enjoys majority support as the Washington Post/ABC News poll suggests, it isn’t helping his overall approval which, according to Gallup, just slipped to 38:

Seems his poll numbers are heading in the opposite direction of the Gipper’s in the third year of his term. Many pundits have claimed that Obama could win because his numbers this year were similar to Reagan’s in 1983. Only problem was that Reagan’s polls started ticking upwards as his economic plan kicked in. Obama’s plan was supposed to start working just a few months after it was passed (more than two years ago).

Maybe that’s because as Jim Hoft reports, “In Ronald Reagan’s third September in office he created 1.1 million jobs in one month.”  (By contrast, “Employers added 103,000 jobs in [Obama's third] September [in office]. Half of those were striking Verizon workers returning to work.”)

Well, technically, the Gipper didn’t create the jobs.  He just put policies in place which made it possible for entrepreneurs and businessmen to create and expand their enterprises, thus making it necessary for them to bring on more employees.

Former President Bill Clinton, the AP’s Andrew DeMillo reports, “on Saturday offered a vigorous defense of President Barack Obama against what he called the same anti-government stances he faced during his campaign and two terms in office“:

“Underlying those challenges is the same old debate about whether government is the problem or whether we need smart government and a changing economy working together to create the opportunities of tomorrow,” Clinton told the crowd, which was flooded with old campaign signs for him or his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Obama in 2008′s Democratic nominating contest.

. . . .

“There’s not a single example on our planet, not one, where an anti-government strategy has produced a vibrant economy with strong and broad-based growth and prosperity,” Clinton said.

Yeah, but Mr. Clinton, as I recall, you compromised with those anti-government forces in the 104th and 105th Congresses. As a result, growth in government slowed as the economy prospered.  The federal government consumed a far smaller percentage of the GDP than it does today.  Indeed, federal spending in the 1990a, as a percentage of GDP, was slightly lower than it was in the 1970s.

And what, pray tell, fell between the 1990s and the 1970s.

UPDATE:  Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward critiques historian Sean Wilentz’s recent article in The New Republic, “20 Years Later: How Bill Clinton Saved Liberalism from Itself”. Here, he addresses a point similar to the one I make above:

Wilentz left unsaid one key part of Clinton’s success that Podhoretz noted prominently: Clinton’s adaptation to the Republican landslide of 1994, which was a direct rebuke to Clinton’s McGovernite ways his first two years in office.  Wilentz’s silence on Obama’s lack of adaptation to the 2010 election result is telling.

I am proud this morning to announce my support for Herman Cain for President.

This is a personal decision by me and does not reflect the views of my co-bloggers nor should be construed as an official endorsement by GOPROUD of which I am a board member.

Now that I’m done with that disclaimer….let me shout this from sea to shining sea — AMERICA NEEDS HERMAN CAIN!!!! I have been flirting with the Cain candidacy for over a year now. I had the pleasure to meet him at CPAC and I have been closely following his campaign long before most people knew his name.

I felt it was important to declare my preference publicly today as I have decided to become actively involved in Team Cain to assist in the South Carolina primary and beyond. I owe my readers the transparency of knowing why I am writing about certain things and not to be confused by my intent.

Why Herman Cain? Well, haven’t been this excited about a Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984 (the first year I was old enough to truly know anything and make a difference).

Some will now say, “now Bruce….there will never be another Ronald Reagan!” And that is true. And I am NOT equating Mr. Cain to Mr. Reagan. What I am saying is that Mr. Cain excites me with his common sense ideas, love of country, and ability to connect to the American psyche. Choosing a President has always been a “gut feeling” thing for America. I have a great feeling about Herman Cain.

Herman Cain has been plucked by destiny to arrive at America’s electoral doorstep at just the right time. He has a solid business background, is an inspirational leader of people, and understands the complexities of the world economy. He wasn’t a community organizer, he is a jobs and growth creator. He wasn’t a concocted creation of America’s radical left and academic centers of power, he is a true child of the American Experience. He has never scoffed at American values, he embraces our nation’s special place in the history of mankind and knows we are teetering on the edge.

Mr. Cain is familiar with rescuing failing enterprises, which to me is his most important qualification. In a sheer coincidence to the timing of my announcement, Daniel Henninger wrote this yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

Does a résumé like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-selection software. [Emphasis added.]

Conventional wisdom holds that this week’s Chris Christie boomlet means the GOP is desperate for a savior. The reality is that, at some point, Republicans will have to start drilling deeper on their own into the candidates they’ve got.

Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain’s life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.

No other GOP candidate can bring the fight to Obama over the sorry state of the American economy than Herman Cain. Our other choices are, I’m sad to say, more of the same old thing — career professional politicians. Yes, even Ron Paul, folks.

So there you have it. My big announcement. Herman Cain is the first Presidential candidate I will actively and ENTHUSIASTICALLY campaign for through blood, sweat, money & tears since Ronald Reagan in 1984. That’s a long time of being unmoved by GOP nominees, don’t you think?

There will be more to say about Herman Cain and the issues. But I wanted to stand up today and proudly declare my support for the 45th President of the United States of America and the next true heir of the American Experience — Mr. Herman Cain.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In recent weeks, with increasing evidence of a sputtering economic recovery, it’s become abundantly clear that the Democrats see their path to victory in the 2012 elections in attacking and marginalizing the GOP.  Because the Democrats have made their intentions abundantly clear, Republicans should have an easier time running against the president’s party.

That said, failing an effective counteroffensive, the Democrats’ attacks could work.  Yet, it remains a high-risk strategy for the party currently in power.  Instead of offering hope for a less-divisive, shall we say, post-partisan politics, the president and his party will attempt to label the GOP as the party

1. reluctant to tax “millionaires and billionaires,” refusing to ask the superrich to pay their “fair share” of federal income taxes.
2. of extremists out of step with middle American, particularly the “middle class”, and
3. the party of “No,” unwilling to compromise and failing to offer a jobs plan of its own.

Republicans should be able to counter the 3rd line of attack, if the House passes a jobs bill and Republican leaders remind voters of the details of the plan–and if the Republican nominee offers a plan of his own.

Over at the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein reminds us that Democrats have tried a similar attack strategy in the past, smearing the Republican nominee in order to distract voters from an incumbent Democrat’s record.  ”With his ratings in the tank, President Carter [in 1980] attempted to raise fears about Ronald Reagan.”  Remember, the left did not always see the Gipper as a genial conservative pragmatist, indeed, Carter’s team that year hoped the California Republican would win the GOP nomination as many thought him too much a right-winger to win a general election.

The attacks on Reagan were actually effective in keeping the race competitive until the very end – and that’s when the two candidates debated, and Reagan came off as reasonable, informed and likeable, which was a contrast with the way he was being portrayed. Everybody who follows politics knows about Reagan’s famous “there you go again” retort to Carter during the debate, but few remember what Reagan was responding to. As it turns out, it was a similar line of attack that we’re now seeing against Perry. (more…)

A great comedienne honored to receive good wishes from a great leader:

Because of the craziness of this past week, a visiting nephew and a visiting father, I somehow got my dates messed up.  I had planned on celebrating this centennial of Lucille Ball’s birthday today, Sunday, August 6, only looking up at my calendar yesterday afternoon to realize that it was indeed, Saturday, August 6 so Sunday would be the 100th anniversary of Lucy’s birth plus one day.

In honor of that great lady, I tracked down a few videos honoring her.  Here, the Gipper offers a tribute to the woman who made millions laugh.

Note how at about 0:46 into the video when Mike Wallace asks Ronald Reagan what made Lucy so special, the great man replied, “I don’t know that I can answer that.  You just accepted it and reveled in it, but you didn’t try to get down and analyze what she could do.  But, it just was peculiarly hers and her way.  I don’t know of anyone you could compare her to.”

What a great way to appreciate a great artist.  You don’t analyze how they do it; you just delight in how well they do it, that they make us laugh or cry — or just plain feel more alive and better connected to the universe and those around us.

Today, we celebrate the 90th birthday of the woman who made Ronald Wilson Reagan great, his beloved Nancy.

As I’ve said before, he was born good; she made him great.


Mrs. Reagan’s favorite color was red. Let’s wear red in honor of her day.